Some years ago jQuery was a solid solution in developing cross-browser applications and providing some fancy DOM manipulations. Things have changed a lot since then and vanilla JS has been evolving steadily. Same story with browsers since Internet Explorer mostly has turned the page too. I know jQuery dev team is moving towards their 3rd major release but i have to admit that i have been using the library even less in my projects.
The truth is that the nature of applications has changed. My views are connected with my data so i do not need anymore plain DOM manipulations. Now these are part of the whole UI functionality and my data flow and not the result of a key stroke. So i need sth stronger than a listener to a click event that's why i use frameworks like AngularJS and lately VueJS and PolymerJS.
New ECMAScript versions bring steadily even more goodies for us. New apis like fetch() shall help us run AJAX requests lightning fast. Many people still use jQuery because of the $.ajax() function but since a native alternative will gain ground i guess this shall end.
Vanilla js offers tons of neat selectors like document.querySelector('myID'); or document.getElementById('myID'); so there is no need for $('#myID'); etc. I know many developers are quite experienced in using jQuery selectors and tend to ignore the vanilla js ways. In fact there are too many developers who feel that they would step outside of their comfort zone if they were asked to use the vanilla js alternatives. The truth is that most of the times vanilla js selectors cover our needs.
As time goes by, the most popular JS frameworks are opting to use vanilla JS instead of JQuery. In fact, the only popular JS frameworks still using JQuery are EmberJS and BackboneJS but the flow is moving away from jQuery.
So this is the question: Is jQuery dying?
I think jQuery is Rome- I was not built in one day nor did it fall in one day and it still exist in a form 2 thousand years later. The issues that jQuery addressed like cross-browsers inconsistencies, difficult-to-use-DOM API and others are becoming irrelevant in this current world. Plus, many things it does can be done in ES2015 or higher via transpilers or naive support. In this sense, its dying for large projects and but maybe not so in small projects. However, due to its mind-share and developers not knowing any better, it will be a long time before it goes into the "Cobol-mode" and "dead mode".
I've spent the past two years avoiding JQuery in projects that don't already have it... I'm not nearly as good with the DOM methods as with JQuery, but it's time to move on. It always bugged me how much was in jQuery's box beyond the DOM and events.
It's not going anywhere, but I've been doing more angular and react, with preference towards react lately.
Ok so I began my career 5 years back. Back then, any complex or fancy thing you wanted to do, there was a quick google search ending with "XXXX jquery plugin". There used to be some good ones and the bad ones of these plugins. I thought and still think jQuery is the backbone for anyone working on DOM.
But after frameworks like AngularJS have come up, I dont remember writing a document on-ready block and writing jQuery code inside. In fact, giving IDs to div is something of past. Angular directives are much easier and convenient to work with.
But IMO, one should first get their hands (and brain) dirty with vanilla JS, jQuery for sometime and then they should enter the framework game. I have worked with developers who entered the industry after the AngularJS is THE framework, and Oh God! many of them dont even know whats the load event, ready event, classes in HTML and other basic stuff, which is not at all a good thing IMO.
While browsers are catching up in functionality quickly, you'll have to admit that the DOM API sucks. jQuery is more than just the raw functionality. It's a much more elegant interface to a notoriously ugly API.
Another __ is dying question? Ok! Let me answer this. No. It isn't dying. You don't believe if I say that most developers won't bother to move away from jQuery. They are too comfortable with jQuery, they simply won't try anything else. Even some UX guys I know are doing the same. Going by the sample size, out of 10 UX developers who knew jQuery, only a couple of them are willing to look beyond that. Those are the curious one. Rest of them are not going to change anytime soon and if they are going to hire a dev, it's pretty clear they will be then dragged into to.
So, jQuery will not die. Atleast, not in the next 10 years!
I was ExtJS developers for about 4 years, and for me it was shock when I realized that ExtJS is dying, but it still alive just less used. I think all is going like - framework A is no anymore number one, framework B is next. And this lifecircle is about 3 years, but it is just trend. It does not mean that framework A can not do the same that B does.
In my opinion the usage has reduced after rise of MVVM framework such as angular, ember etc. However it won't die off completely as there is a huge audience that still find it easy to use.
I don't think it will die. Just evolve, as it always has. It might not be as trendy/hot as it was a couple of years ago, but it still going to be there. It has a very rich ecosystem around it.
Just like PHP on the server side. We now have cool languages like Node, Go, Scala or Kotlin, yet there's still a strong community of PHP Developers and the language itself keeps evolving and adapting. The community is still vibrant to date.
I don't think it will die, but to prevent that it must evolve (a bit). The release candidate for version 3 is out and it seems they're cleaning up old code and introducing new stuff, a few ES6 bits here and there.
And maybe, something new and better than jQuery will show it's face in the coming years, who knows? :)
I just found this discussion thread. Interesting answers - thought it'll be useful to you.
I don't think it will die, not in the next 5-10 years anyway. Why not? Well, not every application needs the complexity of a project like React or Angular, which are usually used for single page apps (as far as I know, even though they can be used for traditional apps too).
Most of the (new) developers will probably learn JQuery before jumping the "Front End Framework/ Single Page Application" train.
Single Page Applications are different, in terms of how you are supposed to think and the way you develop the server side.
jQuery is still very popular, at least according Google Trends, but popularity decreases. Though, it still more popular than Angular and React.
Welli it's true jQuery maybe don't have the focus in it, but nowadays still used for so many developers. It's true we have awesome frameworks and libraries lice react, redux, angular, and others, but i have for the developers that not want to implement the front with a complete js framework jQuery is an option.
No, jQuery will never die.
At least, typing $('#myID'); is faster than document.getElementById('myID'); anyway.
Anna
UX Designer
I agree with a lot of people saying it likely won't die soon, but as vanilla JS evolves (and devs catch up) it may eventually phase out. I still use it for simple one-page microsites, because the frameworks just seem bloated for that use when a single js file will support 99% of my needs.