Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Prototype VS Stack Overflow Documentation

Compare Prototype VS Stack Overflow Documentation and see what are their differences

Note: These products don't have any matching categories. If you think this is a mistake, please edit the details of one of the products and suggest appropriate categories.

Prototype logo Prototype

Prototype JavaScript framework

Stack Overflow Documentation logo Stack Overflow Documentation

A crowdsourced developer documentation
  • Prototype Landing page
    Landing page //
    2018-09-30
  • Stack Overflow Documentation Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-12-25

Prototype features and specs

  • Simplified AJAX Requests
    Prototype provides a simplified API for making AJAX requests, which can make it easier and quicker to add AJAX capabilities to your web application compared to using native XHR.
  • DOM Manipulation
    Prototype offers an easy way to manipulate the DOM, with several utility functions that make selecting and modifying elements straightforward and more readable.
  • Extensive Utility Functions
    Provides many built-in utility functions for tasks like string manipulation, array processing, and object iteration, reducing the need to write these common utilities from scratch.
  • Event Handling
    Simplifies event handling by normalizing events across different browsers and providing an easy-to-use API for attaching and detaching event handlers.
  • Compatibility
    Prototype is known for its good cross-browser compatibility, ensuring scripts work consistently across major browsers.

Possible disadvantages of Prototype

  • Size and Loading Time
    The library is relatively large, which can affect page load times, especially on slower internet connections.
  • Global Namespace Pollution
    Prototype extends many native JavaScript objects and adds methods globally, which can lead to conflicts with other libraries and unexpected behavior.
  • Popularity and Community
    Prototype has seen a decline in popularity compared to other modern frameworks and libraries like React, Angular, and Vue, leading to a smaller community and fewer available resources.
  • Modern Features
    Lacks some of the modern functionality and features that other more recent JavaScript frameworks and libraries offer, which could limit its use in current and future projects.
  • Learning Curve
    For developers accustomed to more modern frameworks or vanilla JavaScript, adapting to Prototype's conventions and methods might require a learning curve.

Stack Overflow Documentation features and specs

  • Community-Curated
    Documentation is curated by a community of experienced developers, ensuring a high level of accuracy and relevancy.
  • Practical Examples
    Focuses on providing practical code examples and use cases, which can be more beneficial for developers compared to traditional documentation.
  • Collaborative Editing
    Allows collaborative editing, enabling multiple contributors to improve and expand the content over time.
  • Decentralized Contributions
    Encourages contributions from a global community, offering diverse perspectives and solutions.

Possible disadvantages of Stack Overflow Documentation

  • Inconsistency
    Documentation quality and coverage can be inconsistent due to varying contributor expertise and interest.
  • Duplication of Effort
    Might duplicate existing resources, as similar documentation already exists on official documentation sites and other platforms.
  • Non-canonical Source
    Not considered an official source of documentation, which may lead to discrepancies with official documentation.
  • Limited Visibility
    Did not gain as much traction as the Q&A section, leading to limited updates and activity before it was eventually discontinued.

Analysis of Prototype

Overall verdict

  • While Prototype.js was influential in its time, it is largely considered outdated compared to more modern and powerful libraries and frameworks. Its use is generally reserved for maintaining legacy systems rather than new project development.

Why this product is good

  • Prototype.js was one of the earliest JavaScript libraries that simplified many tasks, such as DOM manipulation, event handling, and Ajax. It provided a way to write more concise and manageable code before the emergence of frameworks like jQuery and modern alternatives such as React or Vue.js. It's particularly known for its extensions and syntactic sugar that offered a more object-oriented approach to JavaScript.

Recommended for

    Prototype.js is recommended primarily for developers working on maintaining or upgrading older web applications that were originally built using this library. It's not advised for new projects, as there are more robust and widely-supported tools available today that offer better performance, features, and community support.

Prototype videos

PROTOTYPE: 10 Years Later

More videos:

  • Review - Prototype Review by Alex Mercer
  • Review - Prototype Video Review

Stack Overflow Documentation videos

No Stack Overflow Documentation videos yet. You could help us improve this page by suggesting one.

Add video

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Prototype and Stack Overflow Documentation)
Action
100 100%
0% 0
Developer Tools
0 0%
100% 100
Adventure
100 100%
0% 0
Documentation As A Service & Tools

User comments

Share your experience with using Prototype and Stack Overflow Documentation. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
Log in or Post with

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Stack Overflow Documentation should be more popular than Prototype. It has been mentiond 6 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Prototype mentions (4)

  • [AskJS] Is prototype based programming used in modern Javascript?
    It's very weird to realise that this isn't long enough to remember a time when extending native prototypes was en vogue. Source: over 2 years ago
  • ES1995: Javascript that could have been
    The parent is referring to the Prototype framework (http://prototypejs.org/), not the JS language concept of a prototype. Source: almost 3 years ago
  • Make Front End Shit Again
    Let's not forget about http://prototypejs.org/ & http://script.aculo.us/ for modern Web 2.O. - Source: Hacker News / over 3 years ago
  • I want to build an NPM module to extend, array, string and object prototypes. Is it possible ?
    Overriding prototypes used to be state-of-the-art, and indeed it was one of the things that made me fall in love with JS. Frameworks like PrototypeJS and MooTools were built around this and it was of very limited convenience and unlimited headaches. Source: about 4 years ago

Stack Overflow Documentation mentions (6)

View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Prototype and Stack Overflow Documentation, you can also consider the following products

Hitman - Hitman is the marvelous sixth installment in the Hitman series developed by IO Interactive and published by Square Enix.

Devhints - TL;DR for developer documentation

Dishonored 2 - Dishonored 2 is an Action-Adventure, Stealth, First-person, Exploration, Combat and Single-player video game developed by Arkane Studios and published by Bethesda Software.

Documentation Agency - We write your product or library documentation.

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided - Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is an Action-Adventure, RPG, Sci-Fi, Stealth, FPS, Open-world, and Single-player video game developed by Eidos Montreal and published by Square Enix.

Archbee.io - Archbee is a developer-focused product docs tool for your team. Build beautiful product documentation sites or internal wikis/knowledge bases to get your team and product knowledge in one place.