Comments on: Prototype vs. YUI round 1: OOP Architecture

By: admin

admin — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 23:05:23 +0000

Joel,

Very true. For said reason, I also wouldn’t use the YUI module pattern with a large and/or frequently reused object. I reserve the Module Pattern for Objects that are initialized once, such as business logic and widget management objects.

However, I also wouldn’t use the Prototype method, because you expose too much by attaching everything to the ‘this’ variable. Lately, I have been using a combination of overriding the prototype, lazy function definition, and proxy functions created using the Module Pattern.

By: Joel

Joel — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 21:53:37 +0000

When you’re talking about real-world objects with large or many functions in them, Prototype’s approach to object creation is going to win in terms of memory usage, when you have multiple instances of the same object. Any methods attached to a class’s “prototype” are shared between all instances of the class. Because YUI doesn’t seem from your example to use the prototype object, every instance of the class will get its own copies of all the functions.

By: Foo Hack » YUI’s “Module Pattern” vs. Prototype’s Class Function

Mon, 13 Aug 2007 17:54:01 +0000

[...] Geoffery Moller, I came across this article on Matt Snider’s blog. I’m surprised that no one noticed what (to me) was the most [...]

By: admin

admin — Mon, 21 May 2007 17:02:45 +0000

Thanks for the comments Geoff. You make a good point.

By: When Javascript Libraries Attack at geoffreymoller.com

When Javascript Libraries Attack at geoffreymoller.com — Tue, 15 May 2007 21:27:57 +0000

[...] This post at mattsnider.com talks extremely briefly about Javascript object creation. It goes on to compare Prototype’s class definition method versus the standard pattern present in the YUI Library. While I often favor an approach even more traditional than the YUI pattern, the Yahoo! pattern maintains encapsulation. The Prototype abstraction of class definition is a great example of “places where Javascript libraries shouldn’t go.” [...]

By: Geoff Moller

Geoff Moller — Tue, 15 May 2007 19:04:44 +0000

I’m a big fan of Prototype’s collections and DOM utils, but the OO implementation is curious.

The Class.create() method seems to eschew any sort of encapsulation - I’m not sure how that’s OK, no matter what language we’re working with.

Also keep in mind the inheritance gotchas with Prototype:
http://www.encytemedia.com/blog/articles/2006/05/23/prototype-inheritance-madness