I’m kinda sorry I created this thread. But whatever.
[quote=mitică]
That’s assuming libraries are targeted to n00bs, since they can’t actually learn the language. Which is pretty much not true. If a library makes it easy for n00bs, it doesn’t mean the library is for n00bs and n00bs only. Or that any n00b could easily pick the library up and hit the ground running.[/quote]
Whether or not it’s written for and targeted at n00bs has little to do with it… I know plenty of people in the same boat as Sega, who (fairly easily and quickly) learn jQuery but don’t know the basics of (vanilla) Javascript. Either because they haven’t had the time to learn it while getting things done on the job, or because they don’t see why they should bother (again, other than the learning is fun generality). This was the story of at least 80% of a Javascript class/meeting I had a while back (we were asked what our JS experience was before beginning).
Well, besides “just because/learning is fun”, this might be one example: http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?808876 (specifically, oddz’ post)
and stuff like this: http://www.doxdesk.com/updates/2009.html#u20091116-jquery …referring specifically to this sort of example:
Almost always, the ‘best’ way of finding out whether a checkbox is ticked is given with a straight face as:
$(input).is(':checked')
— as obviously input.checked just doesn’t do enough selector-parsing busywork to be really modern.
On the one hand, this is an exaggeration. On the other hand, you do see code like this, and lots of it. After all, it does work, and you’re not going to notice (as a developer or as a casual user) any actual performance issues with it. It’s slower, but in a “people who do jsperf testing” kind of way.
And another note since some people seem to have missed it: Lea builds these very kinds of tools herself and uses them all the time. So claims that she’s too busy being full of herself and trying to be a douchebaggy brogrammer yo are silly and mean. Also claims that because her personal blog is using WordPress, she can’t possibly be allowed to care about performance for work she does for a client or on a project… not only is ad hominem but also another special form of… being very special. I am disappoint. ಠ_ಠ
And am I the only person who’s noticed that the number of Javascript libraries available are now more than I can count on two hands in the last few years? I’m not? Hasn’t it, like, tripled lately?? And the number of new CMSes… good lord. Then you must wonder, where are all the new libraries coming from? Oh, they’re coming from people reinventing the wheel as Kohoutek said. Yet this is somehow a bad thing, yet you’ll all jump on the latest library saying how awesome it is. This makes zero sense. People looking around existing tools to fix their own solutions created these tools, therefore this must be a good thing. You can’t go on about “people shouldn’t be wasting their time writing solutions to their particular problems instead of using what’s already out there” and at the same time rave about how awesome the libraries/tools coming from these very same people are. That’s such a sleazy double-standard. W. T. F.
If people didn’t reinvent wheels, y’all wouldn’t have your precious precious jQuery; you’d have Prototype.js and Dojo. If people didn’t reinvent wheels, you wouldn’t have your precious precious Prototype.js and Dojo; you’d have vanilla Javascript. You wouldn’t have your precious precious SASS or LESS or any of the 500 grid systems floating around out there. You’d have vanilla CSS. You wouldn’t have CoffeeScript. You’d have native language syntax.
Kohoutek already stated the above but she apparently wasn’t snarky enough to get people’s attention so it was time for me to step in and repeat it with some surly attitude and a bit of hate.
