JavaScript does have a Range object, but it refers to an arbitrary portion of the DOM and is not supported in IE 6/7.
If you want, you can simplify your function to this, but it’s all the same really.
this.years = function(startYear) {
var currentYear = new Date().getFullYear(), years = [];
startYear = startYear || 1980;
while ( startYear <= currentYear ) {
years.push(startYear++);
}
return years;
}
console.log( this.years(2019-20));