Show HN: Leaving jQuery behind with Backbone.Native

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13 pointsloganfsmyth4 comments

"jQuery doesn’t always offer enough of an upside to be worth loading. Backbone itself only uses a very small subset of the functionality provided by jQuery, so why bother with it?"

Is the overhead of loading jQuery really in any way a detriment to the overall performance of your application? I've seen comments like this a lot around HN lately, and I wonder if they're not a hyperbole. The size of jQuery, loaded once initially and then never again, cannot impact apps that much, can it? I've never considered all the wonderful benefits of jQuery to not be worth it.

I don't think it's the size specifically that makes an impact. For me, the main question is why load a library to do something that is pretty straightforward with the existing APIs. Most DOM manipulation is just as easy. AJAX can be more complicated, but it depends on your needs.

how does this compare to just making a custom, stripped down jQuery 2.0.1 build? you could shed a lot of weight, including the Sizzle elephant.

That definitely reduces the size of jQuery, but you still end up duplicating a lot of the collection and DOM manipulation logic. That's definitely an option though depending on what you are looking for.

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