Vanilla JS is now faster and easier than most of jQuery, but I wouldn't knock anyone for using jQuery if it saves them time because they know it.

If some reader hasn't taken a look at what you can do with vanilla JS, go ahead and google the next thing you attempt to call jQuery for, you might save yourself some kilobytes of dependencies and complexity.

I recently used jQuery UI to get a calendar up on a page, the client is happy, and I didn't have to burn a week of my life fucking around with newfangled garbage for that.

The problem with not using jquery is that it still takes a lot more code to get the same thing done, and I still need to worry about cross-browser compatibility myself. The amount of extra code keeps shrinking, and browsers are getting closer together but it's still not as easy.

Just don't build complex UIs with jquery. But plain old HTML with a dash of jquery is just really easy to work with.

That's what we're saying though: that used to be true, it's not now (at least in my experience so far). JS does a lot by default that used to require jQuery. It's surprising and refreshing.

I still hate JavaScript and use it as rarely as possible, but even I of all people will concede that modern JavaScript has improved to the point where it can now stand alone.

Give me an example of something that takes a lot more code without jQuery? Maybe we'll both learn something by comparison?

I agree that JavaScript got much better but I still feel like updating the DOM by hand is still too cumbersome to forego using a library or a framework.

Whenever I write an app with just regular JavaScript I find that I always end up creating an immature library for DOM manipulation.