Meh. I think a better reason to use something over $.ajax is the functionality and the API, not because "you don't need jQuery". $.ajax is very general purpose,

Meh. I think a better reason to use something over $.ajax is the functionality and the API, not because "you don't need jQuery". $.ajax is very general purpose, whereas in most cases you simply need to be able to get and post json. Also, jQuery's promise implementation is one of the least-featured and most awkward to use, which drags down the $.ajax API.