The Benefits of JavaScript Prototype

Question

I\'ve been wondering about JavaScript\'s prototypal nature, and the benefits of it, and have come down to the following list :

1) Inheritance

Answer 1

Those are all correct.

Of course, there are "drawbacks" as well:

No closures

function a() {
    var ival = 0;
    this.start = function(){ ival = setInterval(function(){ }, 300); }
    this.finish = function(){ clearTimeout(ival); }
}

compare to:

function a() {
    this.ival = 0;
}
a.prototype.start = function(){ this.ival = setInterval(function(){ }, 300); }
a.prototype.finish = function(){ clearTimeout(this.ival); }

Answer 2

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prototype-based_programming#Comparison_with_class-based_models

Also, please see the discussion of prototype inheritance in the answers to this:

prototype based vs. class based inheritance