Exactly this and I'm a little disappointed, though not surprised that the response was "well it works for me so what's wrong with it? it's only for frontend". It's actually part of the language.

You also forgot another super important point:

- It actually works. How many times have we all run into some weird error or stack trace because node/npm/babel/webpack/typescript/jest/regenerator-runtime/babel-core/quantum-flux-inverter tower of cards collapses when a commonjs module somehow leaks in from node_modules?

Precisely, aren't babel & webpack front end issues?

No

Why would you babel or webpack your nodejs backend code? (Genuinely asking, I have never needed to do it in the last 10 years, so I assumed this was all about browser compatibility and not having to download thousands of small file over the internet respectively)

Oh, 100% agree on that point :D

I'm not convinced :)

Admittedly the largest project I'm working on is mostly in TS now, and I probably get most of the benefits of the import syntax even if require is used under the hood (including linters, which I think worked even before we switched to typescript).