Fetch is a web JS API to do HTTP requests. NodeJS has its own API to do HTTP requests. This add supports for the fetch API.

I think the only benefit it that it makes it easier to share code between front end and back end.

This is an understatement. With fetch available in node, we have a single, standardised, promise-based HTTP client Interface available on all (more or less common) JavaScript platforms.

This is great news for an ecosystem traditionally extremely fragmented and may lead the way to more consolidation in the JS library space.

NodeJS API are traditionally not promised based (although nowadays some do offer a promisified option), so I'm not especially excited to have a promise-based API :)

It's a great news for people doing both front end and backend I guess, but for people doing NodeJS développement it's just one more option to do http request (which I guess is going to be very similar to the module node-fetch that have existed for a while, without special consolidation effect)

> NodeJS API are traditionally not promised based

...and that's part of why this is great news. Node APIs are the avocado colored appliances of the JS ecosystem.

For more on Fetch, check out MDN: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Fetch_API

It makes it easier to learn and develop both frontend and backend.

node js is a web software platform over a decade old that does not include a stable API for making a web request so there are a bunch of community libraries for making a web request, and which one is "best practice" has changed like four or five times through the years. this is a new api for making a web request. yayy progress.