Understanding "Prototypes" in JavaScript

Here's the part I don't get: `Object.create`, as it's defined there, is a long-winded, roundabout way of saying

    {__proto__: o}

People seem to think that this is functionality that was lacking from JavaScript; many of these same people have some inexplicable distaste for the (non-standard) `__proto__` property. What gives?

(Okay, technically it's {__proto__: o, constructor: function F() {}}...)

I like how you illustrate in a clear way something that is unintuitive for people coming from a more traditional class-based background; the scoping of this.

It's easy to see how it applies locally to descendants of the original object, such as here:

  var person = Object.create(null);
  defineProperty(person, 'fullName', function() {
    return this.firstName + ' ' + this.lastName;
  });

where neither fullname nor person even have those properties, but their descendents do.

I have a Java background and I don't really use JavaScript, but I'd like to understand something :

var man = fromPrototype(person, { sex: "male" });

After this code runs, we have a reference to a function (man) inside which we declare an object (newObject) for which we define the new property (sex). That means we can now call newObject.sex

But later he's calling that property on the function itself : jeremy.sex

How is this possible?

I like the author's writing style very much. It's the best explanation on prototype I've ever read. His another article on this is great too.