Javascript Standard

javascript

// JavaScript - The standards:

Netscape initially named as LiveScript, and released in 1995 by Netscape, and 
a year later, was renamed as JavaScript hoping to capitalize on Java's 
popularity at that time, but JavaScript has no actual relationship with Java.

In 1996, Netscape submitted JavaScript to ECMA International for standardization.
This eventually resulted in a new language standard labeled ECMAScript.  All 
major implementation have actually been implementation of the ECMAScript 
standard, but the term JavaScript has stuck for historical and marketing 
reasons.  In the real world, ECMAScript is used to refer to the standard, while 
JavaScript is used when talking about the language in practice.

ECMAScript 3 was released in 1999.

ECMAScript 4 was completely abandoned.

ECMAScript 5 was released in 2009.

The new standard was originally named ES.Harmony before it was referred to as 
ECMAScript 6th Edition (ES6).  In 2015, TC39, the committee responsible for 
drafting the ECMAScript specifications, made the decision to move to a yearly 
model for defining new standards, where new features would be added as they 
were approved, rather than drafting complete planned out specs that would only 
be finalized when all features were ready.  As the result, ES6 was renamed to 
ECMAScript 2015.

Going forward, we may hear names such as ES2017 or ES2018, but we may 
also hear names such as ES7 or ES8, but ES2017 may not be the same as ES7 
because ES7 actually refer to the 7th edition of the standard instead of the 
yearly standard.  I think that the JavaScript community should not use the 
names such as ES7 or ES8 because those standards are not yet written, and 
use the yearly naming convention instead.

ES.Next was also used to imply ECMAScript Proposals for things that are being 
proposed but are not yet approved to be part of the standard.