A first look at what might be in ECMAScript 7 and 8

[2011-09-14] esnext, dev, javascript

Brendan Eich mentions features that are candidates for ECMAScript 6, 7 and 8:

ECMAScript 6: modules and shallow continuations. These things have been known for a while – see [1].
ECMAScript 7: guards, contracts, event loop concurrency.
ECMAScript 8: macros, parallel arrays (SIMD) [background].

It is interesting that the goal of some features is to make JavaScript a better compilation target [2]. I am very excited about macros possibly making it into ECMAScript 8. Just three benefits:

Easily create embedded domain-specific languages (for HTML fragments, queries, GUI definitions, etc.).
Invent new more concise syntax for specific tasks (this one is mainly for – gifted – library authors). If you wanted to, you could also call the result a domain-specific language.
Any new syntax introduced after ECMAScript 8 can be retrofitted to previous versions via macros.