Is JavaScript's “new” keyword considered harmful?

Question

In another question, a user pointed out that the new keyword was dangerous to use and proposed a solution to object creation that did not use new.

Answer 1

I am newbie to Javascript so maybe I am just not too experienced in providing a good view point to this. Yet I want to share my view on this "new" thing.

I have come from the C# world where using the keyword "new" is so natural that it is the factory design pattern that looks weird to me.

When I first code in Javascript, I don't realize that there is the "new" keyword and code like the one in YUI pattern and it doesn't take me long to run into disaster. I lose track of what a particular line is supposed to be doing when looking back the code I've written. More chaotic is that my mind can't really transit between object instances boundaries when I am "dry-running" the code.

Then, I found the "new" keyword which to me, it "separate" things. With the new keyword, it creates things. Without the new keyword, I know I won't confuse it with creating things unless the function I am invoking gives me strong clues of that.

For instance, with var bar=foo(); I have no clues as what bar could possibly be.... Is it a return value or is it a newly created object? But with var bar = new foo(); I know for sure bar is an object.