[embwbam]

One of the major problems with JavaScript has always been that there are too many options. I feel like TS reduces some, but it still lets people choose between a module pattern (AMD, CommonJS), and the traditional everything-in-the-global-scope way of writing programs.

So you're left feeling confused because there is more than one way to write a program. Options are good and all, but in the front-end Javascript community, I think we could deal with fewer of them.

To solve your own problem: I would recommend using CommonJS with Browserify for everything, and only use reference tags for ambient declarations. (.d.ts files). Then you'll always use import and export