June 9, 2014 (Updated December 18, 2014) Update July. 28, 2014: I just gave a talk at BayNode on this exact subject, which includes a walkthrough of all the code discussed in this post. If talks & slides are more your style, check it out. Almost any Node.js developer can tell you what the require() function does, but how many of us actually know how it works? We use it every day to load libraries
![The Node.js Way - How `require()` Actually Works](https://cdn-ak-scissors.b.st-hatena.com/image/square/bbebad36c2acdc71a34f2d1196a4e183f04638cc/height=288;version=1;width=512/http%3A%2F%2Ffredkschott.com%2Fimages%2F2014-06-09-require-and-the-module-system.png)