Ask HN: Is jQuery on its way out? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Is jQuery on its way out?

#11

Post by jawns » Sat, Mar 16, 2019, 5:47 PM UTC

Not a perfect analogy, but PHP was on its way out for a while and probably would have gone all the way out -- if it had not been for one very high-profile company that essentially made it usable at scale. And the reason it did so was because even though PHP had little cachet, it was easy to hire PHP devs.

Similarly, there are now a lot of things you can achieve with vanilla JS (or even vanilla CSS) that you used to only be able to achieve with jQuery, and frameworks like React and Angular are viewed more favorably. But lots of devs of a certain age know jQuery, even if they don't currently use it, and there is something to be said for familiarity. Honestly, if I needed to whip something up in a day, I would probably use jQuery rather than a heavier framework.

Re: Ask HN: Is jQuery on its way out?

#12

Post by m0llusk » Sat, Mar 16, 2019, 5:48 PM UTC

It is quick and easy to access and work with the DOM using jQuery. Both React and Angular are heavyweight libraries that require a lot of bondage and discipline to work as intended. React is from and linked to Facebook and Angular is from and linked to Google. Both of these social media ad companies are broadly considered to be corrupt and potentially best broken up by force of law. There is not particular corporate agenda or threat of breakup hanging over jQuery.

This idea of software tools being on the way out is a slippery one. Perl and PHP are both broadly considered to be somewhere between slipping and no longer relevant, yet a close look shows there are still many commercial sites and actively developed frameworks built using those tools. Popularity and recent trends alone are not necessarily a robust guide to utility or futures.

Re: Ask HN: Is jQuery on its way out?

#13

Post by ilovecaching » Sat, Mar 16, 2019, 5:51 PM UTC

Well hopefully Javascript will be on it's way out thanks to WebAssembly. Any tool that fills a critical gap in a worldwide ecosystem should be admired, but at the end of the day every tool should eventually be replaced as we evolve the craft.

jQuery filled a niche when browsers were less standardized and the DOM was harder to work with. It also came about at a time when people were just starting to play with the idea of web apps, and people could get away with less structured approaches to web design.

Re: Ask HN: Is jQuery on its way out?

#14

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Mar 16, 2019, 5:51 PM UTC

m0llusk wrote: post #12

It is quick and easy to access and work with the DOM using jQuery. Both React and Angular are heavyweight libraries that require a lot of bondage and discipline to work as intended. React is from and linked to Facebook and Angular is from and linked to Google. Both of these social media ad companies are broadly considered to be corrupt and potentially best broken up by force of law. There is not particular corporate…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Is jQuery on its way out?

#15

Post by partisan » Sat, Mar 16, 2019, 5:52 PM UTC

jawns wrote: post #11

Not a perfect analogy, but PHP was on its way out for a while and probably would have gone all the way out -- if it had not been for one very high-profile company that essentially made it usable at scale. And the reason it did so was because even though PHP had little cachet, it was easy to hire PHP devs. Similarly, there are now a lot of things you can achieve with vanilla JS (or even vanilla CSS) that you used to o…

So to complete the thought, at which age should we expect developers to know nothing about new technologies? Also, are you involved in the hiring process at your company?

Re: Ask HN: Is jQuery on its way out?

#16

Post by luhn » Sat, Mar 16, 2019, 5:52 PM UTC

I think jQuery is still a relevant tool for building dynamic websites—animations, carousels, pop-ins, etc.

However, for building SPAs, jQuery has been eclipsed by Angular and React. And thank god for that, jQuery was always an ill-suited tool for the job. Even bad Angular applications are better than good jQuery applications, in my experience.

Re: Ask HN: Is jQuery on its way out?

#17

Post by jorshman » Sat, Mar 16, 2019, 5:53 PM UTC

Jquery still strikes me as being much faster to get up and running than react. Is the issue it’s speed compared to vanilla js?

Re: Ask HN: Is jQuery on its way out?

#18

Post by gjmacd » Sat, Mar 16, 2019, 5:53 PM UTC

jawns wrote: post #11

Not a perfect analogy, but PHP was on its way out for a while and probably would have gone all the way out -- if it had not been for one very high-profile company that essentially made it usable at scale. And the reason it did so was because even though PHP had little cachet, it was easy to hire PHP devs. Similarly, there are now a lot of things you can achieve with vanilla JS (or even vanilla CSS) that you used to o…

I would argue that Facebook's work had little impact on the "scalability" of PHP. I don't see people adopting HipHop (HHVM) in huge numbers. The problem with PHP was it's standards body wasn't doing a good job of keeping the language consistent and it lacked a package manager where Ruby, Python and Node all had solid standards bodies and it was driven by having package management.

With Composer that changed and it appears now they are doing a much better job of standards and changes to the language.

With that said, it's not a concurrent system. It's blocking and that's a problem for modern Web languages.

I do think PHP growth is on the way down... but slowly.

Re: Ask HN: Is jQuery on its way out?

#19

Post by rohansingh » Sat, Mar 16, 2019, 5:56 PM UTC

jawns wrote: post #11

Not a perfect analogy, but PHP was on its way out for a while and probably would have gone all the way out -- if it had not been for one very high-profile company that essentially made it usable at scale. And the reason it did so was because even though PHP had little cachet, it was easy to hire PHP devs. Similarly, there are now a lot of things you can achieve with vanilla JS (or even vanilla CSS) that you used to o…

> And the reason it did so was because even though PHP had little cachet, it was easy to hire PHP devs.

Really not true. There is no part of the hiring process at FB that focuses on trying to find PHP (or now — Hack) developers. The main impetus was that there was an existing, large, PHP code base.

Disclaimer: former FB engineer

Re: Ask HN: Is jQuery on its way out?

#20

Post by chrisco255 » Sat, Mar 16, 2019, 6:00 PM UTC

m0llusk wrote: post #12

It is quick and easy to access and work with the DOM using jQuery. Both React and Angular are heavyweight libraries that require a lot of bondage and discipline to work as intended. React is from and linked to Facebook and Angular is from and linked to Google. Both of these social media ad companies are broadly considered to be corrupt and potentially best broken up by force of law. There is not particular corporate…

Both angular and react are MIT licensed libraries that could be forked at any time by any one. Furthermore these useful frameworks have nothing to do with the business model of Google and Facebook.

jQuery is not suitable for large application development. It can be useful here and there but not as a foundational layer for an application architecture.