I actually don’t think it’s to make the language simpler, but most likely for compatibility. First, Statement/Block are parameterized with whether or not they c

I actually don’t think it’s to make the language simpler, but most likely for compatibility. First, Statement/Block are parameterized with whether or not they can contain Return statements in the spec, so it wouldn’t complicate the spec much. Second, it is exceedingly rare that JS compatibility breaks. The one recent break I am aware of is: var let = [] let[0] = 1 // Syntax error because let [ conflicts with destructuring lexical declaration.