Prototype Based Programming -- source

Rather than classes, prototype-oriented languages do inheritance by copying another object (the prototype) and adding attributes and methods to it; objects inherit from other objects.

• Objects are generally completely mutable during runtime, unlike many class based object-oriented systems like Ruby.
• generally interpreted and dynamically typed
• objects inherit directly from other objects through a prototype property
• object contruction can happen ex nihilo or through cloning

Delegation is a language feature. Delegates are like function pointers, allowing you to invoke a piece of code that is not known until runtime.

• in languages that use delegation, the runtime is capable of dispatching the correct method by following a series of delegation pointers from object to its prototype until a match is found

In pure/concatenative prototyping, there are no pointers to the prototype

• changes to the prototype are not reflected in the cloned objects