I'm glad I factored out jQuery

This post is the first in an ongoing series about things I learned from my recent Winamp2-js project.

Like many of us, I rejected javascript as a dark art until jQuery arrived and finally made it usable. At that point I started writing javascript exclusively in jQuery and never looked back... until recently.

As I was working on Winamp2-js, using jQuery, I realized that I was only using jQuery for a few very simple things: selecting DOM elements and performing simple CSS manipulation. As an exercise I decided to try removing it.

To my surprise, the process was painless. Selecting DOM elements with document.getElementById() was actually perfect for this project, and modifying element's classes via element.classList felt logical and clean.

The resulting code not only loaded faster, since it didn't need to load jQuery, but it was more explicit and was simpler to work on. By removing a layer of abstraction, I was able to make my code feel more taut. I trusted it better, because I could see everything it was doing.

However, the benefits to my code paled compared to the benefits to me as a developer. By giving raw javascript a chance, I not only gained a better understanding of the functionality jQuery actually provides, but I learned that javascript's interface is not nearly as problematic as I had convinced myself it was during all those years of blind rejection.

Next: Surviving Hacker News traffic with the help of free CDNs