ES6 import statements not working in Node v8.4.0

One way that I have worked around this issue...

Install babel stuff for the project:

$ npm install babel-register babel-preset-es2015 --save-dev

Create an index.js file that is the main entry point into the app:

// index.js 
// by requiring `babel/register`, all of our successive `require`s will be Babel'd
require('babel-register')({
   presets: [ 'es2015' ]
});

require('./server');

Then, create a file called server.js that will have your normal index code:

// server.js
import express from 'express';

var app = express()

app.get('/', (req, res) => res.send('Hello World!'))

app.listen(3000, () => console.log('Example app listening on port 3000!'))

And run:

$ node index.js