Why is it necessary to set the prototype constructor?

Question

In the section about inheritance in the MDN article Introduction to Object Oriented Javascript, I noticed they set the prototype.constructor:

// correct the          


        

Answer 1

EDIT, I was actually wrong. Commenting the line out doesn't change it's behavior at all. (I tested it)

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Yes, it is necessary. When you do

Student.prototype = new Person();  

Student.prototype.constructor becomes Person. Therefore, calling Student() would return an object created by Person. If you then do

Student.prototype.constructor = Student; 

Student.prototype.constructor is reset back to Student. Now when you call Student() it executes Student, which calls the parent constructor Parent(), it returns the correctly inherited object. If you didn't reset Student.prototype.constructor before calling it you would get an object that would not have any of the properties set in Student().