I remember looking at the NODE_PATH option but not finding it appealing, I forget exactly why.

It might have been that in the project I was working on at the time, we didn’t check in .env files (a dodgy idea), so it would mean a codebase that didn’t build without extra steps like setting environment variables new devs’ machines and on build servers, all just to do absolute imports. Or maybe it seemed a little bit odd to use something intended for another purpose.

Anyhoo, I guess I considered it a non-option.