> "How do you do something in javascript?"
> "With jQuery you do it like this..."
I had the worst time ever when I had to work with jscript. I really wonder if my dislike of the language comes from the language itself or the community around it.
In IE6, you do it like this.
In IE8, you do it like this.
In Firefox, you do it like this.
Then jQuery came along. And it was like 'Now you do it like this, and jQuery handles it for all browsers perfectly'.
Just because some tasks are now performed easily in native javascript on all browsers, doesn't mean it was always that way.
I'd argue that jQuery was great, but now most (if not all) of it can be replaced by native javascript features (e.g. document.querySelector). Today I wouldn't recommend jQuery to anyone.
I suggest learning a functional language (in my case it was Haskell) in parallel, as it opens up new ways of thinking about javascript and problem solving.
I think SO has gotten a little better about this, but not much, IME