[z3t4]

The main technical difference is that you can not have scoped imports. The main impact though, is that many will use a hammer on screws, meaning; people used to "other tools", can now do so (ES6: import, class, etc). While require teaches you to use the electrical screwdriver.

[tlrobinson]

Are you saying you can't do function-scoped imports ("require" inside a function)? I rarely see that used and it's not available in any other language I can think of.

[z3t4]

Yes. It makes things so much simpler. Your program do not have to be complex! It can exist entirely of functions that do not depend on their outer scope. You can basically change everything around them and the function will still work the same. And you do not have to look outside the function to understand what it does. You only have to know about the standard objects witch in JavaScript (ES5) is Math, Date, JSON and Error. Everything else is "required" when needed.

[tlrobinson]

That's still true but on the module level. If your module is so large that it's hard to keep track of the imports/requires then you should probably split the module up.

I really don't think require-ing within individual functions is a common or good practice. Can you point me to an open source project that does that?

[z3t4]

A module is already scoped in node.js. It would be nice to have scoped require in the browser too, instead of just global import.

Splitting up a program, or module, into (more) modules does not make it simpler, rather contrary, it makes it more complex! Unless it's a fully decoupled abstraction reusable in other projects.

An example of require-ing within individual functions: A function to send notifications to e-mail or SMS ... It makes more sense to require the SMTP or SMS module in those functions, then somewhere else.

[tlrobinson]

ES6 modules do get their own scope in the browser. That's kind of the point of them.