Question

I read here (Douglas Crockford) using prototype operator to add methods to Javascript classes saves also memory.

Then I read in this John Resig’s article “Instantiating a function with a bunch of prototype properties is very, very, fast“, but is he talking about using prototype in the standard way, or is he talking about his specific example in his article?

For example, is creating this object:

function Class1()
{
   this.showMsg = function(string) { alert(string); }
}
var c = new Class1();
c.showMsg();

slower than creating this object, then?

function Class1() {}
Class1.prototype.showMsg = function(string) { alert(string); }
var c = new Class1();
c.showMsg();

P.S.

I know prototype is used to create inheritance and singleton object etc. But this question does not have anyhting to do with these subjects.

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EDIT: to whom it might be interested also in performance comparison between a JS object and a JS static objet can read this answer below. Static object are definitely faster, obviously they can be usued only when you don’t need more than one instance of the object.

Answer 1

Edit in 2021:

This question was asked in 2010 when class was not available in JS. Nowadays, class has been so optimized that there is no excuse not to use it. If you need to use new, use class. But back in 2010 you had two options when binding methods to their object constructors — one was to bind functions inside the function constructor using this and the other was to bind them outside the constructor using prototype. @MarcoDemaio’s question has very concise examples. When class was added to JS, early implementations were close in performance, but usually slower. That’s not remotely true anymore. Just use class. I can think of no reason to use prototype today.

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It was an interesting question, so I ran some very simple tests (I should have restarted my browsers to clear out the memory, but I didn’t; take this for what it’s worth). It looks like at least on Safari and Firefox, prototype runs significantly faster [edit: not 20x as stated earlier]. I’m sure a real-world test with fully-featured objects would be a better comparison. The code I ran was this (I ran the tests several times, separately):

var X,Y, x,y, i, intNow;

X = function() {};
X.prototype.message = function(s) { var mymessage = s + "";}
X.prototype.addition = function(i,j) { return (i *2 + j * 2) / 2; }

Y = function() {
  this.message = function(s) { var mymessage = s + "";}
  this.addition = function(i,j) { return (i *2 + j * 2) / 2; }
};


intNow = (new Date()).getTime();
for (i = 0; i < 10000000; i++) {
  y = new Y();
  y.message('hi');
  y.addition(i,2)
}
console.log((new Date()).getTime() - intNow); //FF=5206ms; Safari=1554

intNow = (new Date()).getTime();
for (i = 0; i < 10000000; i++) {
  x = new X();
  x.message('hi');
  x.addition(i,2)
}
console.log((new Date()).getTime() - intNow);//FF=3894ms;Safari=606

It’s a real shame, because I really hate using prototype. I like my object code to be self-encapsulated, and not allowed to drift. I guess when speed matters, though, I don’t have a choice. Darn.

[Edit] Many thanks to @Kevin who pointed out my previous code was wrong, giving a huge boost to the reported speed of the prototype method. After fixing, prototype is still around significantly faster, but the difference is not as enormous.