| TIMELINE | HISTORY |
|---|---|
| 1995 | Brendan Eich creates the very first version of JavaScript in just 10 days. It was called Mocha, but already had many fundamental features of modern JavaScript! |
| 1996 | 1) Mocha changes to LiveScript and then to JavaScript, in order to attract Java developers. However, JavaScript has almost nothing to do with Java. 2) Microsoft launches IE, copying JavaScript from Netscape and calling it JScript. |
| 1997 | With a need to standardize the language, ECMA releases ECMAScript 1 (ES1), the first official standard for JavaScript (ECMAScript is the standard, JavaScript the language in practice). |
| 2009 | ES5 (ECMAScript 5) is released with lots of great new features. |
| 2015 | 1) ES6/ES2015 (ECMAScript 2015) was released: the biggest update to the language ever! 2) ECMAScript changes to an annual release cycle in order to ship less features per update. |
| 2016 - ♾ | Release of ES2016 / ES2017 / ES2018 / ES2019 / ES2020 / ES2021 / … / ES2089 |
- Fully supported in all browsers
- Ready to be used today
- ES6+: Well supported in all modern browsers
- No support in older browsers
- Can use most features in production with transpiling and polyfilling
- ESNext: Future versions of the language (new feature proposals that reach Stage 4)
- Can already use some features in production with transpiling and polyfilling.