> I still wonder how come the first syntax was considered a good idea in the first place ?

I think it came from RequireJS, probably intended for one-off usage (e.g. a single require that requires a certain loader)

Still a bad idea, though.

http://requirejs.org/docs/plugins.html (Jan 2011: https://web.archive.org/web/20110109084245/http://requirejs....)