> _I was there_ ... In 2007, at the beginning of my journey
  > I started this blog. I remember my first JavaScript
  > tutorial which gained a lot of readers, even though I 
  > wasn’t the expert in the field ... So when I recommended
  > jQuery, some people followed me in this opinion and tried
  > it.

This post was a fun read simply because my own career path is not unlike the author's. I spent this time in comp.lang.javascript (;^)) and ##javscript, where I learned pretty quickly that I was decidedly not hot shit and that even frontend JavaScript development already had a significant history. Today I wouldn't entertain the idea that I was present at the start of some turning point, it was just the start of another career.

Being a neophyte coming from the land of HTML, CSS, and A List Apart, I took to jQuery like a fish to water, but more experienced folks correctly slapped my hand when I championed it (like David Mark, the Voldemort of c.l.j.). I wasn't quite sure why it was so reviled in these circles, but given that I had arrived at these communities to learn and not teach, I went with it and just listened (and didn't write blog posts).

Over time I saw jQuery for the abomination it is. A very usable, imprecise API that has "fluent interface" and a selector engine as its chief selling points, where a single prototype is the God object to end all God objects. Given that all of the other libraries implemented a comparable selector engine, I never felt deprived when working with Prototype, or MooTools, or Ext.js, or ultimately Google Closure. I could see that designs written with these other libraries were far more comprehensible and cohesive than what was coming out of the jQuery world, but to oppose the jQuery tidal wave was a fool's errand, so I just kept writing lots of software for my employers, and didn't write blog posts.

Maybe some day the history of how jQuery "made it" will be written. It seems like a shining example of "Worse is Better." Recommendations like the one from the author were just the blind leading the blind. Now we're stuck with it. Maybe more of us who felt this way should have written blog posts, but as the author hints, that's the paradox! You can spend so much time writing software, or spreading ideas, but seldom is there time to do both prolifically. I still don't feel qualified to write blog posts like this one...