Languages / JavaScript Core
History and Standards
How JavaScript got here and how ECMAScript editions are decided.
Photo by chansu shin on Unsplash
A short history of JavaScript
JavaScript began as a ten-day prototype in a browser and became the shared runtime of the web, servers, and tools. This overview follows that arc from Netscape in 1995 through ECMAScript, Node.js, transpilers, and today's yearly language releases.
How ECMAScript is standardized
ECMAScript is maintained by TC39 at Ecma International. Proposals move through numbered stages, are validated by test262, and ship as yearly editions — separate from HTML, fetch, and other host specifications.
ECMAScript versions cheat sheet
Each yearly ECMAScript edition bundles finished proposals. This cheat sheet lists headline additions from ES5 through recent editions so you can map syntax you see in tutorials to the standard that introduced it.