jQuery--News to Hackers

D

David Mark

I wondered why I was suddenly getting emails about an old jQuery
review.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=626975

Looking at the first comment:

"As for performance, he points out a lot of things like "creating tons
of functions on the fly" and "instantiating new objects for
everything", but he doesn't actually prove that any of these points
cause performance issues. It should be as simple as rewriting the code
to get rid of these 'obvious' deficiencies and then benchmarking it.
Which this person has not done."

No need to benchmark whether not doing something is faster than doing
it. You get to a point where you can spot inefficient patterns and
jQuery's are right out front.

I didn't do it, but others have validated my opinions about jQuery's
performance (or lack thereof) with easy-to-read charts:

http://dante.dojotoolkit.org/taskspeed/report/charts.html

"I'll trust John Resig, the guy who is being paid by Mozilla to work
on JavaScript full time, over some random internet dude with a chip on
his shoulder."

Of course. Presented with concrete evidence, trust somebody you don't
know over somebody else you don't know. Stranger still, there is
plenty of evidence that trusting Resig is a ridiculous proposition.
On the contrary, it is always best to assume he is wrong. He's been
in here a couple of times and was booed off the stage.

And who cares what Mozilla is paying him to do? What do a JavaScript
Evangelist's duties entail anyway?

The next one starts out:

"All this link says to me is that the people who hang in
comp.lang.javascript are all a bunch of smug pricks."

Right, jQuery's bugs and other shortcomings are irrelevant next to
misgivings about a newsgroup. Anyone care to praise jQuery and lift
this stigma?
 
A

Andrew Poulos

David said:
I wondered why I was suddenly getting emails about an old jQuery
review.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=626975

Looking at the first comment:

"As for performance, he points out a lot of things like "creating tons
of functions on the fly" and "instantiating new objects for
everything", but he doesn't actually prove that any of these points
cause performance issues. It should be as simple as rewriting the code
to get rid of these 'obvious' deficiencies and then benchmarking it.
Which this person has not done."

No need to benchmark whether not doing something is faster than doing
it. You get to a point where you can spot inefficient patterns and
jQuery's are right out front.

I didn't do it, but others have validated my opinions about jQuery's
performance (or lack thereof) with easy-to-read charts:

http://dante.dojotoolkit.org/taskspeed/report/charts.html

"I'll trust John Resig, the guy who is being paid by Mozilla to work
on JavaScript full time, over some random internet dude with a chip on
his shoulder."

Of course. Presented with concrete evidence, trust somebody you don't
know over somebody else you don't know. Stranger still, there is
plenty of evidence that trusting Resig is a ridiculous proposition.
On the contrary, it is always best to assume he is wrong. He's been
in here a couple of times and was booed off the stage.

And who cares what Mozilla is paying him to do? What do a JavaScript
Evangelist's duties entail anyway?

The next one starts out:

"All this link says to me is that the people who hang in
comp.lang.javascript are all a bunch of smug pricks."

Right, jQuery's bugs and other shortcomings are irrelevant next to
misgivings about a newsgroup. Anyone care to praise jQuery and lift
this stigma?

I was asked to work on a large project that uses jQuery 1.26. They were
considering upgrading to the latest version and wanted to know:
- how is it better
- why should they upgrade (as pretty much everything seems to be
working, except some things in IE 7 and 8).
- would it break anything that is now working.

I told them that I don't know as I'm not a user of jQuery. They did some
research and were surprised to discover that jQuery is not a robust
framework they were led to believe. They were unsure what to do next.

Sadly it seems they are just going to fix what they can and then hand it
over to their client.

Andrew Poulos
 
D

David Mark

I was asked to work on a large project that uses jQuery 1.26.

That's a shame as that jQuery is unusable due to UA string sniffing
and the upgrade to 1.3x has been complicated (idiotically) by lots of
other miscellaneous changes. It's not just that all of the browser
detection has been updated (to shaky object inferences), there are
kiddie fingerprints all over the thing. New (broken) features like
"live", memory leaks, random changes to critical low-level functions,
etc. make it a very costly proposition, and for what?
They were
considering upgrading to the latest version and wanted to know:

Of course they were. Let me guess, they didn't know why; it's just
that they wanted the newer, "cooler" jQuery. If they knew who was
churning this junk out, they'd think again.
- how is it better

Better class of browser sniffing.
- why should they upgrade (as pretty much everything seems to be
working, except some things in IE 7 and 8).

That's the usual account. When people qualify "working" with seems,
you know they have no idea. And if things admittedly don't work in
IE's released since the turn of the century, you've got to wonder how
stupid these people are to start over with a new version. And, of
course, they'll find that lots of things don't work in IE in the next
version (after lots of expensive testing.)
- would it break anything that is now working.

Very likely.
I told them that I don't know as I'm not a user of jQuery.

Every time somebody promotes one of my reviews of jQuery, I get emails
asking for more information. I tell them to search this archive for
jQuery + my name. If their staff gets it, good; if not, get a new
staff as the logic is pretty simple. I know I've personally helped
derail half a dozen jQuery makeovers. Once word spreads, jQuery will
be relegated to vanity sites.
They did some
research and were surprised to discover that jQuery is not a robust
framework they were led to believe. They were unsure what to do next.

Seems sure to me that they need to remove the jQuery code.
Sadly it seems they are just going to fix what they can and then hand it
over to their client.

Of course. That is quite typical and one of the reasons I've been
talking to IT people about how to avoid incompetent (and/or crooked as
in this case) "Web designers" (first red flag to look for is jQuery.)
It's going to take some time to sink in, but the professional world is
definitely getting the message.
 
A

Andrew Poulos

David said:
That's a shame as that jQuery is unusable due to UA string sniffing
and the upgrade to 1.3x has been complicated (idiotically) by lots of
other miscellaneous changes. It's not just that all of the browser
detection has been updated (to shaky object inferences), there are
kiddie fingerprints all over the thing. New (broken) features like
"live", memory leaks, random changes to critical low-level functions,
etc. make it a very costly proposition, and for what?


Of course they were. Let me guess, they didn't know why; it's just
that they wanted the newer, "cooler" jQuery. If they knew who was
churning this junk out, they'd think again.


Better class of browser sniffing.


That's the usual account. When people qualify "working" with seems,
you know they have no idea. And if things admittedly don't work in
IE's released since the turn of the century, you've got to wonder how
stupid these people are to start over with a new version. And, of
course, they'll find that lots of things don't work in IE in the next
version (after lots of expensive testing.)


Very likely.


Every time somebody promotes one of my reviews of jQuery, I get emails
asking for more information. I tell them to search this archive for
jQuery + my name. If their staff gets it, good; if not, get a new
staff as the logic is pretty simple. I know I've personally helped
derail half a dozen jQuery makeovers. Once word spreads, jQuery will
be relegated to vanity sites.


Seems sure to me that they need to remove the jQuery code.

I think that by using jQuery they are in a position to abrogate
responsibility for its flaws (its the jQuery's maintainer's job).
Whereas if they coded everything themselves then they have to take
responsibility for all of it.
Of course. That is quite typical and one of the reasons I've been
talking to IT people about how to avoid incompetent (and/or crooked as
in this case) "Web designers" (first red flag to look for is jQuery.)
It's going to take some time to sink in, but the professional world is
definitely getting the message.

Yes, their bar is set pretty low: "if it appears to work on whatever
browser the client is using to check the site then we're home free".

Andrew Poulos
 
D

David Mark

I think that by using jQuery they are in a position to abrogate
responsibility for its flaws (its the jQuery's maintainer's job).
Whereas if they coded everything themselves then they have to take
responsibility for all of it.

I'd like to see them try that line with one of my clients. They'd be
thrown out the nearest window.
Yes, their bar is set pretty low: "if it appears to work on whatever
browser the client is using to check the site then we're home free".

I hate maggots like that and they are everywhere these days.
Basically browser scripting is on the way out because the crooks have
sucked all the life out of it.

These "hackers" don't seem to get it. The comment about the link not
being ready for Reddit prime time is priceless. I posted a link to
the months-old (and nearly identical) shrillibuster there and some
moron voted it down (along with every other reply from me.) I guess
if they hide dissenting opinions, it's like they don't exist and they
can go back to being "right" again.

The crooks are bad enough, but whining teenagers defending their right
to be crooks and then crying that nobody is actually fixing jQuery is
too much. Their theory seems to be that it is too complicated for
anyone but the Ninja master to understand. And, of course, it is so
popular that it must be good. Seems they are unwilling to accept
anything that isn't marketed down their throat.
 

Ask a Question

Want to reply to this thread or ask your own question?

You'll need to choose a username for the site, which only take a couple of moments. After that, you can post your question and our members will help you out.

Ask a Question

Members online

No members online now.

Forum statistics

Threads
473,744
Messages
2,569,482
Members
44,901
Latest member
Noble71S45

Latest Threads

Top