I agree. I still use it from time to time when initially hacking together a project. It makes my development process faster and easier. I never have problems with it. The primary concern between start and launch is getting to done, not shaving 20kb or 30kb off (if it was 300kb or 500kb that would be a different matter). As I get to roughly 85%-90% done, or sometimes post launch, I'll then allocate time where it makes sense to removing jQuery and pursuing further optimizations. Eliminating jQuery is toward the bottom of the list of reasonable concerns when it comes to making a new product successful. I have more than two decades of experience with JavaScript, and there are numerous things that are simplified to a point of fast, no concern development triviality with jQuery. If it's useful to your development process, use it.