We will focus on how a JavaScript module can be loaded, and get a gist of what all module loaders do.
If you are new to modules in JavaScript I would recommend to start with this article by Addy Osmani.
Do you use Browserify, WebPack, jspm, StealJS, or SystemJS? This article will provide a peak under the hood at the layer on top of which those libraries are implemented.
The nature of a human brain is that it cannot deal with a lot of objects at the same time (Miller’s Law). If you are going to build a large JavaScript application, you should stop, remember this limitation and start thinking in terms of modules.
Modules are a way to organize your application. Simply break your functionality into small pieces, focusing on how they will work with each other, and then assemble them together. A module could be seen as a black box with a clear, simple API. Modules commonly depend on other modules.
In today's modern browsers, there is support for not only writing and loading modules, but performing various low-level tasks around loading and executing the module. This article will explain the current standard for module loaders - their lifecycle and their hooks. A future article will show a detailed example for how to use these hooks.
Pop quiz! If you have modules written in CoffeeScript and CommonJS, is it possible to use them both within an ES6 application?
