Farewell jQuery

jQuery is no longer considered a "must-have" because its primary purpose—standardizing JavaScript across inconsistent browsers (like IE6–9) and simplifying clunky old APIs—has been fulfilled by modern web standards. Most modern browsers now follow the same standards, making jQuery's "compatibility layer" redundant for new projects. [1, 2, 3, 4]

Why It's No Longer Needed

Browser Standardization: Modern "evergreen" browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari) automatically update and support the same native APIs, eliminating the need for a library to "fix" cross-browser quirks.
Performance Overhead: Including the ~30KB (gzipped) jQuery library adds unnecessary load time and memory usage when native alternatives perform the same tasks faster.
Modern Frameworks: Tools like React, Vue, and Angular use a declarative, component-based approach that doesn't require direct DOM manipulation, making jQuery’s core functionality obsolete in those environments. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]

Relevant Improvements in JavaScript (Vanilla JS)

Modern JavaScript (ES6 and beyond) has adopted many of the features that originally made jQuery famous, often with cleaner and faster native implementations. [9, 10, 11]

Feature [5, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16]	jQuery Method	Modern Native Alternative (Vanilla JS)
Element Selection	`$('.class')`	`document.querySelectorAll('.class')`
Ajax Requests	`$.ajax()`	`fetch()` with `async/await`
Event Handling	`.on('click')`	`addEventListener('click')`
CSS Classes	`.addClass()`	`element.classList.add()`
Animations	`.animate()`	CSS Transitions/Animations or Web Animations API
Array Utilities	`$.each()`	`Array.forEach()`, `.map()`, or `.filter()`

Modern Alternatives to jQuery and JavaScript Libraries

Vanilla JavaScript

The modern JavaScript language, with its ES6+ features, is more than capable of handling the tasks that jQuery was once indispensable for. Consider the following examples:

DOM Manipulation

With jQuery:

$('#myElement').text('Hello, world!');

With Vanilla JavaScript:

document.querySelector('#myElement').textContent = 'Hello, world!';

Event Handling

With jQuery:

$('#myButton').on('click', function() {

alert('Button clicked!');

});

With Vanilla JavaScript:

document.querySelector('#myButton').addEventListener('click', () => {

alert('Button clicked!');

});

When is jQuery Still Used?

Despite being "redundant" for new apps, jQuery remains relevant in specific scenarios:

Legacy Codebases: Millions of existing websites and WordPress plugins still rely on it.
Rapid Prototyping: Some developers still find its concise, "chainable" syntax faster for simple interactive scripts.
Maintenance: Large enterprise systems often choose to keep jQuery rather than risk expensive, buggy rewrites. [2, 3, 17, 18, 19]