sle2025/paper07

SLE 2025 paper:
Optimal Language Design is Hard: A Case Study in ECMAScript (JavaScript) Standardization

Philipp Riemer, Yury Nikulin, Ashley Claymore, Mikhail Barash

• 🏆 Distinguished Research Paper Award
• DOI: 10.1145/3732771.3742715
• T1A: Design
  • It studies and supports design choices in a widely used language (ECMAScript), focusing on the language design process itself.
• T2B: Evolution
  • The work frames language standardization as an evolving, long-running maintenance process with accumulating issues/preferences.
• T4A: Workbenches
  • It introduces tooling (and an ILP-backed workflow) to structure and optimize parts of the decision-making process.

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