You might not need jQuery • Hacker News Board

Re: You might not need jQuery

#271

Post by gisenberg » Fri, Jan 31, 2014, 5:17 AM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #162

notJim wrote: post #107

I recently did a project that didn't use jQuery in order to keep my code smaller. It was an embedded 3rd-party widget, so keeping the code as small as possible was a key requirement. The code I wrote supports down to IE7, but IE7 wasn't really the biggest issue. The real problem with not using jQuery is that all of the collective knowledge we have about browser inconsistencies is encapsulated in jQuery. When you run…

http://caniuse.com/

Not sure what you're getting at. Feature support doesn't mean there aren't inconsistencies in implementation, and caniuse's documentation on that delta are very much surface-level.

Re: You might not need jQuery

#272

Post by boie0025 » Fri, Jan 31, 2014, 5:17 AM UTC

sergiotapia wrote: post #148

sfeng wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need an abstraction to do something that's natively implemented on your platform.

No thanks, I'll take something that I'm sure 99% of web developer know by heart and works cross browser. I don't want/need to spend hours upon hours writing "clean" code that doesn't use jQuery. I have business problems to solve.

That's what it all boils down to... "I have business problems to solve".

Re: You might not need jQuery

#273

Post by wyuenho » Fri, Jan 31, 2014, 5:24 AM UTC

kayoone wrote: post #184

wyuenho wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A classList polyfill is like 500b compressed. No need to blow a non-existent problem out of proportion. https://github.com/remy/polyfills/blob/master/classList.js

are you serious ? thats actually a good example on why you should use jquery. First of all the dev needs to know exactly on which platforms he will run into problems and how to solve them...And what if you need not one but several polyfills ? That gets messy pretty quickly.

Ah no. First of all, you should always know which platform you target and what works and what don't work on those platforms, even if you are using jQuery. jQuery is not perfect. Platform specific corner cases are still exposed to you.

What if you need several polyfills? Drop them in too. You should always know what browser feature you are using. The same argument goes for using libraries. What if you need more than jQuery? Bring them in too. There are asset pipelines and/or pure front end packaging solutions like AMD to help you. What's the problem?

Re: You might not need jQuery

#274

Post by wyuenho » Fri, Jan 31, 2014, 5:30 AM UTC

LukeShu wrote: post #227

lowboy wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to substantiate your benchmark where you compare jQ1, jQ2, and the native DOM API?

Here is the mentioned pull request: https://github.com/jashkenas/backbone/pull/2959 Here is his benchmark: http://jsperf.com/backbone-patch-22be8f9/2 It only compares jQuery 1 and the DOM API, no jQuery 2. TestBaseView: DOM API TestPaulView: Reduced jQuery usage TestView: jQuery

Yep that's it. You can replicate this benchmark and replace jq1 with jq2 to see how much faster it gets. You'll be disappointed.

Re: You might not need jQuery

#275

Post by Iftheshoefits » Fri, Jan 31, 2014, 5:41 AM UTC

TheZenPsycho wrote: post #261

Iftheshoefits wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

JavaScript is a dynamic language, and it is arguably the case that many of the frameworks that exist for it hide or transform enough of the "native" implementation details as to be different languages. Or supersets of it, if you like. I don't think it's at all unreasonable to suggest that a developer who uses jQuery (or any other framework) doesn't have to have more than a vague, fleeting understanding of the "native…

Such a viewpoint would be ignorant of the distinction between a language and an API.

Yes, that's rather the parent's point, I think.

Re: You might not need jQuery

#276

Post by skrebbel » Fri, Jan 31, 2014, 5:53 AM UTC

efuquen wrote: post #57

No, please no. If size is an issue for some reason or you want to have no dependencies you can use something like http://zeptojs.com/ and just embed everything in one minified file. If you do things right only the functions you are actually using will get placed in there as well. Do not reinvent the wheel to solve problems that can't be solved in much cleaner and nicer ways. Managing dependencies can be annoying, but…

You're right in principle, but Zepto is a horrible recommendation because it gives the middle finger to anyone on IE < 10. I was originally designed explicitly for mobile browsers, so it makes sense, but it means it's rather unfit for the majority of businesses.

Re: You might not need jQuery

#277

Post by sfeng » Fri, Jan 31, 2014, 5:54 AM UTC

mattmanser wrote: post #169

nelmaven wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, no. IE8 supports it. http://caniuse.com/queryselector

IE8 is limited to the old CSS selectors so basically it sucks and doesn't really support it.

But so is all of the actual CSS in your app.

Re: You might not need jQuery

#278

Post by TheZenPsycho » Fri, Jan 31, 2014, 5:57 AM UTC

Iftheshoefits wrote: post #275

TheZenPsycho wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such a viewpoint would be ignorant of the distinction between a language and an API.

Yes, that's rather the parent's point, I think.

except "many of the frameworks that exist for it hide or transform enough of the "native" implementation details as to be different languages. Or supersets of it" is wrong. It's all still javascript. Just.. plain.. javascript. with a different api/library.

Re: You might not need jQuery

#279

Post by enscr » Fri, Jan 31, 2014, 6:06 AM UTC

I'd love to use a jQuery 'lite' version, just for the convenience and brevity of expressions. Some of it should be baked into javascript.

Re: You might not need jQuery

#280

Post by aviraldg » Fri, Jan 31, 2014, 6:08 AM UTC

Orva wrote: post #133

efuquen wrote: post #57

No, please no. If size is an issue for some reason or you want to have no dependencies you can use something like http://zeptojs.com/ and just embed everything in one minified file. If you do things right only the functions you are actually using will get placed in there as well. Do not reinvent the wheel to solve problems that can't be solved in much cleaner and nicer ways. Managing dependencies can be annoying, but…

Size really is issue when dealing with mobile devices. Even from disk cache each KB increases startuptime by about 1ms (and jquery 2 is ~32kb minified, for Also, last time I checked jquery uses "querySelectorAll" for that fancy $("selector") syntax, which is slow as hell with every possible browser compared to "getElementBy*". This might not be issue with desktop machines, but you will probably lose most of your mobi…

jQuery might use querySelectorAll for its selector, but also looks for basic patterns and optimizes them by using things like getElementBy* eg. $("#test") will use getElementById behind the scenes, not querySelectorAll.