What makes me angry - jQuery | Hacker News Reader

What makes me angry - jQuery

wrzasq.pl

5 pointsCouto5 comments

I think the author has totally missed the point of jQuery which is why he's probably so frustrated. It's not meant to be used to build massive client-side applications, instead it's a tool to make dealing with the (terrible) DOM and AJAX APIs a bit more bearable and abstract away any cross-browser nuances.

Instead I'd recommend something like backbone.js or ember.js, they are both designed for building client-side apps.

He suggests using Prototype instead. Don't do this. In my last job we built a complex CMS on Prototype; it was horrible. Prototype's DOM API is verbose and unpredictable and the classical inheritance model it supplies isn't worth switching. Also development is pretty much dead, the last release was November 2010.

The author mentions Dojo at the end of the article in passing, which is a great all inclusive framework for large client side apps. But yest I think the author is missing a few things. The first and most glaring is complaining about jQuery lacking OO, jQuery's philosophy is intentionally functional. It sometimes makes it difficult to extend or add onto jQuery but that is not jQuery's bag, they are more of an API that you use in your own app, they are not really a architectural pattern that you follow to build an app. If you are adding onto the jQuery object to build your app, you are probably doing it wrong. For a toolkit that gives a developer an architectural framework, they should look at Dojo or roll their own buy utilizing Backbone, Require, various other libs and jQuery.

You pretty much took the words out of my mouth. jQuery is not a framework, it is simply a tool in your toolbox. You don't build a house using only a hammer. The author's own inability to use the rights tools together is not an reason to go trashing the library.

I think he gets it. He's responding to companies blindly mandating jQuery as its development language whether it's the right solution or not, due to its popularity.

I will however fault him for taking the job in the first place. I apply to JavaScript jobs, not jQuery jobs.

You could use ender.js (http://ender.no.de/), it's completely modular.

It is not, however, ready for production use. At all. I had the following blocking internet explorer 7 for ten seconds each page load:

  if ($('input[name=firstname]').length) {
    // stuff
  }

The bit it was choking on was the selector. Oh and there's the 2+ second processing time each page load on any browser when you've got more than about three modules loaded in.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com