I'd argue three. Namespace import is really just giving a name to the idea that "you must provide an alias to be used as a namespace if trying to do a wildcard import to avoid naming conflicts" because executing JS in a browser would otherwise not be able to detect naming conflicts - you'd end up overriding values of the same name with the most recent import which is almost never desired behavior. Think about how you might resolve the issue of two different modules exporting a function with the same name otherwise. "Mandatory namespacing" fixes the problem.

The "weird one" of the remaining three is side effect imports which isn't all that weird when you realize you're not assigning it to anything. Functionally this is the same as calling a function rather than assigning a function to a value. eg `myFunction = function myfunction() { //stuff }` vs `myFunction()` and when you think about it like that it becomes significantly less weird but also something you rarely want to do - it's mostly used for polyfills. Good to know it exists but you can probably ignore that it does.

So now you're left with two: Default and Named. Use Default when you want the entire library - or almost the entire library. Used Named when you want specific pieces of the library. That's all there is too it really. If I want a specific function from a library - there's no reason to import the entire library. For a while you'd mix both Default and Named exports for React due to how transpiling worked - this React blog post explains it well: https://reactjs.org/blog/2020/09/22/introducing-the-new-jsx-... but you don't really have a reason to mix the two in modern codebases.

Named imports tend to be preferred because Default imports means giving a name to it which can result in inconsistencies across a codebase when many people are working on it. (eg: `import SumTwo from 'sumtwoNumbers.js'` vs `import AddTwo from 'sumTwoNumbers.js'`. A named import `import {SumTwoNumbers} from 'sumtwoNumbers.js'` solves this problem)

There's still one final little "gotcha" - there can only be a single Default export. Generally it's an object that contains "everything" but it doesn't need to be and those times are the only edge cases you'll run into though I can't say I ever have encountered this so it is a "theoretical" reason to avoid Default imports but I can't say it's ever been an issue in practice.

I guess I avoided a lot of this weirdness by basically only ever using the ES6 syntax and preferring Named imports (and not being stuck in the React ecosystem). The CommonJS got to avoid some of the "weirdness" because it could pretend the Browser doesn't exist (and leave handling it to bundling tools). So I guess I'll capitulate and say it's a little weird but you can basically ignore it and used Named imports as the "One True Style".

I try not to hate on projects publicly, because I know a lot of devs smarter than me pour their sweat and tears into these things. But imagine releasing a new language in 2014 and fucking up strings.