Its a good way to start and actually make things happen. But it's also important to get beyond that to become a strong developer.

Some do, some don't.

jQuery is a common way to learn to do front end programming. It saves a lot of time when used well. But it is important to extend the knowledge to core javascript and be able to write code when jQuery is not available (like when writing scripts to embed on different sites).

The approaches aren't exclusive either, you can start "holistic" and then learn more by going "analytic" afterwards, once you have the gist of things.

Agreed, this is my preferred way of learning.