Deno joins JavaScript standards effort

Developers of Deno, the TypeScript / JavaScript runtime positioned as an alternative to Node.js, have joined the standards body overseeing development of the JavaScript standard.

In a December 13 blog post on the Deno company website, engineer Luca Casonato noted the company is now a member of ECMA International, the organization overseeing ECMA-262, the ECMAScript standard that underlies JavaScript. Deno will be participating with other ECMA members and the wider JS community on the next iterations of JavaScript via the TC39 working group.

Deno will push for feature improvements that benefit everyone but especially users of server-side JavaScript, Casonato wrote. The features Deno expects to pursue include:

• Better support for non-JS assets in the ES module graph
• Improved backing for explicit resource management
• More extensive standard library functions for async iteration

Deno also is interested in pursuing closer alignment of TypeScript and JavaScript. Casonato will be Deno’s primary representative at TC39. He invites suggestions on improvements to JavaScript, to be emailed to luca@deno.com or via Twitter at @lcas.dev.

ECMAScript 2021, the most recent version of the JavaScript standard, was published in June, featuring capabilities for promises and strings. Also this year, the TC39 group in July formed a task group, TC39-TG3, to focus on JavaScript security, looking to help developers create secure programs.