Noted for designing and documenting several computer programming languages, Steele has served on accredited standards committees ECMA TC39 (ECMAScript, for which he was editor of the first edition), X3J11 (the C language), and X3J3 (Fortran) and was chairman of X3J13 (Common Lisp). He has also been a member of the IEEE working group that produced the IEEE Standard for the Scheme Programming Language, IEEE Std 1178-1990. Steele represented Sun Microsystems in the High Performance Fortran Forum, which produced the High Performance Fortran specification in May 1993.
In addition to specifications of the Java programming language, his work at Sun Microsystems included research in parallel algorithms, implementation strategies, and architectural and software support. In 2005, Steele began leading a team of researchers at Sun developing a new programming language named Fortress, a high-performance language designed to obsolete Fortran.
