On this episode of Modern Web Podcast, Rob Ocel interviews Mark Erikson, the Redux maintainer and senior front end engineer at Replay.io. They discuss the arcane complexities of publishing JavaScript packages to NPM today, the balance between developer experience and user experience when it comes to open source libraries, the unique troubles for React/Next library authors, and the responses to Mark’s wildly successful blog about upgrading Redux to use ESM.

00:00:01] Ecosystem evolves, nobody at the wheel.[00:07:02] Open source library complexity: Dev exp. vs user exp.[00:13:11] ESM vs CJS: Technical merits, tree shaking, syntax.[00:18:35] Lazy-load files with CJS/ESM.[00:23:37] Publish libraries in multiple formats, React server components.[00:30:38] React team locks out valid code paths.[00:35:26] Open source maintainer responsibility: Maximally compatible, widely respected.[00:42:25] Competing philosophies on web evolution.[00:47:54] Unifying competing standards for developers.[00:53:19] Expertise gained through unexpected challenges.

Sponsored by This Dot Labs.