Moving from `prototype` and `new` to a closure-and-exposure pattern

Question

I have been re-factoring someone else\'s JavaScript code.

BEFORE:

function SomeObj(flag) {
    var _private = true;
    this.flag = (fla         


        

Answer 1

In my experience, the only thing you lose by not using .prototype is memory - each object ends up owning its own copy of the function objects defined therein.

If you only intend instantiating "small" numbers of objects this is not likely to be a big problem.

Regarding your specific questions:

1. The second comment on that linked article is highly relevant. The author's benchmark is wrong - it's testing the overhead of running a constructor that also declares four inner functions. It's not testing the subsequent performance of those functions.

2. Your "closure and expose" code sample is not OO, it's just a namespace with some enclosed private variables. Since it doesn't use new it's no use if you ever hope to instantiate objects from it.

3. I can't answer this - "it depends" is as good an answer as you can get for this.