I always go into these things hoping the outsider will be an Amish farmer or professional welder, but it always turns out to be just another programmer.
TBF right now JS is in transition from commonjs to ESM, and we all believe for the better, but this transition period does yield some strange issues like the article said, for instance I hope/expect that "Warning: To load an ES module [...]" will be default in the near future so we won't need that warning anymore.
Also knowing JS enough, if I see "SyntaxError: Cannot use import statement outside a module" coming from a package I'd know that the package is wrong, at which point I would just try to find other of the 2M+ packages, open the JS file to see how it works if I'm really interested, open an issue or assume the project is just broken (which just happens, not all packages are well built).
The JS tooling story _is_ convoluted, and most people just don't touch that stuff, or when they do, they start from a working place, and just make small tweaks.
I know a few people whom keep up on tech trends, even though it has nothing to do with their job.
I follow programming trends, basically through HN, and self study. (I have wasted a lot of money on programming/Computing books.), and I'm basically a Jack of all Trades in life.
I'm a mechanic certain years. I'm a contractor certain years. I'm a Electrician when I am very low on money. I'm a Watchmaker whenever someone asks me what I do. (I hate that last sociatial question. When did it become copacetic to ask for job status, and finances. I guess it came with the Selfie. (I didn't use a question mark on purpose. Too disenfranchised today to care.)
I do miss the days before relying on bloated JS libraries.
I miss the LAMP days for my personal websites.
There was a free server I used to use, but forget it's name.
It allowed full domain names without their branding. Like mysite.com, instead of mysite.com.branding.
I know Git, Google, and Amazon offer a free page, but I just don't like learning their way of putting up a site.
As you can by my verbage, I'm not a professional.
But for some reason I try to stay current on certain aspects of this industry.
But then I realised I am interesting in things other people do as a job: cooking, CAD, gardening, wood work, music.
So people must be interested in programming as a past time.
It significantly predates the selfie. Tyler Durden mocked the question in Fight Club before smart phones existed, and it was already very old then. I'd bet money you could find films and books in the '50s that document that question (I think I know of a novel that does, but I'd have to double-check to be sure). I bet the only reason it'd be harder to find in 18th and 19th century literature is that so much of that was by and for aristocrats. Pre-industrial-revolution, perhaps it was an uncommon question.
It makes sense in a world where most people spend the best 40+ hours of their week working a job for wages, lose another 5-10 good hours to commuting to that job, and the rest of their waking time is spent desperately catching up on neglected housework and recovering from that 40 hours. It's only outliers who are bugged by the question, or see it as presumptuous. These outliers usually have settled for a lot less than most people are willing to (materially, and maybe family-wise—this'd be your Tyler Durdens, your actually-poor-and-not-just-slumming-it bohemian sorts or members of Fussell's "Class X"), or else have found themselves in a situation where they're much richer than most people but don't have to work all that hard for it (some of the Fussellian upper-middle, especially later in their careers, plus your usual trust-fund kids).
I was hoping a young Amish farmer goes on his rumspringa to decide if he wants to continue on as Amish farmer, he likes the modern world well enough but is so scarred by the JavaScript experience he runs back to the safety of the church, never to stray again.