Why was JavaScript implemented using prototypal inheritance?

Question

There are lots of articles and posts explaining how JavaScript inheritance works, but why was JavaScript implemented using prototypal inheritance instead of classical inheritanc

Answer 1

Here's what Brendan Eich has to say about what happened: https://brendaneich.com/2008/04/popularity/

As I've often said, and as others at Netscape can confirm, I was recruited to Netscape with the promise of "doing Scheme" in the browser. At least client engineering management including Tom Paquin, Michael Toy, and Rick Schell, along with some guy named Marc Andreessen, were convinced that Netscape should embed a programming language, in source form, in HTML.

The diktat from upper engineering management was that the language must "look like Java". That ruled out Perl, Python, and Tcl, along with Scheme.

I'm not proud, but I'm happy that I chose Scheme-ish first-class functions and Self-ish (albeit singular) prototypes as the main ingredients. The Java influences, especially y2k Date bugs but also the primitive vs. object distinction (e.g., string vs. String), were unfortunate.