jQuery

[Cory]

Do you think the use of jQuery is unnecessary these days or it's not very wise to use in general? Do you think it's a good tool to use for JavaScript beginners, or do you think beginners should learn vanilla JavaScript?

 

[Arantor]

It’s mostly unnecessary these days.

I will concede it still makes some things more elegant to write but at this point it doesn’t do anything near what it used to around having to work around browser incongruities.

I strongly encourage: https://youmightnotneedjquery.com/

 

[Cory]

I've seen that site before. Every time the usage of jQuery pops up people usually link to it, so I guess I can understand how jQuery is all-around unnecessary when you can accomplish the same thing with vanilla JavaScript, and with newer versions of JavaScript, probably not a ton of it has to be used like in the past.

 

[Arantor]

jQuery was such a help back in the day in fixing up code to work seamlessly between IE6, Firefox, Opera and Chrome back in the days before nearly everything was Chrome and compatibility was a much better deal.

But there’s much less reason to use jQuery 3.6 now than there was in the jQuery 1.x days, and while I for one do still appreciate the convenience factor, maybe it’s time to let it rest.

 

[Cory]

I didn't think about compatibility, but I now do remember that being a primary reason people shifted toward jQuery instead of vanilla JavaScript. Compatibility for most coding (at least what I used) was terrible in the days of Internet Explorer.

 

[Arantor]

That was *why* it was born because compatibility was such a mess in 2006 (yes, that‘s how old jQuery is)

 

[an0nym0us]

jQuery is an open-source JavaScript library that makes JavaScript accessible to millions. It is very lightweight and has automated some common tasks into methods that can be accessed with one command. Even though the rise of JavaScript framework Angular have dimmed its sheen a little but for simple websites its allure is still present and its installed base is not moving anywhere.