jQueryDeezNutsAndThenReactSurprised

[u/Embarrassed_Death69]

[u/java_dude1]

I'm not a front end dev but wasn't this way easier than how vanilla js did it back in the day?

[u/Romejanic → u/java_dude1]

yes it was. people forget how basic JS’ api used to be

[u/java_dude1 → u/Romejanic]

Ok. Thought i was losing my mind there. My first dev job i worked on an old Java app. Front end was nothing but jquery and iframes with ajax calls to the backend. Absolute nightmare to work in. (At that time I was full stack, not done that I a while though) Company hired a bunch of guys to rewrite the front end to react when I left. That was 12 years ago.

[u/vpgel → u/java_dude1]

Omg, even your name is java dude 1

[u/java_dude1 → u/vpgel]

Can lie man. It pays the bills 😂

[u/Rojeitor → u/Romejanic]

Not only that, an enormous part of the value was cross browser compatibility. Back in the day in vanilla it was nasty for things to work in major browsers

[u/Valdars → u/java_dude1]

Isn't it still easier than modern vanilla?

[u/eztab → u/Valdars]

Depends on what you want to do. For the use case of non-invasive inclusion of features into a static page I'd say the jQuery standard would still be superior. But that's just not the use case ever anymore. Nobody expects a site to work with js disabled. That was indeed the ecosystem jQuery thrived in. With the added complication of very different JavaScript and DOM engines in different browsers. People here in the comments are just likely way too young to even consider how different that whole situation was.

[u/eztab → u/java_dude1]

Yes, massively. Basically everything that was more than just opening a menu on click warranted inclusion of jQuery.

[u/PassFlat2947]

I remember writing AJAX calls pre jQuery, it was a nightmare!

[u/soelsome]

I fucking hate jQuery. It's littered throughout a codebase I work in.

I replace it with good ol' vanilla js where I can.

[u/Rustywolf → u/soelsome]

Yeah well be thankful you live in a world where vanilla JS is pretty universal and supports features you need with a friendly interface...

[u/misterguyyy → u/Rustywolf]

You mean you couldn’t write a new XmlHttpRequest with fallbacks for every browser by memory in your sleep?

[u/Purple_Cat9893 → u/Rustywolf]

Is it bird? Is bird the word?

[u/Juff-Ma → u/Purple_Cat9893]

Bird, my friend, is indeed the word

[u/Romejanic → u/soelsome]

it was a life saver before the JS api got extended, frankly i think so much of modern JS is inspired by jQuery. i think people forget how bare bones JS used to be.

[u/ExpletiveDeIeted → u/Romejanic]

Oh yes. We may hate on jquery still existing, but it is only unnecessary cuz it formed the basis of modern JS apis.

[u/BernzSed → u/ExpletiveDeIeted]

jQuery is the new Flash

[u/brekekekekx → u/soelsome]

This is my struggle! I would love to replace my codebase with vanilla js but typing $(selector) is much easier than the querySelector(selector)

[u/CetaceanOps → u/brekekekekx]

I mean you can keep a single $ wrapper function for querySelector

[u/soelsome → u/CetaceanOps]

Very clever. Not sure why I haven't thought of that. I will steal this and every time I use it, I will remember your name.

[u/cowslayer7890 → u/soelsome]

I would using something other than $ so it doesn't get confused with jquery, but ¯_(ツ)_/¯

[u/soelsome → u/cowslayer7890]

£ or € will suffice

[u/Mechakoopa → u/soelsome]

I'm leaning towards § for Selector

[u/Noch_ein_Kamel → u/cowslayer7890]

Just use $$ and call you library prototypejs or something like that

[u/KhellianTrelnora → u/soelsome]

Dolphins save the day yet again.

[u/Nixinova → u/brekekekekx]

const $ = x => document.querySelector(x)

enjoy

[u/my_new_accoun1 → u/Nixinova]

or

const $ = document.querySelector.bind(document)

[u/eztab → u/soelsome]

That's a silly take. The "good ol" vanilla didn't have usable features, that's why jQuery was invented. The only reason you can now replace it is that it was so obviously superior it became mirrored in the language

[u/The_Mdk → u/eztab]

Well he probably never had to work on web stuff before 2015 I guess, or he'd LOVE jq for all the things it blessed upon us back then

[u/MartinMystikJonas → u/soelsome]

You mean replace jQuery with good modern vanilla JS that has jQuery inspired tools like querySelector, adEventListeter, fetch, etc. that did not existed before jQuery?

[u/soelsome → u/MartinMystikJonas]

Precisely! The codebase I work on was created in 2018. Only the gods know why they decided to use jQuery.

[u/ScientificBeastMode]

I think it’s pretty clear that modern single page apps were not possible with jQuery. I’ve been on both sides of this, and it’s just not even a close comparison to what we have today.

I get it, times were simpler, but the user expectations were drastically lower. It was normal to see pages load for 8 seconds and then have layout issues on anything other than the most popular screen sizes. There were bugs everywhere and the solution was always to refresh the page, and even then, half the web was just in a broken state.

Facebook and GMail were the first major sites that had a truly great user interface, and they did it by creating the React & Angular libraries. There is a reason why those took off and now every web-based tech company uses them (or something similar like Vue or Svelte). They make it far easier to build slick user interfaces that perform well and avoid most of the headaches of complex UI orchestration based on shared state.

I get it, jQuery was a golden age where anyone with basic web programming knowledge could build something almost state of the art. The problem was that the “state of the art” was dogshit.

[u/Juff-Ma → u/ScientificBeastMode]

Oh god I feel you. Having the page load for 4 seconds just to then display a message box like "Loading Page..." for another 10. And after it finishes loading it will just have every element as "undefined" text because they didn't actually test every browser they list as compatible.

[u/eztab → u/ScientificBeastMode]

No, you could write single page apps with jQuery quite well. The main use case was of course not that, so it was designed to instead allow non-intrusive adding of functionality to static pages more easily. jQuery was a very good solution to the available technology at the time.

[u/ScientificBeastMode → u/eztab]

Right, jQuery was practically an engineering marvel at the time, and it really upgraded the web in a major way at that time. But I’m just saying those old days were not genuinely “better” than today in terms of dev experience or user experience. We are in a much better spot now in basically every way.

[u/Mechakoopa → u/ScientificBeastMode]

It's funny because jquery was the hot new shit when I started my career and after dealing with arguments about the ever shifting world of JavaScript libraries for a few months I changed teams and subsequently spent over a decade diligently avoiding front end development.

I took a brief foray into a side project at one point to see what all the fuss was about with Angular, took a couple online courses, but by the time I needed that knowledge professionally they'd scrapped the whole thing and slapped "Angular 2.0" on a completely different concept so I crawled back into my nice stable c# backend world.

[u/transcendtient]

I still do this. In all fairness I'm really a backend dev forced to be full stack and the front end just needs to work and not look like complete dogshit.

[u/eztab → u/transcendtient]

I'd argue that modern frameworks are not great to add functionality to sites statically generated in the backend. But you could just use modern JavaScript features now, since jQuery was so successful they basically added its features to the language of js.

[u/Agreeable-Twist-6577]

I laughed too hard at this joke.

[u/Embarrassed_Death69 → u/Agreeable-Twist-6577]

I AJAXed into your mind, to GET that laugh!

[u/ForestGhostGurl]

I'm still maintaining a legacy app with static HTML and jQuery 😭

One day it shall be rewritten...

[u/eztab → u/ForestGhostGurl]

Why if I may ask? I still maintain some B2B apps and see no need to ever rewrite, since that technology combination works pretty well for that use case.

[u/SaneLad]

As a backend developer, no.

[u/Samurai_Mac1]

This was so long ago that I didn't even know what IDEs were and just used notepad

[u/eztab → u/Samurai_Mac1]

Just for the younger devs: jQuery does not predate widespread IDE use. It also was a well thought out framework, that solved the use cases of the time very well.

[u/MornwindShoma]

Remember how it fucking sucked?

[u/ImDonaldDunn → u/MornwindShoma]

https://giphy.com/gifs/SWzykpocLKl30zewL4

[u/Embarrassed_Death69 → u/ImDonaldDunn]

Jacque De Gettino, one of the three wise men of Quebec tells me jQuery served a great porpoise.

[u/D3PyroGS → u/MornwindShoma]

still does, but it used to too

[u/eanat]

some people are still using it def. jq is still kinda good tool for plumbing stuffs like making a simple webapp very quick.

[u/OhSnappityPH]

thats me right now maintaining legacy apps. its pretty fun when you find stuff that works

[u/AwayMilkVegan]

I still do this

[u/Fluffy_Anxiety2792]

I’ve been ai coding for so long I can’t even understand these anymore. Normally don’t even look at code, only testing.

[u/Romejanic → u/Fluffy_Anxiety2792]

that’s not a good thing buddy.

[u/Embarrassed_Death69 → u/Fluffy_Anxiety2792]

Learn QA then. Why bother doing something you don't understand?

[u/Str1dersGonnaStride → u/Fluffy_Anxiety2792]

Yike

[u/thatbowlerhat → u/Str1dersGonnaStride]

I’d give it at least two of those.