7 ms·

A love letter to jQuery

173 points by joshmanders 11y ago

brakmic 11y ago
Whenever I hear "You don't need jQuery!" I immediately ask myself: is this guy/girl younger than 25?
- karlshea 11y ago
  I think even people that are older sometimes forget how terrible it was to develop with JavaScript before things like Prototype and jQuery came on the scene. Just moving from alert() to console.log() was a revelation.
  - brakmic 11y ago
    You're right! Forgetting to say "thank you" to people who helped us a lot is something that happens more than often in IT. I still remember when I heard of jQuery. It was in 2007 and it was so amazing. Yes, I admit, the 'alert()/console.log()' was amazing :)
    - karlshea 11y ago
      I'd just like to go back and show 15-year-ago me Firebug or Chrome/Firefox's DevTools and inspector. It's pretty stunning how far the tooling has come and what you can do with it.
      - antod 11y ago
        Heh, nearly that far back I was wishing I could install Venkman in IE. JQuery and Firebug deserve a lot of credit for bringing some sanity to JS/web development. Sure things have moved on now, but they were ground breaking.
        aidos 11y ago
        Man, it was 2006 (10 years ago!) when Firebug, Drosera [1] and Web Inspector [2] were all released. There were definitely a lot of people eager to have some tools to make front end web dev easier back then. I never worked with Venkman but I recall all too well the hellish time I had debugging JS back around the turn of the millennium. IE was laughable, if there was an error in a script somewhere it would often just say error on line -1. [1] https://webkit.org/blog/61/introducing-drosera/ https://webkit.org/blog/61/introducing-drosera/ [2] https://webkit.org/blog/41/introducing-the-web-inspector/ https://webkit.org/blog/41/introducing-the-web-inspector/
        antod 11y ago
        That part about the line numbers in IE error messages was exactly the pain I was thinking of :)
      - brakmic 11y ago
        Sadly, we can't go back in time. But we should at least be grateful in the opposite direction.
    - vatotemking 11y ago
      I'd like to say thank you to the author of iepngfix. You da real mvp. [0] [0] - https://www.twinhelix.com/css/iepngfix/ https://www.twinhelix.com/css/iepngfix/
  - dj_doh 11y ago
    Write less, Do more. In its truest sense.
- FnuGk 11y ago
  i am confused. What do you expected them to be? and why is it relevant?
  - simonw 11y ago
    If you were writing JavaScript 8 years ago, a library like jQuery was pretty much essential to help patch over the enormous numbers of browser bugs and differences between the various IEs, Firefox, Safari and Opera. My experience is definitely that developers under 25 are much less likely to understand the historic context that jQuery came from, and hence have less respect for what it achieved (and continues to achieve).
    - blowski 11y ago
      I've had exactly this type of conversation with a young junior dev. "AJAX requests are easy - just use the Forms API." They have no idea that in 2005 I read a whole book on 'how to make an AJAX request'.
      - icebraining 11y ago
        Just getting a reference to the XMLHttpRequest object required twelve lines of code :|
- alexc05 11y ago
  Well, I'm 40 and prefer using front end frameworks (angular, mithril, react) to jQuery nowadays. Additionally, there are times when I find (for little things) native javascript is quicker and more useful. I think the sea change for me was not using front end frameworks, but when I first started trying to play with nodejs. As soon as I started working with that AND started coming to understand the async nature of javascript, my entire world shifted underneath me. In hindsight, I'm amazed that I managed to remain employed for so long while NOT knowing that javascript was async. Oh well. Such is life. Anyways, I've definitely said "you don't need jQuery" on numerous occasions. There are plenty of places where it is the best and cheapest solution, but other times when it isn't (or isn't available).
  - meo2 11y ago
    https://www.google.com/?q=is+javascript+asynchronous https://www.google.com/?q=is+javascript+asynchronous
    - alexc05 11y ago
      Ahh.... lovely, thank you. So what I'm referring to as "asynchronous javascript" is technically a colloquialism used to describe the event-driven callback-y nature of the code. I'm not sure I'm still against referring to javascript as asynchronous or at least as having asynchronous methods for the purposes shorthand and quick communication. Consider the code (or paste it into a chrome console) function _done(){ console.log(arguments) } var db = window.openDatabase("dbfoo", 1, "test db", 5e6) db.transaction(function(tx){ tx.executeSql('CREATE TABLE t1(a, b PRIMARY KEY);', _done, _done) }) console.log("i happen before the line above me") Notice how the lines of code complete out of order. I think it's really useful to think of that as asynchronous code. It appears I'm using async as a term interchangeably with non-blocking... which may not be correct. So it may be the case that my nomenclature is off, but I'm sure I got that from somewhere. Perhaps a lot of people were referring to node as async in the early days, I'm re-watching this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztspvPYybIY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztspvPYybIY now, but it doesn't look like Ryan Dahl uses the term async. Anyways, looks like I'll have to train myself to use the right word for it. Thanks for pointing that out without making me feel dumb or being all insulting and internet-y. :) I really appreciate that. EDIT: Hmmm... additionally, to be fair: it appears that some agree that it is OK to refer to parts of javascript as async http://stackoverflow.com/a/16524240/398055 http://stackoverflow.com/a/16524240/398055 so it might not be perfectly accurate, but it isn't wildly inaccurate either.
- nostrademons 11y ago
  I'm 34, been developing web stuff for over 10 years now, and started using JQuery back when John Resig was still personally meeting & greeting people who were using JQuery at meetups. I'm pretty firmly in the "You don't need JQuery camp", and the reason is that you don't need JQuery now. It was an amazing piece of software when it came out; it made rich JS development not only practical, but easy, without worrying about cross-browser issues. But it succeeded. Resig's goal - from very early on, at least as soon as he started to working at Mozilla - was to get JQuery baked into browsers, and he's largely done that. We got querySelectorAll. We got a unified event model that all browsers support. We got FormData. We got a consistent box model, and consistent getComputedStyle() behavior. We got animations and transitions, and the native versions even run on the GPU for fast mobile performance. As a result, most of the problems that JQuery solved just aren't problems in modern web development. Cross-browser issues are minor and getting smaller every day. Selectors are baked in. Animations and transitions are CSS one-liners, rather than needing to spin up a setTimeout loop and manually calculate the delta in the property each tick. That doesn't deny the historical significance of JQuery, or just how much it improved web development back in 2007. But we build apps for the world we live in today, and today, JQuery gives you some minor programming convenience in exchange for 30K of download size and a bunch of layout thrashing if you use its CSS or dimensions methods.
- danielsamuels 11y ago
  I'm 24, but I grew up supporting IE6 and remember trying to get cross compatibility working for the mess that we called 'browsers' back then. It's been great to see the evolution of Javascript over the last 10 or so years, it's fairly obvious how many of the new features we take for granted came from jQuery originally. I do avoid jQuery now though, I can't remember the last time I used it.
- tlrobinson 11y ago
  This seems to suggest that we really don't need jQuery any more.
  - coldtea 11y ago
    Or that, you know, the younger generation rediscovers the square wheel.
- spoiler 11y ago
  I am 22, and I have used jQuery. I loved jQuery, and it was a fascinating library that solved a lot of problems. It is still a great library, if one needs to support legacy browsers.I also think that jQuery influenced the DOM API to some extent; good things were adopted, bad ones were improved. However today, I don't think it's as useful—I am not saying it isn't useful—as it once was. The overhead to support multiple modern browsers is usually very low, and often it's even none. I also believe most of the problems people point about jQuery is that at some point a lot of confident, but bad developers, started using it and somehow jQurey unjustly gained that bad reputation.
  - DonHopkins 11y ago
    It's the people who "program" in jQuery as a way to avoid learning JavaScript who mess up its reputation.
deleted 11y ago
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jnbiche 11y ago
jQuery was invaluable 5+ years ago, but luckily it's not needed for most modern web projects, unless you need to support old IE browsers. Even then, it's worth seeing how many calls you really need to make that are not supported across your target browsers.
- blowski 11y ago
  > luckily it's not needed for most modern web projects Alright, technically it's not 'needed' for any web projects. But it sure can help in a lot of ways on a lot of projects.
  - jnbiche 11y ago
    > But it sure can help in a lot of ways on a lot of projects. On modern browsers? Can you give me an example?
    - blowski 11y ago
      Three ways it can help: * A lot of plugins/libraries require jQuery, so by using jQuery you can use those plugins. * It's easier to hire junior devs that can write good enough jQuery, compared to native JavaScript. * As a very mature library, there's lots of documentation out there for standardising the way you do things. This makes it easier for other devs to pick up your work.
      - jnbiche 11y ago
        > A lot of plugins/libraries require jQuery, so by using jQuery you can use those plugins. I'm seeing more and more mature "Vanilla JS" libraries for common tasks I used to use jQuery plugins for. But yes, if you must have some plugin, then you have to use jQuery. In that case, it's probably not worth the time to re-write the plugin in Vanilla js unless you have some specific bandwidth constraints among your users. > It's easier to hire junior devs that can write good enough jQuery, compared to native JavaScript. Sadly, you're probably right about this. I'm a little uncomfortable with the term "native" JavaScript since that makes some devs think it's some kind of OS hacker-level of difficulty, when in fact, most jQuery equivalents in modern JS are quite similar to...jQuery. > As a very mature library, there's lots of documentation out there for standardising the way you do things. This makes it easier for other devs to pick up your work. Sure, I can see this being true. I guess if you have to hire and train a bunch of relatively middle-of-the road junior developers, jQuery is a good choice at the moment. But even if I were in your position, I'd still try to push them to get used to writing in vanilla JS. This is good not only for your project, but also for them, since more and more employers, even mediocre employers, will start expecting potential frontend dev employees to be able to write vanilla JS.
mortenjorck 11y ago
Nice meditation on one of the defining frameworks of the modern web. I don't see robust front-end frameworks like React as ever really making jQuery redundant – for the non-app, document-paradigm web, these solutions make for over-engineering, while pure JS still leaves (ever fewer, granted) gaps. For certain purposes, jQuery will remain the best fit for some time to come.
Kequc 11y ago
I've always had a dissatisfied opinion about jQuery, I much preferred Mootools. When coffeescript turned up, it seemed to hop on the back of jQuery. Doing a lot of the things Mootools already did and leaving gaps where jQuery was king. Now I use typescript and no libraries at all. It isn't too difficult to write a utility object that can handle whatever depreciations or abstractions are fluctuating. If you are writing a library of any kind and expect your clients to install jQuery for the benefit I'd say you've added too much bloat.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- emehrkay 11y ago
  Funny how ES6 looks a lot like MooTools, it was ahead of its time
pramodliv1 11y ago
I wish someone builds a jQuery-like API for Android. Will definitely back it on KickStarter. Is it going to be React-native?
- wh-uws 11y ago
  Seems to have stagnated but someone has https://github.com/phil-brown/droidQuery https://github.com/phil-brown/droidQuery
indubitably 11y ago
A lot of what is now called Native comes from Javascript — every time we use `querySelector(All)`, for instance, it’s because of jQuery’s influence. Which makes me a bit less nostalgic than this author: every time I use qsa I think “Thanks, jQuery”, but I don’t need to use jQuery itself anymore…
AnkhMorporkian 11y ago
I may have turned into a little wimp, but this actually made me a little misty eyed. Sometimes when I'm working with React or Ember on a large project, and have to do quite a bit of work for a small feature, I fondly remember the days of just banging out a two-liner with JQuery that would do the same thing.
- alexc05 11y ago
  You know what I really liked about it? It was an "inverse" angry developer opinion. Rather than the overly negative "this thing sucks and everyone should stop using it" it was positive and upbeat. I do think that data bindings in angular or the methods of working with mithriljs or react bring a lot to the table that you don't get from using jQuery, but I do respect what jquery gave us. It was a cute article / nerdy fluff piece.
- namenotrequired 11y ago
  Stupid question from a newbie: why don't you do that today?
  - AnkhMorporkian 11y ago
    Well, while frameworks require a bit of boilerplate, it makes large projects MUCH more maintainable. Back in the bad old days, yes, you could bang out a bunch of features very quickly in JQuery, but as the size of the site increased there were lots of opportunities for disparate sections of code to interfere with each other. Additionally, there are serious performance concerns using jquery for any significant number of DOM mutations, which most of the major frameworks solve. Finally, you can't just arbitrarily mutate the DOM in these frameworks, so you can't use jquery willy-nilly if you're using them.
    - Can_Not 11y ago
      Some frameworks reduce boilerplate by implementing features for you in their way so that tiny trivial tweaks require reverse engineering the framework and maintaining your own fork of the framework. Hopefully generators that scaffold boilerplate instead of hiding features in the framework stay to pick up more.
esaym 11y ago
I wish he would have said why he doesn't need it any more. Heck, I just paid $30 to code school last summer to take the jquery courses and now I use the heck out of it on everything...
- mythz 11y ago
  The big front-end JavaScript frameworks like React and Angular are architected in a way that no longer require jQuery for DOM querying or manipulation. They also smooth out browser quirks which is less of an issue now with Modern browsers than it was at the dawn of jQuery which was another USP it had that propelled it to popularity.
  - esaym 11y ago
    Well I figured that. I was more interested in how he moved away from jquery. I've looked into Angular many times over the years. But sadly, I find more people complaining about it than praising it. Looking into React now.
- monk_e_boy 11y ago
  Wow, great! Don't stop learning. There are a whole bunch of cool js tools that people have mentioned here, take a look at some of them! But the biggest thing that I have learnt over the last few weeks was "browserify" it's really useful for all sorts of things. Take a look at 'npm' and how it installs all sorts of gubbins for you. You may never use it, but for things like coffee script, sass (I assume you know about bootstrap css?) npm will install them for you. browserify will transpile them for you.
zobby 11y ago
Dear JQuery. I wrote a vanilla JS script: Being sort of wild, I began to write a listener. Because IE fucked Moz at Opera, Webkit had also it's own way to speak JS. Dear JQuery, I ended with a 20 lines poem that handle them all. - JUST FOR A CROSS BROWSER LISTENER - Dear Jquery, you left me with you haiku: <pre> $('#button').on('click',function(){alert('SMD')}); </pre>
_Marak_ 11y ago
Heh. I still use jQuery for pretty much every project. There is a server-side port of jQuery which is absolutely fantastic: https://github.com/cheeriojs/cheerio https://github.com/cheeriojs/cheerio This allows you to render jQuery based views on the server or client with the same code. All the latest JavaScript view libraries are a huge pain to work with. Sharp learning curves, punishing APIs, and extremely unexpected performance issues. jQuery just works. <3 jQuery
dj_doh 11y ago
Longevity and robustness of jQuery is hard to match. 10+ years for a software project is amazing. Hopefully, in next few years pure ES6 (and later ES7) will give us that joy that's been missing.
_greim_ 11y ago
Here's an alternate POV. jQuery is fading from the spotlight not just because there are better ways of handling the DOM, but because the mindshare and code ecosystem that grew up around it got completely blindsided by modern module-loading/packaging systems. The same is true of Angular I think but to a much lesser degree.
neom 11y ago
John Resig is one of the kindest, gentlest, most wonderful people I've ever met. I think this is heavily reflected in jQuery itself. Thanks for everything JR and jQ! <3
err4nt 11y ago
I'll just offer another perspective. for me jQuery was a major stumbling block to me learning JavaScript. And without JavaScript, you can't write very much jQuery either. I'm young enough that there's a generation of jQuery-loving developers above me, and the whole generation younger than me is enamoured with the newer frameworks. But for me it wasn't until I stopped looking at jQuery and focused on proper JavaScript that any of it made sense to me. The thing I find remarkable the more I learn Js is that the 'level' of the language seems perfect for the problems you're working with. jQuery makes things abstract and high-level enough you'll never figure it out - and any lower level and JS would be a lot harder to learn. The more I get into it the more perfectly suited to the task it seems to be.
2pointsomone 11y ago
This was thoughtful, touching, and very emotional making! Thank you for writing / sharing this. Very much share the feelings.
dre85 11y ago
Wonderful letter. I agree wholeheartedly. I learned web development 15 years ago and I stopped for a long time. When I came back about 3 years ago, jQuery for me was such a beautiful and pleasant reintroduction. I kept thinking to myself "I can't believe this! You mean I don't have to use those insanely long and unintuitive native js Dom calls anymore?!"
bradgessler 11y ago
The best APIs are those that don't change because they work so well. jQuery has pretty much been that.
iamleppert 11y ago
Honestly, I miss developing with jQuery. It was fun, expressive, fast, and unopinionated. I miss the web before the framework bro's came in and over-engineered the hell out of it.

173 points by joshmanders 11y ago

brakmic 11y ago

Whenever I hear "You don't need jQuery!" I immediately ask myself: is this guy/girl younger than 25?

karlshea 11y ago
I think even people that are older sometimes forget how terrible it was to develop with JavaScript before things like Prototype and jQuery came on the scene. Just moving from alert() to console.log() was a revelation.
- brakmic 11y ago
  You're right! Forgetting to say "thank you" to people who helped us a lot is something that happens more than often in IT. I still remember when I heard of jQuery. It was in 2007 and it was so amazing. Yes, I admit, the 'alert()/console.log()' was amazing :)
  - karlshea 11y ago
    I'd just like to go back and show 15-year-ago me Firebug or Chrome/Firefox's DevTools and inspector. It's pretty stunning how far the tooling has come and what you can do with it.
    - antod 11y ago
      Heh, nearly that far back I was wishing I could install Venkman in IE. JQuery and Firebug deserve a lot of credit for bringing some sanity to JS/web development. Sure things have moved on now, but they were ground breaking.
      - aidos 11y ago
        Man, it was 2006 (10 years ago!) when Firebug, Drosera [1] and Web Inspector [2] were all released. There were definitely a lot of people eager to have some tools to make front end web dev easier back then. I never worked with Venkman but I recall all too well the hellish time I had debugging JS back around the turn of the millennium. IE was laughable, if there was an error in a script somewhere it would often just say error on line -1. [1] https://webkit.org/blog/61/introducing-drosera/ https://webkit.org/blog/61/introducing-drosera/ [2] https://webkit.org/blog/41/introducing-the-web-inspector/ https://webkit.org/blog/41/introducing-the-web-inspector/
        antod 11y ago
        That part about the line numbers in IE error messages was exactly the pain I was thinking of :)
    - brakmic 11y ago
      Sadly, we can't go back in time. But we should at least be grateful in the opposite direction.
  - vatotemking 11y ago
    I'd like to say thank you to the author of iepngfix. You da real mvp. [0] [0] - https://www.twinhelix.com/css/iepngfix/ https://www.twinhelix.com/css/iepngfix/
- dj_doh 11y ago
  Write less, Do more. In its truest sense.
FnuGk 11y ago
i am confused. What do you expected them to be? and why is it relevant?
- simonw 11y ago
  If you were writing JavaScript 8 years ago, a library like jQuery was pretty much essential to help patch over the enormous numbers of browser bugs and differences between the various IEs, Firefox, Safari and Opera. My experience is definitely that developers under 25 are much less likely to understand the historic context that jQuery came from, and hence have less respect for what it achieved (and continues to achieve).
  - blowski 11y ago
    I've had exactly this type of conversation with a young junior dev. "AJAX requests are easy - just use the Forms API." They have no idea that in 2005 I read a whole book on 'how to make an AJAX request'.
    - icebraining 11y ago
      Just getting a reference to the XMLHttpRequest object required twelve lines of code :|
alexc05 11y ago
Well, I'm 40 and prefer using front end frameworks (angular, mithril, react) to jQuery nowadays. Additionally, there are times when I find (for little things) native javascript is quicker and more useful. I think the sea change for me was not using front end frameworks, but when I first started trying to play with nodejs. As soon as I started working with that AND started coming to understand the async nature of javascript, my entire world shifted underneath me. In hindsight, I'm amazed that I managed to remain employed for so long while NOT knowing that javascript was async. Oh well. Such is life. Anyways, I've definitely said "you don't need jQuery" on numerous occasions. There are plenty of places where it is the best and cheapest solution, but other times when it isn't (or isn't available).
- meo2 11y ago
  https://www.google.com/?q=is+javascript+asynchronous https://www.google.com/?q=is+javascript+asynchronous
  - alexc05 11y ago
    Ahh.... lovely, thank you. So what I'm referring to as "asynchronous javascript" is technically a colloquialism used to describe the event-driven callback-y nature of the code. I'm not sure I'm still against referring to javascript as asynchronous or at least as having asynchronous methods for the purposes shorthand and quick communication. Consider the code (or paste it into a chrome console) function _done(){ console.log(arguments) } var db = window.openDatabase("dbfoo", 1, "test db", 5e6) db.transaction(function(tx){ tx.executeSql('CREATE TABLE t1(a, b PRIMARY KEY);', _done, _done) }) console.log("i happen before the line above me") Notice how the lines of code complete out of order. I think it's really useful to think of that as asynchronous code. It appears I'm using async as a term interchangeably with non-blocking... which may not be correct. So it may be the case that my nomenclature is off, but I'm sure I got that from somewhere. Perhaps a lot of people were referring to node as async in the early days, I'm re-watching this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztspvPYybIY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztspvPYybIY now, but it doesn't look like Ryan Dahl uses the term async. Anyways, looks like I'll have to train myself to use the right word for it. Thanks for pointing that out without making me feel dumb or being all insulting and internet-y. :) I really appreciate that. EDIT: Hmmm... additionally, to be fair: it appears that some agree that it is OK to refer to parts of javascript as async http://stackoverflow.com/a/16524240/398055 http://stackoverflow.com/a/16524240/398055 so it might not be perfectly accurate, but it isn't wildly inaccurate either.
nostrademons 11y ago
I'm 34, been developing web stuff for over 10 years now, and started using JQuery back when John Resig was still personally meeting & greeting people who were using JQuery at meetups. I'm pretty firmly in the "You don't need JQuery camp", and the reason is that you don't need JQuery now. It was an amazing piece of software when it came out; it made rich JS development not only practical, but easy, without worrying about cross-browser issues. But it succeeded. Resig's goal - from very early on, at least as soon as he started to working at Mozilla - was to get JQuery baked into browsers, and he's largely done that. We got querySelectorAll. We got a unified event model that all browsers support. We got FormData. We got a consistent box model, and consistent getComputedStyle() behavior. We got animations and transitions, and the native versions even run on the GPU for fast mobile performance. As a result, most of the problems that JQuery solved just aren't problems in modern web development. Cross-browser issues are minor and getting smaller every day. Selectors are baked in. Animations and transitions are CSS one-liners, rather than needing to spin up a setTimeout loop and manually calculate the delta in the property each tick. That doesn't deny the historical significance of JQuery, or just how much it improved web development back in 2007. But we build apps for the world we live in today, and today, JQuery gives you some minor programming convenience in exchange for 30K of download size and a bunch of layout thrashing if you use its CSS or dimensions methods.
danielsamuels 11y ago
I'm 24, but I grew up supporting IE6 and remember trying to get cross compatibility working for the mess that we called 'browsers' back then. It's been great to see the evolution of Javascript over the last 10 or so years, it's fairly obvious how many of the new features we take for granted came from jQuery originally. I do avoid jQuery now though, I can't remember the last time I used it.
tlrobinson 11y ago
This seems to suggest that we really don't need jQuery any more.
- coldtea 11y ago
  Or that, you know, the younger generation rediscovers the square wheel.
spoiler 11y ago
I am 22, and I have used jQuery. I loved jQuery, and it was a fascinating library that solved a lot of problems. It is still a great library, if one needs to support legacy browsers.I also think that jQuery influenced the DOM API to some extent; good things were adopted, bad ones were improved. However today, I don't think it's as useful—I am not saying it isn't useful—as it once was. The overhead to support multiple modern browsers is usually very low, and often it's even none. I also believe most of the problems people point about jQuery is that at some point a lot of confident, but bad developers, started using it and somehow jQurey unjustly gained that bad reputation.
- DonHopkins 11y ago
  It's the people who "program" in jQuery as a way to avoid learning JavaScript who mess up its reputation.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

jnbiche 11y ago

jQuery was invaluable 5+ years ago, but luckily it's not needed for most modern web projects, unless you need to support old IE browsers. Even then, it's worth seeing how many calls you really need to make that are not supported across your target browsers.

blowski 11y ago
> luckily it's not needed for most modern web projects Alright, technically it's not 'needed' for any web projects. But it sure can help in a lot of ways on a lot of projects.
- jnbiche 11y ago
  > But it sure can help in a lot of ways on a lot of projects. On modern browsers? Can you give me an example?
  - blowski 11y ago
    Three ways it can help: * A lot of plugins/libraries require jQuery, so by using jQuery you can use those plugins. * It's easier to hire junior devs that can write good enough jQuery, compared to native JavaScript. * As a very mature library, there's lots of documentation out there for standardising the way you do things. This makes it easier for other devs to pick up your work.
    - jnbiche 11y ago
      > A lot of plugins/libraries require jQuery, so by using jQuery you can use those plugins. I'm seeing more and more mature "Vanilla JS" libraries for common tasks I used to use jQuery plugins for. But yes, if you must have some plugin, then you have to use jQuery. In that case, it's probably not worth the time to re-write the plugin in Vanilla js unless you have some specific bandwidth constraints among your users. > It's easier to hire junior devs that can write good enough jQuery, compared to native JavaScript. Sadly, you're probably right about this. I'm a little uncomfortable with the term "native" JavaScript since that makes some devs think it's some kind of OS hacker-level of difficulty, when in fact, most jQuery equivalents in modern JS are quite similar to...jQuery. > As a very mature library, there's lots of documentation out there for standardising the way you do things. This makes it easier for other devs to pick up your work. Sure, I can see this being true. I guess if you have to hire and train a bunch of relatively middle-of-the road junior developers, jQuery is a good choice at the moment. But even if I were in your position, I'd still try to push them to get used to writing in vanilla JS. This is good not only for your project, but also for them, since more and more employers, even mediocre employers, will start expecting potential frontend dev employees to be able to write vanilla JS.

mortenjorck 11y ago

Nice meditation on one of the defining frameworks of the modern web. I don't see robust front-end frameworks like React as ever really making jQuery redundant – for the non-app, document-paradigm web, these solutions make for over-engineering, while pure JS still leaves (ever fewer, granted) gaps. For certain purposes, jQuery will remain the best fit for some time to come.

Kequc 11y ago

I've always had a dissatisfied opinion about jQuery, I much preferred Mootools. When coffeescript turned up, it seemed to hop on the back of jQuery. Doing a lot of the things Mootools already did and leaving gaps where jQuery was king. Now I use typescript and no libraries at all. It isn't too difficult to write a utility object that can handle whatever depreciations or abstractions are fluctuating. If you are writing a library of any kind and expect your clients to install jQuery for the benefit I'd say you've added too much bloat.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
emehrkay 11y ago
Funny how ES6 looks a lot like MooTools, it was ahead of its time

pramodliv1 11y ago

I wish someone builds a jQuery-like API for Android. Will definitely back it on KickStarter. Is it going to be React-native?

wh-uws 11y ago
Seems to have stagnated but someone has https://github.com/phil-brown/droidQuery https://github.com/phil-brown/droidQuery

indubitably 11y ago

A lot of what is now called Native comes from Javascript — every time we use `querySelector(All)`, for instance, it’s because of jQuery’s influence. Which makes me a bit less nostalgic than this author: every time I use qsa I think “Thanks, jQuery”, but I don’t need to use jQuery itself anymore…

AnkhMorporkian 11y ago

I may have turned into a little wimp, but this actually made me a little misty eyed. Sometimes when I'm working with React or Ember on a large project, and have to do quite a bit of work for a small feature, I fondly remember the days of just banging out a two-liner with JQuery that would do the same thing.

alexc05 11y ago
You know what I really liked about it? It was an "inverse" angry developer opinion. Rather than the overly negative "this thing sucks and everyone should stop using it" it was positive and upbeat. I do think that data bindings in angular or the methods of working with mithriljs or react bring a lot to the table that you don't get from using jQuery, but I do respect what jquery gave us. It was a cute article / nerdy fluff piece.
namenotrequired 11y ago
Stupid question from a newbie: why don't you do that today?
- AnkhMorporkian 11y ago
  Well, while frameworks require a bit of boilerplate, it makes large projects MUCH more maintainable. Back in the bad old days, yes, you could bang out a bunch of features very quickly in JQuery, but as the size of the site increased there were lots of opportunities for disparate sections of code to interfere with each other. Additionally, there are serious performance concerns using jquery for any significant number of DOM mutations, which most of the major frameworks solve. Finally, you can't just arbitrarily mutate the DOM in these frameworks, so you can't use jquery willy-nilly if you're using them.
  - Can_Not 11y ago
    Some frameworks reduce boilerplate by implementing features for you in their way so that tiny trivial tweaks require reverse engineering the framework and maintaining your own fork of the framework. Hopefully generators that scaffold boilerplate instead of hiding features in the framework stay to pick up more.

esaym 11y ago

I wish he would have said why he doesn't need it any more. Heck, I just paid $30 to code school last summer to take the jquery courses and now I use the heck out of it on everything...

mythz 11y ago
The big front-end JavaScript frameworks like React and Angular are architected in a way that no longer require jQuery for DOM querying or manipulation. They also smooth out browser quirks which is less of an issue now with Modern browsers than it was at the dawn of jQuery which was another USP it had that propelled it to popularity.
- esaym 11y ago
  Well I figured that. I was more interested in how he moved away from jquery. I've looked into Angular many times over the years. But sadly, I find more people complaining about it than praising it. Looking into React now.
monk_e_boy 11y ago
Wow, great! Don't stop learning. There are a whole bunch of cool js tools that people have mentioned here, take a look at some of them! But the biggest thing that I have learnt over the last few weeks was "browserify" it's really useful for all sorts of things. Take a look at 'npm' and how it installs all sorts of gubbins for you. You may never use it, but for things like coffee script, sass (I assume you know about bootstrap css?) npm will install them for you. browserify will transpile them for you.

zobby 11y ago

Dear JQuery. I wrote a vanilla JS script: Being sort of wild, I began to write a listener. Because IE fucked Moz at Opera, Webkit had also it's own way to speak JS. Dear JQuery, I ended with a 20 lines poem that handle them all. - JUST FOR A CROSS BROWSER LISTENER - Dear Jquery, you left me with you haiku: <pre> $('#button').on('click',function(){alert('SMD')}); </pre>

_Marak_ 11y ago

Heh. I still use jQuery for pretty much every project. There is a server-side port of jQuery which is absolutely fantastic: https://github.com/cheeriojs/cheerio https://github.com/cheeriojs/cheerio This allows you to render jQuery based views on the server or client with the same code. All the latest JavaScript view libraries are a huge pain to work with. Sharp learning curves, punishing APIs, and extremely unexpected performance issues. jQuery just works. <3 jQuery

dj_doh 11y ago

Longevity and robustness of jQuery is hard to match. 10+ years for a software project is amazing. Hopefully, in next few years pure ES6 (and later ES7) will give us that joy that's been missing.

_greim_ 11y ago

Here's an alternate POV. jQuery is fading from the spotlight not just because there are better ways of handling the DOM, but because the mindshare and code ecosystem that grew up around it got completely blindsided by modern module-loading/packaging systems. The same is true of Angular I think but to a much lesser degree.

neom 11y ago

John Resig is one of the kindest, gentlest, most wonderful people I've ever met. I think this is heavily reflected in jQuery itself. Thanks for everything JR and jQ! <3

err4nt 11y ago

I'll just offer another perspective. for me jQuery was a major stumbling block to me learning JavaScript. And without JavaScript, you can't write very much jQuery either. I'm young enough that there's a generation of jQuery-loving developers above me, and the whole generation younger than me is enamoured with the newer frameworks. But for me it wasn't until I stopped looking at jQuery and focused on proper JavaScript that any of it made sense to me. The thing I find remarkable the more I learn Js is that the 'level' of the language seems perfect for the problems you're working with. jQuery makes things abstract and high-level enough you'll never figure it out - and any lower level and JS would be a lot harder to learn. The more I get into it the more perfectly suited to the task it seems to be.

2pointsomone 11y ago

This was thoughtful, touching, and very emotional making! Thank you for writing / sharing this. Very much share the feelings.

dre85 11y ago

Wonderful letter. I agree wholeheartedly. I learned web development 15 years ago and I stopped for a long time. When I came back about 3 years ago, jQuery for me was such a beautiful and pleasant reintroduction. I kept thinking to myself "I can't believe this! You mean I don't have to use those insanely long and unintuitive native js Dom calls anymore?!"

bradgessler 11y ago

The best APIs are those that don't change because they work so well. jQuery has pretty much been that.

iamleppert 11y ago

Honestly, I miss developing with jQuery. It was fun, expressive, fast, and unopinionated. I miss the web before the framework bro's came in and over-engineered the hell out of it.