Prototypal Inheritance in JavaScript

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2024-05-13 09:00:05

Five years ago I wrote Classical Inheritance in JavaScript (Chinese Italian Japanese). It showed that JavaScript is a class-free, prototypal language, and that it has sufficient expressive power to simulate a classical system. My programming style has evolved since then, as any good programmer's should. I have learned to fully embrace prototypalism, and have liberated myself from the confines of the classical model.

My journey was circuitous because JavaScript itself is conflicted about its prototypal nature. In a prototypal system, objects inherit from objects. JavaScript, however, lacks an operator that performs that operation. Instead it has a new operator, such that

This indirection was intended to make the language seem more familiar to classically trained programmers, but failed to do that, as we can see from the very low opinion Java programmers have of JavaScript. JavaScript's constructor pattern did not appeal to the classical crowd. It also obscured JavaScript's true prototypal nature. As a result, there are very few programmers who know how to use the language effectively.

Fortunately, it is easy to create an operator that implements true prototypal inheritance. It is a standard feature in my toolkit, and I highly recommend it for yours.