like you intended it to look,
regardless of what browser
standards committees at organizations
like the European Computer
Manufacturers Association (ECMA).
This group of experts is responsible
for setting standards that make it
possible for browsers such as Firefox,
Internet Explorer, or Opera to interpret
Web pages in the same way.
only graduate student to sit on the
ECMAScript committee. The members
of this group are typically lead architects
and designers from each of the world's
major Web browsers, as well as senior
technologists and researchers from
other companies and institutions.
invited to join the standards committee
because of the novel work he had done
constructing a mathematical model for
JavaScript, a language that is incorporated
into every Web browser in the world.
search," explains Herman, whose
research interests are in programming
language semantics and formal specifi-
cation. "All I could find was a 200-page
JavaScript was supposed to behave, but
it was incredibly difficult to understand."
by building a mathematical model
that would be "more concise and more
precise than English and hopefully
more understandable as well," he says.
months later, he got a call from Mozilla's
Eich, who had seen Herman's model.
"He was interested in mathematical
models and programming language
semantics and was curious to hear
my perspective on this and what I
had learned from building a model,"
says Herman.
was soon invited to join the ECMAScript
committee and spend the summer working
at Mozilla. "It was an incredibly remark-
able thing," says Herman. "In the past, it's
been hard for dialogues to exist between
industry and academia. They are separate
communities with separate communi-
cations channels, so the fact that the
programming language designer and
CTO of a major company would seek
out academic input is just really exiting.
It points to a new level of dialogue."
"Dave's appointment to the ECMAScript
committee is very important because it
shows that practitioners have recognized
the need to use the kind of formal models
we have been working on. It is also an
opportunity for us to see our ideas put
into wide use."
the next generation of JavaScript, and
Herman is focused on two aspects of
this process. He's working on develop-
ing a mathematical model of the new
JavaScript that is easier to understand and
more accessible to real-world programmers
than the previous language definition.
And, he's helping design the new lan-
guage and formulate its specification.
involved in the language design, whereas
the other people on the committee can
say, `Here are the real-world constraints,'"
says Herman, who has been given a
$60,000 grant by Mozilla to fund his
year. "It's the theoretical meets the
practical. The whole goal is to be able
to marry those two."
model for JavaScript and now sits on a leading
standards committee and works for one of
the world's top Web browsers.