You're looking at it from an overly pessimistic perspective. jQuery didn't solve any new problems, there were tons of libraries that solved the exact same probl

You're looking at it from an overly pessimistic perspective. jQuery didn't solve any new problems, there were tons of libraries that solved the exact same problems in different ways at the time that it came out, like MooTools, Dojo, and Scriptaculous/Prototype. jQuery was not innovative, it didn't save the world from anything. It's biggest selling point was that the code was easy for designers to pick up, eliminating a lot of the need for the designer/developer dichotomy. tldr; jQuery's success was not innovation or unification, it was an easy to pick up syntax. From there it was all inertia.