I don't understand Crockford on [removed] The Way Forward

Question

In a lecture called "The Way Forward", Douglass Crockford shares that he no longer uses "new" in his JavaScript, and is weaning himself off of "this&quo

Answer 1

Obviously some other good answers here, but TL;DR:

Why does this snippet make the following assignment?

that.method = method

He's "extending" the that object, adding a locally defined method (unfortunately named) method. It's no more complex than that.

function animal_constructor(init){
    return {};
}

function dog_constructor(init) {
    // Create a generic animal object
    var dog = animal_constructor(init),
        // Define a local function variable called 'bark'
        bark = function() {
            alert('woof!');
        };

    // Add the 'bark' function as a property of the generic animal
    dog.bark = bark;
    // Return our now-fancy quadriped
    return dog;
}

// Try it out
var init = {},
    animal = animal_constructor(init),  // generic animals can't bark
    yeller = dog_constructor(init);     // fancy dog-animals can!

yeller.bark();  // > woof!
animal.bark();  // > Uncaught TypeError: undefined is not a function