Mastery: JavaScript vs jQuery

Hi Keith,

Which would you focus mastery on? JavaScript, or jQuery?
This is with the assumption that you only have basic background on JavaScript.

Do you mean in the book or as a developer?

BTW, jquery uses javascript only. It's only a library of javascript

Keith Wood wrote:Do you mean in the book or as a developer?

As a developer.

I know jQuery is just a javascript framework.
But javascript in itself is complicated.
That is why we have jQuery to simplify javascript,
and extend it if necessary.

Knowing this much,
would you rather spend more time understanding javascript?
Or just forget about javascript, and specialize (or master) in jQuery?

Knowing just jQuery can get you only so far. jQuery can not do everything for you. You need to know JavaScript for those situations.

Eric

Eric Pascarello wrote:Knowing just jQuery can get you only so far. jQuery can not do everything for you. You need to know JavaScript for those situations.

Eric

What would be an example that would not be possible with jQuery?

Geff Chang wrote:
But javascript in itself is complicated.
That is why we have jQuery to simplify javascript,

Yes, it's true that jQuery makes doing things in the browser a lot simpler -- I can't imagine dealing with event handling or Ajax without jQuery for example -- but that does not mean that you can get away without knowing JavaScript. It's just like using Java libraries doesn't mean you can skip learning any Java.

Effective use of jQuery requires a good grasp of basic JavaScript, and even some advanced concepts such as functional programming, closures and function contexts. While you can get away without know much about those, your code will suffer for it. jQuery makes effective use of JavaScript as a functional language and not understanding how JavaScript works in this respect will severely hamper your code.

You need a bit of both. As the others have said, jQuery is a JavaScript library and you still need to use JavaScript to implement basic functions and processes. Knowing more about jQuery's abilities would allow you to reduce the amount of code you write yourself by taking advantage of the functionality built into jQuery.