Tools affect how you think. If you have got a hammer then every problem is a nail. If you have got a screwdriver then you don't realise that it might be a chise

Tools affect how you think. If you have got a hammer then every problem is a nail. If you have got a screwdriver then you don't realise that it might be a chisel you need, or a tyre lever or a paint stirrer. jQuery is a layer of extra stuff on top of javascript. It was great in the days before standards compliant browsers as it spared you from having to learn the quirks of every different browser and you could get on with the task in hand knowing that your code would work. But this came at a price of not knowing how to do things with javascript. Javascript has changed. You can now actually select stuff pretty easily and do those animations with CSS instead of with some jQuery. HTML5 means you can use the native form validation things and you don't need to validate on the frontend with some jQuery code. Then when you submit the form you can use fetch instead of the once incredible jQuery ajax wrappers. Sometimes well meaning tools that make everything easy are only any good if you know how the well meaning tool works. An analogy, a server with a 'cpanel' control panel. Great in principle but there is a sea of icons and you have to know how to do things the special 'cpanel' way. Which is fine, but if you know the command line and what to type on it then you are going to be done before you have found the icon in the intuitive interface of cpanel. Plus, if you don't know what you are doing, things are documented for doing stuff the command line way, they aren't if you are doing it with the special icons. The longer you spend mastering 'cpanel' the less likely you will learn the command line way and therefore not feel comfortable without it. As mentioned tools are great but they affect how you think and how you solve problems. So it is not a question of not being hip. We just don't need the arm bands and extra guard rails any more.