You might not need jQuery (2014)
youmightnotneedjquery.com
You might not need jQuery (2014)
1–10 of 241 posts
Re: You might not need jQuery (2014)
#2It's ironic that there's probably no bigger sales pitch for jQuery than this site.
In every single example, the jQuery version is basically one or two lines of code, versus 10-15 lines for the alternative. (and the jQ version seems significantly easier on the eyes as well.)
Also, jQuery supports promises and has for quite a while.
This page hasn't aged well. I've come full circle and am now using jQuery again.
Re: You might not need jQuery (2014)
#3What we need in 2021 is not this site, it's a youmightnotneedreact.com
Re: You might not need jQuery (2014)
#4It's ironic that there's probably no bigger sales pitch for jQuery than this site. In every single example, the jQuery version is basically one or two lines of code, versus 10-15 lines for the alternative. (and the jQ version seems significantly easier on the eyes as well.) Also, jQuery supports promises and has for quite a while. This page hasn't aged well. I've come full circle and am now using jQuery again.
I generally agree but I think the site is specifically calling out use of jQuery in libraries to avoid a big dependency.
"If you're developing a library on the other hand, please take a moment to consider if you actually need jQuery as a dependency"
Re: You might not need jQuery (2014)
#5Someone should make a youmightnotneedspringboot.com
Re: You might not need jQuery (2014)
#6It's ironic that there's probably no bigger sales pitch for jQuery than this site. In every single example, the jQuery version is basically one or two lines of code, versus 10-15 lines for the alternative. (and the jQ version seems significantly easier on the eyes as well.) Also, jQuery supports promises and has for quite a while. This page hasn't aged well. I've come full circle and am now using jQuery again.
I generally agree but I think the site is specifically calling out use of jQuery in libraries to avoid a big dependency. "If you're developing a library on the other hand, please take a moment to consider if you actually need jQuery as a dependency"
Agreed! Especially for a smaller library or one that wouldn't adequately take advantage of jQuery shortcuts (or if you're using another library for DOM/shadow DOM, like react/angular/vue/etc)
Counterpoint, if you're developing a library, then (based on this page itself), each line that would depend on jQuery would otherwise balloon to 15 times as large, so maybe the highly optimized jQ dependency would be worthwhile if the extra functionality would actually be useful (or perhaps "slim" jQuery). The savings would increase for each additional library that had a shared dependency on jQuery.
But, anyway, developer time is valuable, and the 80kb or so for jQuery will probably be blown away as soon as you stick a single image on the page.
Re: You might not need jQuery (2014)
#7What we need in 2021 is not this site, it's a youmightnotneedreact.com
And of course in 2021 you could build the site using Vue with GraphQL and a CDN deployment pipeline with auto scaling :)
Re: You might not need jQuery (2014)
#8It's ironic that there's probably no bigger sales pitch for jQuery than this site. In every single example, the jQuery version is basically one or two lines of code, versus 10-15 lines for the alternative. (and the jQ version seems significantly easier on the eyes as well.) Also, jQuery supports promises and has for quite a while. This page hasn't aged well. I've come full circle and am now using jQuery again.
This comment is a great example of what I call "lines of code mindset" which is form of tip of the iceberg mentality, where programmers optimize for simplicity only the code they see. Is saving 10-15 lines worth it if you need an 86.1 Kb vendor dependency? Hidden complexity you don't control is the most expensive kind I think.
Re: You might not need jQuery (2014)
#9It's ironic that there's probably no bigger sales pitch for jQuery than this site. In every single example, the jQuery version is basically one or two lines of code, versus 10-15 lines for the alternative. (and the jQ version seems significantly easier on the eyes as well.) Also, jQuery supports promises and has for quite a while. This page hasn't aged well. I've come full circle and am now using jQuery again.
I doubt the “choose not to use jQuery” path means “never write a function to wrap up that boilerplate”. The point is that you might be able to write the equivalent function instead of pulling down a whole library.
That said, optimization techniques have gotten good enough that you might be able to just let a build tool do that for you. If you really still want to use jQuery.
Re: You might not need jQuery (2014)
#10It's ironic that there's probably no bigger sales pitch for jQuery than this site. In every single example, the jQuery version is basically one or two lines of code, versus 10-15 lines for the alternative. (and the jQ version seems significantly easier on the eyes as well.) Also, jQuery supports promises and has for quite a while. This page hasn't aged well. I've come full circle and am now using jQuery again.
I think a lot of the initial appeal around jQuery was that it made querying and manipulating the DOM simple. Much of its features have been replaced by broadly-available APIs like Document.querySelector and Element.classList. Loading the entirety of jQuery just to access some of the remaining features just means you're loading JavaScript that you aren't going to use. I miss relying on jQuery because it's familiar and consistent, but it also makes it easy to forget how much better browsers have gotten in the time since it was introduced.