A bad programmer will write bad code wether he uses jQuery or not. going pure DOM doesnt make the code better, especially when dealing with browser differences.

A bad programmer will write bad code wether he uses jQuery or not. going pure DOM doesnt make the code better, especially when dealing with browser differences. if you have the time to re-implement all the abstraction needed in order to make your code work on legacy browsers each time you code a DOM related function , good for you , i dont. the goal of jQuery is not to provide a MVC framework , an AMD framework , or whatever that helps writing modular code. The goal of jQuery IS DOM manipulation and having a single API for every browser out here. And jQuery is a framework not a langage so your argument ( PHP==jQuery because it let's developers write ugly stuff) doesnt stand.