I am using JSLint with syntastic in Vim and when I have a simple .js
file like so
var a = 99;
var b = `I am ${a} years old`;
Why does Syntastic (and thus jslint) give me this error
Unexpected '`'
Okay, I think you're asking a trick question. With the most recent version of JSLint, your code lints fine.
Try it out on jslint.com.
It used to be that JSLint didn't support es6 (ES2015) features out of the box, and you had to explicitly tell it you were using es6.
Template literals (`) weren't a thing until ES2015 (again, aka es6), which leaves out many browsers. And older copies of JSLint assumed you were serving up your JavaScript as written to browsers that might only be es5 compliant unless you told it you're in ES2015 (es6) mode.
So try putting /*jslint es6 */
at the top of your file and see if it lints.
But more importantly: Update your version of JSLint.