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JavaScript

Steven Ventimiglia
Steven Ventimiglia
27,371 Points

Vanilla JS (without jQuery)...

https://teamtreehouse.com/library/ajax-basics/ajax-and-apis/what-is-an-api

There are obviously tons of books on this, along with other online resources, and I can find the information there - however, I would have loved this course even more, if it stuck to a vanilla approach as opposed to injecting jQuery.

Dave's approach to teaching vanilla JS is awesome - down to how he cares about tabbing correctly and commenting after long functions to know what "trio" is related to which function.

I've enjoyed using jQuery for years, however, I'm specifically taking these courses to step away from using the library and learning how to accomplish things without it.

1 Answer

Steven Parker
Steven Parker
231,007 Points

jQuery really shines when doing AJAX.

I'm very comfortable with plain JavaScript for most tasks, though I do enjoy the conveniences of jQuery if it's already loaded. But working with AJAX is one of just a few times when I would load up jQuery just for that task alone. The jQuery interface for AJAX is vastly easier to deal with.

I believe this is such a commonly-held opinion among developers that it makes perfect sense to teach AJAX hand-in-hand with the jQuery functions for it. I know it's possible to do AJAX without jQuery, but I can't imagine ever deliberately choosing to do so in a real programming situation.