20 credit z-inf project
Student: Kai Waløen (UiB)
Supervisor: Mikhail Barash (UiB)
Examinator: Mikhail Barash (UiB), Anya Helene Bagge (UiB), Yulia Startsev (Mozilla)
JavaScript is amongst the world’s most popular and most used languages. It is a popular choice for web development and is supported by powerful libraries and frameworks such as React, Angular, Vue.js, Next.js and many more. The committee responsible for maintaining and standardizing the JavaScript programming language is Technical Committee 39 (TC39) of the ECMA International. There are 6 TC39 meetings each year in which proposals are made to implement new functionality with the goal foster the evolution of JavaScript, of which University of Bergen was the host of the international TC39 meeting in 2023. In order for a proposal to be implemented into JavaScript, it goes through a rigourous 6 stage process (https://tc39.es/process-document/). Each proposal has one or more author and champion who are responsible for developing and maintaining the proposal.
Stage 0: This is a new proposal. It is not currently being considered by the committee.
Stage 1: This proposal is under consideration. The committee expects to devote time to examining the identified problem space, the full breadth of possible solutions, and cross-cutting concerns.
Stage 2: The committee has chosen a preferred solution or solution space, but the design is a draft and may still change significantly. The committee expects the feature to be developed and eventually included in the standard, but due to reasons that may not be apparent at this stage, the feature may never be included in the standard.
Stage 2.7: The proposal is approved in principle and undergoing validation. The solution is complete and no further work is possible without feedback from tests, implementations, or usage. No changes to the proposal will be requested by the committee aside from those elicited through testing, implementation, or usage experience.
Stage 3: The proposal has been recommended for implementation. No changes to the proposal are expected, but some necessary changes may still occur due to web incompatibilities or feedback from production-grade implementations.
Stage 4: The proposed feature is complete and ready to be included in the standard. No further changes will be made to the proposal.
The changes we are classifying are the following:
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API Change: Modifies or introduces new functions, objects, or methods in the standard library. These changes do not affect the syntax of the language but add new functionality to existing features.
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Semantic Change: Changes the meaning of the JavaScript code even if the syntax remains the same. These changes can alter the behavior of existing JavaScript programs in subtle or breaking ways. Usually involves modifying execution rules rather than introducing new syntax.
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Syntactic Change: Introduces new syntax or modifies existing syntax rules. Usually involves new keywords, operators, or expressions. These changes often require updates to parsers and affect how JavaScript code is written.