In my opinion, a zen master should be able to declare classes, extend them, do mixins, construct one off instances and synthetic classes, access super class' methods the old school way, etc without helper functions like the ones listed in the article. Be able to use and master the tools the language gives you.<p>Don't be afraid of the language; but do acknowledge that it is a toy language with lots of invisible death traps. Establish a coding convention that lets your team build and test large scale applications effectively. If that includes helpers and tools, (I like Resig's class.js myself, <a href="http://ejohn.org/blog/simple-javascript-inheritance/" rel="nofollow">http://ejohn.org/blog/simple-javascript-inheritance/</a>) then great! Just please make sure the team can do it all without the helpers so that they understand all that is possible.