Rediscovering JavaScript

Inheriting from a Class

In the past, to implement prototypal inheritance you had to literally change the prototype on the constructor function. This was rather inconvenient, error prone, and not intuitive. Also, there was no clear way to override methods. This was so hard that most programmers either got it wrong or relied on libraries to do it for them.

The updated syntax for inheritance greatly simplifies the task of creating prototypal inheritance. There is also a clear and elegant way to override methods. The syntax for inheritance is much like the one used by other mainstream languages, especially Java—that’s good news and bad news.

The good news is that programming inheritance is now very easy and approachable, and the code is easier to ...