In very basic terms - one of the biggest boons of jQuery were patching over browser incompatibilities. The tradeoff was an extra library being downloaded and a

In very basic terms - one of the biggest boons of jQuery were patching over browser incompatibilities. The tradeoff was an extra library being downloaded and a small performance trade-off (in certain scenarios). In 2015 most browsers are in much better shape than they were in, say, 2007. A lot of people are mostly targeting users who use up-to-date, standards compliant browsers. They are also often targeting people who use mobiles, which are (for a couple of reasons) much more sensitive to poor JS performance than desktops, and also see a more tangible benefit from small page sizes. Another advantage to jQuery was making complex JS operations very simple. Modern JavaScript has actually made life much easier[1], meaning that it's often only a little more work to use vanilla Javascript. [1]: http://youmightnotneedjquery.com/ http://youmightnotneedjquery.com/