ES6, ES2015, ES7, ES2016, ES8, ES2017, and ES.Next

As we already know, JavaScript is a language that runs mostly on browsers (as well as in servers using NodeJS, and in desktop and mobile devices), and each browser can implement its own version of the available functionalities of JavaScript (as you will learn later on in this book). This specific implementation is based on ECMAScript. Thus, the browsers offer mostly the same functionalities (our JavaScript code will run in all browsers); however, each functionality's behavior may be a little bit different from browser to browser.

All the code presented in this chapter so far is based on ECMAScript 5 (ES5 - ES is simply short for ECMAScript), which became a standard in December 2009. ECMAScript 2015 (ES2015) was standardized in June 2015, almost 6 years after its previous edition. The name ES6 became popular before the release of ES2015.

The committee responsible for drafting the ECMAScript specifications made the decision to move to a yearly model to define new standards, where new features would be added as they were approved. For this reason, ECMAScript sixth edition was renamed to ECMAScript 2015 (ES6).

In June 2016, ECMAScript seventh edition was standardized. We know this edition as ECMAScript 2016 or ES2016 (ES7).

In June 2017, ECMAScript eighth edition was standardized. We know this edition as ECMAScript 2017 or ES2017 (ES8). At the time of writing this book, this is the most recent edition of ES.

You also might see ES.Next in some resources. This term is a reference to the next edition of ECMAScript.

In this topic, we will cover some of the new functionalities introduced in ES2015 onwards, which will be helpful when we develop our data structures and algorithms.