“You might not need jQuery”

I stumbled on the You Might Not Need jQuery website, and I think that it’s a fantastic idea.

What it does is that it compares code written using jQuery, and code written in plain Javascript. If you develop mainly in jQuery, this helps you to write the same code in plain Javascript. On the other hand, if you are like me and don’t like jQuery for any reason, then it’s a good resource to learn from other people’s code.

It also links to some good libraries that can be used independently of jQuery.

Personally, I find using jQuery quite annoying for the following reasons.

1. It can noticeably slow down page loading, especially on mobile. It even slows down PCs with Core i5 processors by 100ms.
2. The jQuery website boasts that it’s only 32kB minified and gzipped, and they call it lightweight. On the contrary, the Ponzu system that I’m developing, which uses Javascript for AJAX, hashtag-based navigation, localStorage-based page caching, JSON-driven HTML templates and more, is less than 20kB total (minified and gzipped). It’s hard to justify 32kB when the vast majority of code is not going to be used.
3. There are often too many functions doing similar things (and I’m saying this coming from Ruby, which also has a lot of redundant functions). Event handling is especially an area that put me off.

In Ponzu, we use jQuery only if the client is Internet Explorer. We have a small number of shims that use jQuery as a compatibility layer.