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?