Glossary

CLI

A CLI, or Command-Line Interface, is a text-based interface for interacting with a program. The common command-line app for a Mac user is the Terminal app, and Windows users often use Command Prompt.

CommonJS

CommonJS is a group that defines standard formats for JavaScript APIs. They have defined standards for JavaScript modules and packages.

CORS

CORS (Cross-Origin Resource Sharing) is a mechanism for servers to control client access to web assets.

ES5

ES5 refers to EcmaScript 5th Edition. A simple way to put it is that ES5 is the version of JavaScript which developers are most familiar with today. ES2015/ES6

A wide range of new features were introduced in this version of JavaScript, including classes, modules, iterators, and promises. Evergreen browsers (Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Edge) have full support for ES6, but to use ES6 features in older browsers, tools such as Babel and TypeScript have to transpile ES6 code down to ES5.

ES2016/ES7

This version of JavaScript added a number of new features to the language, including Array.includes and the exponentiation operator. This version of JavaScript is fully supported by all evergreen browsers (Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Edge)

ES2017/ES8

This version of JavaScript is the latest standard. It is currently in the final stage before becoming the new official standard. This spec includes Async/Await (already in all evergreen browsers) and shared memory/atomics.