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To Learn (Or Not Learn) JQuery
Nerval's Lobster writes: jQuery isn't without its controversies, and some developers distrust its use in larger projects because (some say) it ultimately leads to breakage-prone code that's harder to maintain. But given its prevalence, jQuery is probably essential to know, but what are the most important elements to learn in order to become adept-enough at it? Chaining commands, understanding when the document is finished loading (and how to write code that safely accesses elements only after said loading), and learning CSS selectors are all key. The harder part is picking up jQuery's quirks and tricks, of which there are many... but is it worth studying to the point where you know every possible eccentricity?
This is another in a long chain of articles that seem to assume all developers work on web frontend software. We do not. I have no use for jQuery and thankfully do not have to work on a single line of JavaScript in my day job. Maybe if you want to work on frontend-y stuff then it would be worth learning, but it is by no means required to be a developer.
I agree, but there is a balance you should achieve. When I first learned jQuery and realized how easy it was to do a lot of things, I went crazy with it. Nowadays I've realized most of what I was using jQuery for, was better done using minimal jQuery (or none at all) and more CSS. Yes, it would be possible to use plain old javascript, but it's easier to write, AND READ jQuery than it would be to script all browser-specific perks of javascript. At the end of the day, use it, but don't abuse it. It's cached on all client browsers anyway and processing overhead and minimal, might as well use it and save yourself a headache or two.
Back when I did web stuff a number of years ago, we used jQuery pretty extensively. I've even been involved a bit, submitted performance patches, etc. (none of the code I touched is still present though). Having used other javascript toolkits, jQuery was by far my favorite (I still have nightmares about Dojo). Made a lot of things very easy that were otherwise cumbersome, lengthy, or errorprone to do. Note that when I say jQuery here I mean the core of it, not the UI components and such that came later.
I've actually read the linked articles (*gasp*), and it seems the one referenced to imply that developers distrust it in large projects (really, summary?) is simply elaborating on how they have been using jQuery in a way that doesn't work very well, and found a different way of using it where it does work well. Surprise, jQuery is a tool, and crafting solutions requires you to use the right tool, in the right way, at the right time. Screwdrivers are great for screws, but nails pair better with the hammer.
jQuery is a very helpful tool if you use it right, and I think it would be beneficial for most javascript developers to have played around with it. It's not all that complicated, it's easy to learn, and if you're javascript is novice level, figuring out how/why jQuery works will also improve your javascript skills significantly.
I haven't heard of any other controversy regarding jQuery either but I haven't really been paying attention to it lately. Anyone care to elaborate?
If you're doing front end web development, at some point, you're going to have to become good at Javascript.
You've got all these different frameworks where everything gets abstracted 3 redirections deep into a pseudo MVC layer populated with promise events and callback system that work well for 80% of the job and make 20% incredibly hard, and STILL in the end ties into the DOM, and is just as breakage prone, all the while explicitly demanding you adhere to their code organization because that way they can encode configuration into class names and function invokations and all of them claiming the other is bad not because of intrinsic issues but because they don't make the same ideological architectural choices like one-page-apps or putting business logic (including navigation!) in pages - even though it's more predicated on popularity than functionality, and ALL of that built on top of the mess that is Javascript and you are well and truly sunk my friend. Not even a run-on-sentence has enough space to cover all the horrible stuff that lies out there for the aspiring web developer.
So I recommend learning Javascript. Once you have a good strong feel for the fundamentals, once you've treated Crockford's "JavaScript: The Good Parts," the same way as you've done with K&R's "The C Programming Language," and you're solid on the basics, THEN jump off into these new worlds of overly pretentious web designers delving into their first languages and claiming you can't write a decent site without coffeescript, haml, and sass. So you can put them in their place, or at least, so you can understand how much they're complicating what is, after all, not that difficult of a thing. Even experienced developers write really, seriously completely awful code with Javascript, thinking they'd doing a decent job because they didn't invest time and energy to understand why they're not.
The only problem is that Javascript is bad. I like learning by examples, but that is so not the way to go with Javascript. Examples abound - but they're more than likely to be bad examples. There's reference books, like "Javascript: The Definitive Guide," but they're not great for learning. So what I do is tell people to learn jQuery first.
With jQuery and a few minutes, they can pick up the basics. Someone who already knows CSS or writes code for a living should feel productive in less than a full work day. It's easy, it's fast*, it handles browser differences**, there are well documented examples of how to use each feature on the jQuery doc pages, and best of all for me - it's non intrusive, so you can fit in the new vanilla javascript you're slowly picking up in, without needing to learn any framework specific configurations or magic function naming or guessing why it's not calling a method because it's not been added to the object prototype by your pesudo controller registration.
For me, I hate frameworks that are all-or-one solutions. Big heavyweight*** frameworks that tell you "This webpage is now a ____ application". First, they never are perfect solutions, and second, they always make some percent easier at the cost of making the rest painful. I think when learning a new language, especially if you've already got one or more under your belt, forcing someone to do it your way, or making familiar patterns or constructs hard is a huge detriment. Besides, how can you expect someone to learn if they're not allowed to get it wrong? You end up with folks who don't understand the importance of things like memory management if they never had to do it, and how useful are they during crunch mode?
So, yeah. Learn jQuery. Learn dom traversal and manipulation. Learn event registration. Learn AJAX. Try out some animations. Write a plugin or two. Many of these things are appearing in modern browsers now, but once you understand the concept, the basics that are endemic to web development, and you can be productive, then you'll have the grace time needed to properly learn actual Javascript. Then you get out your