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I instruct my agents to build UI exclusively with bootstrap 5, jQuery, and HTMX. Every app is fast, responsive, progressive, small, and most importantly: it fi
by petcat 7d ago
I instruct my agents to build UI exclusively with bootstrap 5, jQuery, and HTMX.
Every app is fast, responsive, progressive, small, and most importantly: it fits in my brain and I can maintain it. No build step or really any tooling at all.
- jjice 7d agoCurious what jQuery brings for you these days? My favorite jQuery features got implemented in the vanilla DOM APIs (document.querySelector and fetch being the big one for me). Now I'm curious if I'm missing out.
- petcat 7d agoI prefer the terseness of jQuery's API and things like chaining dom operations with the fluent API. I don't like the native DOM API. Too verbose (I still read and review code)
- abanana 7d agoMakes sense to me. Their motto was "Write less, do more", i.e. its conciseness was a major selling point, but that seems to have been forgotten now that its other selling points have been rendered obsolete. I recall scripts ending up as little as one-third the size of vanilla JS, when rewritten using jQuery (where the website was otherwise using jQuery anyway).
- SparkyMcUnicorn 7d agoI still think the only reason to use jQuery is if you need IE11 support. Otherwise, it's really simple to do all the things you mentioned without the complexity/heaviness of jQuery. Something like this: ``` const $ = s => { const r = {}; const els = [...document.querySelectorAll(s)]; r.text = t => (els.forEach(e => e.textContent = t), r); r.on = (ev, fn) => (els.forEach(e => e.addEventListener(ev, fn)), r); // ... return r; }; ```
- petcat 6d agoRight, I can cobble together my own worse version of jQuery if I wanted to. Or I can just use jQuery.
- tao_oat 6d agoDoes anyone actually need IE11 support in 2026? It was released 13 years ago.
- queenkjuul 6d agoI worked at an enterprise in 2022 that still relied on IE11 in certain places
- mrweasel 6d agojQuery is 30kB, there's not a lot of heaviness. In a world of React, Vue, htmx and what have you, 30kB is nothing. If you like the syntax and functionality of jQuery, or if you're just use to it now, there's very little reason to no use it, and speed and size certainly isn't a reason. 15 years ago, maybe, but not in 2026.
- eudamoniac 7d agoIMO it is literally not possible for a medium+ jQuery app to fit in a brain or be maintained easily (especially without TypeScript). That's why React et al were invented. It is smaller, faster, no build step for sure, but I would never reach for jQuery for any possibly ambitious app. If you are using mostly agents and don't actually need to have it in your brain, then I'd probably go with strict TypeScript at the very least for verifiability purposes
- deleted 7d ago[deleted]
- mrits 7d agoI do boostrap 5 and htmx. works great
- deleted 7d ago[deleted]
- sgt 7d agoAlso a solid combination for LLM assisted apps. Claude Code will just get it. It's good with Tailwind also though.
- kyleee 7d agoEven better than that - just use bootstrap 3
- alexcroox 7d agoI've been thinking the same about the future of frameworks. Many of the complexities in today's frameworks exist for "developer experience", given that's less and less relevant by the month, it will be interesting to see the tech stacks chosen going forward.