I started studying web development 2 years ago and I never feel the need to reach for jQuery. From the very beginning I wanted to get a solid knowledge of front end technologies without libraries or frameworks. After working for some time in this field I do feel the need for stuff like Bootstrap, Tailwind, Vue/React, but not jQuery.
What's is selling point considering that DOM manipulation and HTTP requests has improved over the years in vanilla JS?
I've read through most of the comments and I see a lot of:
I'm used to jQuery syntax
$ is shorter than document.querySelector
jQuery provides better support for older browsers
First two aren't really meaningful to me, and for the last one, I'd say if you care about browser support you are probably compiling your code anyway.
I'm not familiar with using jQuery but I work with people that use it and I've realized it promotes some bad practices like:
Repeated DOM node selection due to the ease of use of $(selector)
Manipulation of CSS that should be done in CSS
jQuery is not JavaScript. Some people use it as a crutch and it shows
So my main question, if someone is comfortable with vanilla JS, does it make any sense learning jQuery?
I actually landed my job as web developer because I was good at CSS and ES6 JS.