The ECMAScript standard

In the beginning, some companies such as Microsoft were trying to develop their own JavaScript implementation, in this case, JScript for Internet Explorer 3.0, in the year  1996. To define a standard, Netscape delivered JavaScript to the European Computer Manufacturers Association (ECMA), a standards organization for information and communication systems.

The first edition of ECMA-262 was adopted by the ECMA General Assembly in June 1997. Several editions of the language standard have been published since then. The name ECMAScript was a compromise between the organizations involved in standardizing the language, especially Netscape and Microsoft, whose disputes dominated the early standards sessions.

So, after all these standardization processes and paperwork, what are we using? ECMAScript, JScript, ActionScript, or JavaScript? Are they the same? Well, basically no. After the standardization, ECMAScript was defined as the main language, and JavaScript, JScript, and ActionScript are dialects of this language, of course, JavaScript being the most known and used.

The ECMAScript Version 5 is supported by most browsers nowadays, released in 2011. Some of the features managed for this version are as listed:

• Support for new Array methods
• Support for manage dates
• Support for JSON

At this point, we’ve seen pure ES5 syntax, very verbose, sometimes highly coupled with other functionality, and if we are planning to develop a big application, it can become difficult to maintain.

Thank God we won’t have to deal with this syntax anymore. The ECMAScript 6 (ES6) version came with a lot of changes that simplify the development and understanding of our code.