The ECMAScript Standards Process

For the past couple of years, TC39 has been accepting proposals for new features to add to the ECMAScript standard. As we look at the current work being pursued in the committee, we see two categories of investments:

• Work on the JavaScript runtime. This work (binary data, private names, globalization, etc.) offers valuable new capabilities to the platform, and can be made available in a feature-detectable way under the existing JavaScript script tags, allowing for smooth and near-term adoption of these features.
• Work on JavaScript syntax. This work (let, destructuring, iterators, object literals, etc.) adds to the expressiveness of the JavaScript language, but also requires heavier weight versioning for developers, such as opting in to new script tags.

We prioritize the JavaScript runtime because it fundamentally limits the capabilities of the Web. We participate in the standards body to make sure these features can become ubiquitous tools developers can depend upon.