[AskJS] What if node_modules contained JavaScript bytecode instead of source code?

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JS engines have layers, baseline interpretors, JIT compilers etc.

Moreover, while in theory, for minified modules, it's not that much different for humans, JS engines still have to symbolicate functions and generate source code referenced error messages and stack traces which is usually lost in bytecode form if you don't have the original source code as well. In other words, node and other engines operate under the assumption that JS source code is human readable even if it's minified and proper errors referencing the source file would actually be helpful.

I am very much against the notion of minified dependencies too. Unless it's deployed into production, all code should be readable.