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Who Still Uses jQuery Regularly, and Why?

dev.to staff on May 03, 2023

Do you still use jQuery? Despite the emergence of newer technologies and frameworks, it seems that many web developers still use jQuery on a regula...
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Ben Sinclair

I do, I suppose. I deal with a bunch of "legacy" projects which use jQuery - sometimes really old versions of it - and that's just what there is to work with. All the contrib modules and stuff use it, so when I have to go in and make changes, I use it too.
For anything new on these projects, I use vanilla JS though.

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Echeverriaq

In general, it seems that jQuery is only used in maintenance of old projects. Even so, if I have to rewrite something from the old jQuery, I take the opportunity to rewrite it in Vanilla. And I guess I'll never rewrite the whole project again, and it's not a very elegant method, but it feels like cleaning up an old stain.

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Joe Mainwaring
  • So I haven't used jQuery in years, but I would still consider it if I felt it was the right tool for the job.
  • There are A LOT of software projects that are no longer actively developed but are still required to be maintained. Most of my consulting work has involved updating something that was built years prior, and they never have the budget to re-write the entire thing to current standards.
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Alexandre Plennevaux

Because.... WordPress, and its huge ecosystem of plugins which often use jQuery. Which prevents the WP team from removing it.
Typical chicken and egg situation!

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Ingo Steinke, web developer

WordPress could have made a break somewhere, or a transition like Gutenberg blocks replacing the classic editor but there is still an option to stick to the old one.

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Bernd Wechner

I do. Why not?

It's mature, popular, and other stuff depends on it that is also mature and popular. I'm all for new stuff, but also maturity and proven staying power. And the fact that JQuery even raises this question, which correlates with a sense I get from the bees knees community that JQuery should die and go away, is proof of its staying power.

With a spiffy new project that was built for the future, would I look at alternatives? Sure thing. But neither am I highbrow about using mature and stable popular stuff. In fact, if there were any hint of it dying I'd lean away from it. But JQuery shows no such signs.

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Hendrik Ras

The danger here is that you start to lean on such libraries where ES6 and TypeScript provides alternatives that come out of the box with the language and are considered standard.

There is still no harm in using it yourself until someone else needs to work on a codebase where it is used. Now all of a sudden they are forced to understand JQuery (or lodash) too.

Its different if the project relies on such libraries to begin with, but its always worth considering what a tool/ library really adds to a project.

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Sospeter Mong'are

I use jQuery to maintain existing application as well as develope application. I have no alternative. Would you suggest

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Travis Fantina

I don't often use JQuery but when I do I'm always impressed. If I was building a JS heavy project without a framework like Svelte I'd definitely reach for JQuery.

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Gabor Szabo

Unless I am experimenting with one one of the frameworks I use JQuery for every project. Partially as I feel it will require a lot less ongoing maintenance. It won't be deprecated under my feet.

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Mikael Silva Nascimento

The main reason I like to use jquery because it’s easier compared to reactjs. Specially for me. I also like react but I’m still in the process of learning the framework.

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Ochuko

My friend wanted an e-commerce site for his business so he bought a template online and begged me to help make it functional. Now I'm stuck with a bunch of jQuery code and crazy CSS files πŸ˜ͺ