What is jQuery, and Should You Learn it in 2018?

jQuery has been widely used for more than a decade, and well-known companies like Kickstarter, Twitter and Hootsuite have used it in their applications. What else can jQuery do, and should you learn it?

The Benefits of Using jQuery

For many web developers, jQuery was the very first library they learned, and with good reason. jQuery:

• Simplifies common JavaScript challenges. For example, sorting and filtering arrays is made easy with jQuery.
• Streamlines making AJAX calls.
• Even works on the server side with Node.

jQuery Has Its Downsides

jQuery has made life easier for developers, but there are drawbacks to using it, too. At 272 kilobytes, it is a huge library to import. jQuery also makes learning JavaScript more difficult, because jQuery's abstraction hides the complex parts of JavaScript.

But here's the biggie: modern web browsers have made jQuery DOM APIs obsolete, doing the same work much more quickly. In fact, we now teach vanilla JavaScript instead of jQuery in our classes.

But! We strongly encourage you to learn jQuery, and here's why: Many companies, including the big names listed above, have used jQuery in their code, meaning that they need developers who understand jQuery to maintain their apps. For this reason alone, it's important that web developers learn jQuery for now.

How to Learn jQuery

So, how do you learn jQuery? Director in Residence Beth D'Amato has written a great blog post on the topic, and goes further into detail on how you might use jQuery in your career as a web developer. Check it out over at Course Report.