> Is this… ${new-style} really better than… ${old-style}?

Yes! A hundred thousand times yes!

I have not seen this syntax in JavaScript before, but just by having the vague notion that it's pipe-like, I was able to generally understand what was happening within seconds of reading it. I'd have to read up on the syntax a bit to confidently write code in this style, or perhaps to fix a bug (does "${%}" do what I think it does) but I can quite literally comprehend the author's intent almost at almost the same speed as I can read.

    1. get all the keys of envars.
    2. convert every key into a "var=value" format.
    3. put a space between them all
    4. stick a dollar sign in front of the whole thing
    5. no clue what the `chalk` library is for?
      a. this *appears* to prefix a "node ${args}" call with the previously-created environment variable bits
      b. that tracks with what we've seen so far
      c. close enough for now
    6. log the whole thing

Note that even without knowing what chalk is or does, the flow of everything makes it extremely clear what exactly the high-level outcome is supposed to be. We're building up a string like "$ FOO=bar BAZ=qux node --arg thing --arg2 more_args". We're doing something fancy with it that I don't quite know about just yet, but the above knowledge makes it very easy to fill in that gap.

With the second one, I have to construct a tree in my head

    1. console.log…
      a. the result of chalk.dim, which is
        i. all the env vars
        ii. mapped to key=value format
        iii. joined by a space
      b. ^ actually do chalk.dim on that thing above
        i. sorry, back up, there were some additional arguments
      c. ^ actually do chalk.dim on the above with 'node' and space-separated args
        i. I think this concatenates them?
        ii. double-check [1.a] to confirm
        iii. did I miss `args` defined somewhere in [1.a]?
          A. no, it's apparently inherited from scope
    2. ^ actually log all the above
      a. wait is this a correct reading, based on reassembling the above?

The confusion is compounded by not knowing the details of chalk. I have to jump backwards and reason about what the result of a non-linear chunk of steps is to make sure my guess is consistent.

I have no opinion on the merits of this particular syntax, its implementation details, or in comparison to alternate proposals of similar ideas. I'm sure there's worthwhile debate to be had on those details. But from a high level, I'm a fan. My head is not a meat-based tree traverser and I'm guessing most people's isn't either. Human brains are big fans of linear narratives. While I love movies and shows like Memento and Westworld, this kind of disjoint storytelling is quite literally done for the purpose of generating confusion and not for promoting comprehension.