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jQuery write less, do more!

Source: https://medium.com/@hhartleyjs/why-i-switched-back-to-jquery-in-2024-and-why-youre-wrong-for-not-doing-it-f247b9830fcb

The Web Is Broken. jQuery Is the Cure.
Let’s cut through the hype: the modern web stack is a over-engineered, dependency-riddled wasteland, and I’ve had enough. After years of wrestling with React’s hydration errors, Vue’s composition API confusion, and Svelte’s “magic” that breaks the second you need to do anything real — I went back to jQuery. And you know what? It was glorious.

Here’s why you’re wasting your time with “modern” frameworks.

The Web Didn’t Need Fixing
Remember when websites just worked? When you could:
✅ Add interactivity in 3 lines of code
✅ Load a script without a bundler
✅ Actually understand what your code was doing

jQuery gave us that. Then frameworks came along and convinced us that a simple dropdown menu needed:

A virtual DOM
A state manager
A hydration strategy
17 layers of abstraction
Newsflash: Your blog doesn’t need React. Your e-commerce site doesn’t need Next.js. You’ve been scammed.

jQuery Is Faster (Yes, Really)
“bUt jQuErY iS sLoW!” — says the React dev whose app ships 400KB of JavaScript before the first paint.

Let’s compare:

jQuery (minified): 30KB
React + ReactDOM: 130KB (before your app code)
Vue + Vue Router: 80KB
Svelte: 45KB (but good luck debugging it)
jQuery loads instantly. Your SPA takes 3 seconds to hydrate. Who’s slow now?

Modern Devs Are Addicted to Complexity
The JavaScript industrial complex has convinced you that:

“You need a framework!” (No, you don’t.)
“SPAs are better!” (For who? Google’s ad revenue?)
“The virtual DOM is efficient!” (It’s a hack for a problem that didn’t exist.)
Meanwhile, jQuery solves 90% of frontend problems with 1% of the code:

// Show a modal (2024: 50 lines of React state)
$("#modal".show();

// Fetch data (2024: 3 hooks, a loading state, and suspense)
$.get("/api/data", function(response) {
console.log("Done.";
});
The jQuery Ecosystem Never Died
jQuery is still used on 77% of websites (W3Techs, 2024). Why?

Bootstrap still uses it.
WordPress still uses it.
Legacy codebases still run the internet.
And guess what? It still works. Meanwhile, your “modern” stack will be obsolete in 12 months.

When You Actually Need a Framework [None, as there is nothing you can do with React that you cannot do with jQuery]

The Bottom Line
The web dev industry profits from your confusion. They want you chasing new frameworks, new bundlers, new syntax — so you never realize how little you actually need.

🚀 Try it yourself:

Delete node_modules.
Add jQuery.
Build something today that would’ve taken a week in React.
Your users won’t know the difference — but your productivity will.

I'm definitely going this route tomorrow. Once it gives me what I want, to hell with the headache.

MERN nearly wan kill DevOps.

donsheddy1:
I'm definitely going this route tomorrow. Once it gives me what I want, to hell with the headache.

jQuery will surely give you all you need for effective front-end development

MindHacker9009:
jQuery write less, do more!

Source: https://medium.com/@hhartleyjs/why-i-switched-back-to-jquery-in-2024-and-why-youre-wrong-for-not-doing-it-f247b9830fcb

The Web Is Broken. jQuery Is the Cure.
Let’s cut through the hype: the modern web stack is a over-engineered, dependency-riddled wasteland, and I’ve had enough. After years of wrestling with React’s hydration errors, Vue’s composition API confusion, and Svelte’s “magic” that breaks the second you need to do anything real — I went back to jQuery. And you know what? It was glorious.

Here’s why you’re wasting your time with “modern” frameworks.

The Web Didn’t Need Fixing
Remember when websites just worked? When you could:
✅ Add interactivity in 3 lines of code
✅ Load a script without a bundler
✅ Actually understand what your code was doing

jQuery gave us that. Then frameworks came along and convinced us that a simple dropdown menu needed:

A virtual DOM
A state manager
A hydration strategy
17 layers of abstraction
Newsflash: Your blog doesn’t need React. Your e-commerce site doesn’t need Next.js. You’ve been scammed.

jQuery Is Faster (Yes, Really)
“bUt jQuErY iS sLoW!” — says the React dev whose app ships 400KB of JavaScript before the first paint.

Let’s compare:

jQuery (minified): 30KB
React + ReactDOM: 130KB (before your app code)
Vue + Vue Router: 80KB
Svelte: 45KB (but good luck debugging it)
jQuery loads instantly. Your SPA takes 3 seconds to hydrate. Who’s slow now?

Modern Devs Are Addicted to Complexity
The JavaScript industrial complex has convinced you that:

“You need a framework!” (No, you don’t.)
“SPAs are better!” (For who? Google’s ad revenue?)
“The virtual DOM is efficient!” (It’s a hack for a problem that didn’t exist.)
Meanwhile, jQuery solves 90% of frontend problems with 1% of the code:

// Show a modal (2024: 50 lines of React state)
$("#modal".show();

// Fetch data (2024: 3 hooks, a loading state, and suspense)
$.get("/api/data", function(response) {
console.log("Done.";
});
The jQuery Ecosystem Never Died
jQuery is still used on 77% of websites (W3Techs, 2024). Why?

Bootstrap still uses it.
WordPress still uses it.
Legacy codebases still run the internet.
And guess what? It still works. Meanwhile, your “modern” stack will be obsolete in 12 months.

When You Actually Need a Framework [None, as there is nothing you can do with React that you cannot do with jQuery]

The Bottom Line
The web dev industry profits from your confusion. They want you chasing new frameworks, new bundlers, new syntax — so you never realize how little you actually need.

🚀 Try it yourself:

Delete node_modules.
Add jQuery.
Build something today that would’ve taken a week in React.
Your users won’t know the difference — but your productivity will.

jQuery is fine, but saying “there’s nothing you can do with React that you can’t do with jQuery” is peak cope.

You can also build an app with vanilla JS and innerHTML. Doesn’t mean you should.

Frameworks exist because apps got complex, not because devs were bored.

Comparing jQuery to React by bundle size is like comparing a bicycle to a trailer truck and shouting “my bike is faster!”

One is for pages. The other is for applications.

Use the right tool instead of crying about tools you don’t understand.
“Web used to just work” — yes, and so did PHP mixed with HTML and MySQL in one file.

We moved on because maintenance, testing, scaling, and teamwork exist.

Legacy still running ≠ best practice. COBOL runs banks too.

Nobody is forcing React on your blog.

But building a real interactive app with jQuery in 2024 is suffering you choose.

If jQuery solves your problems, good. Don’t project your limits on everyone else.

“Delete node_modules and add jQuery”

Cool. Also delete Git, delete tests, and deploy with FTP.

Simplicity ≠ progress.
Comparing jQuery to React by bundle size is like comparing a bicycle to a trailer truck and shouting “my bike is faster!”

One is for pages. The other is for applications.

Use the right tool instead of crying about tools you don’t understand.

platymus:
One is for pages. The other is for applications.

Instead it should be what applications can you build with React that you cannot build with jQuery.

jQuery is like a manual car while React is like an automatic car. With a manual car you understand how to use the clutch and gears but with an automatic car you just drive without knowing how to use the clutch and gears.
But with web development unlike cars, using a tool like React is just unnecessary complexity that does not benefit the project and users as it takes longer to develop and to debug complex applications.

MindHacker9009:
Instead it should be what applications can you build with React that you cannot build with jQuery.

jQuery is like a manual car while React is like an automatic car. With a manual car you understand how to use the clutch and gears but with an automatic car you just drive without knowing how to use the clutch and gears.
But with web development unlike cars, using a tool like React is just unnecessary complexity that does not benefit the project and users as it takes longer to develop and to debug complex applications.

Your analogy already answers you.

Manual car ≠ better car.
It just means more work for the driver.

React exists so teams don’t manage clutch, gears and engine by hand while building large apps.
If your “app” never leave first gear, jQuery is enough. Simple.

Nobody said React builds impossible apps.

You can also build Facebook with jQuery the same way you can build a house with a spoon.

The question is maintainability, scale and team sanity — not “can it work at all”
[b]“Unnecessary complexity” [/b]only applies when the problem is small.

Once state, routing, async data and teams enter the chat, jQuery turns to wahala.

React didn’t appear because devs were bored.
Saying React adds no benefit just tells me you’ve never maintained a large frontend codebase.

Writing everything manually doesn’t make you smarter — it just makes bugs harder to track.
You can drive manual all your life — doesn’t mean automatic is useless.

It just means your journey never long.

platymus:
Your analogy already answers you.

Manual car ≠ better car.
It just means more work for the driver.

React exists so teams don’t manage clutch, gears and engine by hand while building large apps.
If your “app” never leave first gear, jQuery is enough. Simple.

Nobody said React builds impossible apps.

It’s easier to repair a manual car’s gearbox and clutch than an automatic transmission.

With React: React bugs can be very hard to track.
1. Stale state & closures (very common)
2. Effect dependency bugs
3. Re-render performance bugs
4. Key-related rendering bugs
5. Async race conditions
6. Strict Mode double-invocation

jQuery is for more experienced developers who are not scared of using jQuery and vanilla JS on the front-end which allowed us to develop very complex applications faster.

MindHacker9009:
It’s easier to repair a manual car’s gearbox and clutch than an automatic transmission.

With React: React bugs can be very hard to track.
1. Stale state & closures (very common)
2. Effect dependency bugs
3. Re-render performance bugs
4. Key-related rendering bugs
5. Async race conditions
6. Strict Mode double-invocation

jQuery is for more experienced developers who are not scared of using jQuery and vanilla JS on the front-end which allowed us to develop very complex applications faster.

Every bug you listed is state complexity, not “React wahala”.

Those same bugs exist in jQuery — you just debug them silently with console.log and prayer.

Saying jQuery is for “more experienced devs” because it hides nothing is like saying assembly is for elites.
It’s not elite, it’s just more manual.
Yes, manual gearbox is easier to repair — because it breaks less expectations.

But when automatic fails, you fix one system.
With jQuery, bugs scatter across handlers, DOM state, and side effects.

React centralizes complexity. jQuery distributes it everywhere.
“We built complex apps faster with jQuery” — back when apps were smaller, teams were smaller, and expectations were lower.

Try maintaining that same jQuery app with 10 devs for 3 years.
That’s when the real wahala starts.

Every React “bug” you listed is documented and predictable.

jQuery bugs are undocumented side effects from DOM mutations and event soup.

One is hard but structured. The other is easy until it’s not.

jQuery feels simple because it postpones complexity.
React feels complex because it exposes it early.

Experienced devs know the difference.

platymus:
Every bug you listed is state complexity, not “React wahala”.

Those same bugs exist in jQuery — you just debug them silently with console.log and prayer.

Saying jQuery is for “more experienced devs” because it hides nothing is like saying assembly is for elites.
It’s not elite, it’s just more manual.
Yes, manual gearbox is easier to repair — because it breaks less expectations.

But when automatic fails, you fix one system.
With jQuery, bugs scatter across handlers, DOM state, and side effects.

React centralizes complexity. jQuery distributes it everywhere.
“We built complex apps faster with jQuery” — back when apps were smaller, teams were smaller, and expectations were lower.

Try maintaining that same jQuery app with 10 devs for 3 years.
That’s when the real wahala starts.

Every React “bug” you listed is documented and predictable.

jQuery bugs are undocumented side effects from DOM mutations and event soup.

One is hard but structured. The other is easy until it’s not.

jQuery feels simple because it postpones complexity.
React feels complex because it exposes it early.

Experienced devs know the difference.

1. Not all React complexity is state complexity

Yes, some bugs originate from state, but many of the “React wahala” issues I mentioned are framework-induced, not just state mismanagement. Examples:

Hydration mismatches in SSR

Strict Mode double-invocation surprises

Scheduler and concurrent rendering edge cases

These are not things a developer can fully control, yet they create bugs that don’t exist in jQuery simply because jQuery doesn’t abstract rendering. This is different from “complex state”, it’s complex runtime behavior baked into React itself.

2. Predictability vs. simplicity

You argue React centralizes complexity, which is true for maintainability. But that centralization introduces a single point of failure: when React behaves unexpectedly, you often cannot inspect or patch the internals directly. In jQuery, each DOM mutation is visible and traceable, it may be messy, but a developer can see and fix it immediately. React trades direct control for structure.

3. Manual vs automatic analogy nuance

The “manual gearbox breaks less” analogy actually fits jQuery better in small apps: fewer abstractions, fewer hidden layers, predictable direct behavior. React is like an automatic gearbox, you get smoother operation and fewer errors at scale, but when it breaks, the fix can require deep understanding of the system. That’s exactly the trade-off: predictable but opaque vs. transparent but scattered.

4. Scaling isn’t just about team size

I agree that jQuery apps get unmanageable at scale, but the claim that React is inherently easier at scale assumes perfect adherence to patterns. In reality, large teams still encounter subtle React bugs that are not trivial, hooks misuse, async race conditions, hydration mismatches, which are easier to overlook than scattered jQuery issues because they appear under specific conditions.

5. Early complexity vs deferred complexity

React exposes complexity early, yes. But some of that complexity is framework-internal, not just developer-managed state. jQuery hides complexity until it explodes in subtle side effects. So the difference is not just “manual vs structured,” it’s also visible control vs. opaque orchestration.

6. Security Issue in React vs jQuery
A great recent example of this is CVE‑2025‑55182, nicknamed “React2Shell”, a critical security vulnerability in React Server Components that allows unauthenticated remote code execution (RCE) on vulnerable servers. This means an attacker can send a malicious request and run arbitrary code on the server without any user authentication or developer missteps.

This bug exists in the core React library, specifically in how React Server Components deserializes incoming payloads, not because someone wrote a bad hook or forgot a dependency. Even a perfectly written app using these features could be vulnerable if the library itself is flawed.

The flaw scored 10.0 (maximum severity) on the CVSS scale. It was actively being exploited in the wild and affected a huge slice of cloud apps using React Server Components and related frameworks.

True, jQuery apps can get messy and incur bugs caused by manual DOM state and event handlers. But those bugs are about developer poor practice, not insecure behavior baked into the library itself. A critical RCE in the framework is not something a developer caused and it undermines the idea that React’s abstraction always buys safety at scale.

All the new front-end frameworks are used by developers to create on-going work for themselves, which the end user does not need, instead of just focusing on delivering what the user wants on time using jQuery

MindHacker9009:
1. Not all React complexity is state complexity

Yes, some bugs originate from state, but many of the “React wahala” issues I mentioned are framework-induced, not just state mismanagement. Examples:

Hydration mismatches in SSR

Strict Mode double-invocation surprises

Scheduler and concurrent rendering edge cases

These are not things a developer can fully control, yet they create bugs that don’t exist in jQuery simply because jQuery doesn’t abstract rendering. This is different from “complex state”, it’s complex runtime behavior baked into React itself.

2. Predictability vs. simplicity

You argue React centralizes complexity, which is true for maintainability. But that centralization introduces a single point of failure: when React behaves unexpectedly, you often cannot inspect or patch the internals directly. In jQuery, each DOM mutation is visible and traceable, it may be messy, but a developer can see and fix it immediately. React trades direct control for structure.

3. Manual vs automatic analogy nuance

The “manual gearbox breaks less” analogy actually fits jQuery better in small apps: fewer abstractions, fewer hidden layers, predictable direct behavior. React is like an automatic gearbox, you get smoother operation and fewer errors at scale, but when it breaks, the fix can require deep understanding of the system. That’s exactly the trade-off: predictable but opaque vs. transparent but scattered.

4. Scaling isn’t just about team size

I agree that jQuery apps get unmanageable at scale, but the claim that React is inherently easier at scale assumes perfect adherence to patterns. In reality, large teams still encounter subtle React bugs that are not trivial, hooks misuse, async race conditions, hydration mismatches, which are easier to overlook than scattered jQuery issues because they appear under specific conditions.

5. Early complexity vs deferred complexity

React exposes complexity early, yes. But some of that complexity is framework-internal, not just developer-managed state. jQuery hides complexity until it explodes in subtle side effects. So the difference is not just “manual vs structured,” it’s also visible control vs. opaque orchestration.

6. Security Issue in React vs jQuery
A great recent example of this is CVE‑2025‑55182, nicknamed “React2Shell”, a critical security vulnerability in React Server Components that allows unauthenticated remote code execution (RCE) on vulnerable servers. This means an attacker can send a malicious request and run arbitrary code on the server without any user authentication or developer missteps.

This bug exists in the core React library, specifically in how React Server Components deserializes incoming payloads, not because someone wrote a bad hook or forgot a dependency. Even a perfectly written app using these features could be vulnerable if the library itself is flawed.

The flaw scored 10.0 (maximum severity) on the CVSS scale. It was actively being exploited in the wild and affected a huge slice of cloud apps using React Server Components and related frameworks.

True, jQuery apps can get messy and incur bugs caused by manual DOM state and event handlers. But those bugs are about developer poor practice, not insecure behavior baked into the library itself. A critical RCE in the framework is not something a developer caused and it undermines the idea that React’s abstraction always buys safety at scale.

All the new front-end frameworks are used by developers to create on-going work for themselves, which the end user does not need, instead of just focusing on delivering what the user wants on time using jQuery

Yes, some React issues are framework-induced (SSR hydration, StrictMode, concurrency). That’s the cost of building apps that render across server, client, streaming, caching, and async boundaries.

jQuery doesn’t have those bugs because jQuery doesn’t even attempt those problems. That’s not superiority — that’s a smaller problem space.
On “visible control vs opaque orchestration”:
jQuery feels transparent because[b] you are the orchestrator.[/b]
React feels opaque because the framework is doing coordination you’d otherwise write (badly) yourself.

Experienced devs know that “I can see everything” often just means “everything can break everything”.

The security example actually proves the opposite of your point.

When a framework vulnerability happens, it gets audited, patched, versioned, and rolled out.
In jQuery-heavy apps, security issues are usually custom, silent, and unreviewed, because everyone rolled their own patterns.

No abstraction = no shared safety net either.

And this idea that “frameworks exist to create work” is nostalgia talking.
Users now expect offline support, fast navigation, realtime updates, accessibility, and consistent state across screens.

You can build that with jQuery — but let’s not pretend it’s faster or safer past a certain point. That’s vibes, not evidence.

jQuery optimizes for developer control.
React optimizes for[b] application correctness over time.[/b]
If your apps stay small, jQuery wins.
If they grow, React exists for a reason.

Pretending one should replace the other is just choosing tools by ideology.

platymus:
jQuery feels transparent because[b] you are the orchestrator.[/b]
React feels opaque because the framework is doing coordination you’d otherwise write (badly) yourself.

Relying on modern frameworks often reflects a need to outsource orchestration, not an increase in programming skill. A strong programmer is a strong orchestrator, someone who understands control flow, state, and side effects directly. That’s why experienced developers can be effective with tools like jQuery: nothing is hidden, and nothing happens unless you explicitly design it to happen.

React2Shell illustrates the trade-off clearly. It is a serious security vulnerability in React Server Components that allows unauthenticated remote code execution (RCE) on vulnerable servers. This class of issue arises because React introduces server-side orchestration, serialization, and execution layers that developers do not fully control.

This simply cannot occur in jQuery itself, because jQuery does not execute on the server or introduce hidden runtime behavior. With jQuery, the orchestrator, the developer, decides exactly what runs, when it runs, and where it runs. The attack surface is limited by explicit design, not expanded by abstraction.

The distinction isn’t about old vs new tools. It’s about who owns the orchestration: The developer, or the framework.

MindHacker9009:
Relying on modern frameworks often reflects a need to outsource orchestration, not an increase in programming skill. A strong programmer is a strong orchestrator, someone who understands control flow, state, and side effects directly. That’s why experienced developers can be effective with tools like jQuery: nothing is hidden, and nothing happens unless you explicitly design it to happen.

React2Shell illustrates the trade-off clearly. It is a serious security vulnerability in React Server Components that allows unauthenticated remote code execution (RCE) on vulnerable servers. This class of issue arises because React introduces server-side orchestration, serialization, and execution layers that developers do not fully control.

This simply cannot occur in jQuery itself, because jQuery does not execute on the server or introduce hidden runtime behavior. With jQuery, the orchestrator, the developer, decides exactly what runs, when it runs, and where it runs. The attack surface is limited by explicit design, not expanded by abstraction.

The distinction isn’t about old vs new tools. It’s about who owns the orchestration: The developer, or the framework.

This sounds deep, but it’s mixing control with manual labor.

A strong programmer isn’t the one doing everything by hand — it’s the one who knows what to delegate safely and what not to.
Writing your own orchestration doesn’t make you more skilled, it just makes you the framework.

“Nothing is hidden” in jQuery is true — and that’s exactly the problem.

Every handler, mutation, and side effect is now your responsibility forever.
React doesn’t remove control; it formalizes it so 10 developers don’t each invent their own orchestration style.

React2Shell is not proof that abstraction is bad — it’s proof that server-side rendering is hard.

If you build SSR manually with jQuery + Node, you’ve recreated the same attack surface, just without audits, CVEs, or coordinated patches.

Saying “jQuery can’t have this bug” [/i]is like saying [i]“my bicycle can’t crash at 120km/h”. True, but irrelevant.

“The developer decides exactly what runs”

That only works while the app is small.
Once async data, caching, streaming, retries, and partial renders enter the chat, someone must orchestrate — either React or your future self at 2am.
So yes, orchestration matters.

But the real question is not who owns it, it’s whether it’s standardized or improvised.

jQuery gives freedom.
React gives constraints.

Experienced devs know constraints are what keep large systems sane.
Doing everything yourself doesn’t make you the orchestrator — it makes you the bottleneck.
Abstraction isn’t loss of control, it’s delayed chaos prevention.

platymus:
This sounds deep, but it’s mixing control with manual labor.

A strong programmer isn’t the one doing everything by hand — it’s the one who knows what to delegate safely and what not to.
Writing your own orchestration doesn’t make you more skilled, it just makes you the framework.

“Nothing is hidden” in jQuery is true — and that’s exactly the problem.

Every handler, mutation, and side effect is now your responsibility forever.
React doesn’t remove control; it formalizes it so 10 developers don’t each invent their own orchestration style.

React2Shell is not proof that abstraction is bad — it’s proof that server-side rendering is hard.

If you build SSR manually with jQuery + Node, you’ve recreated the same attack surface, just without audits, CVEs, or coordinated patches.

Saying “jQuery can’t have this bug” [/i]is like saying [i]“my bicycle can’t crash at 120km/h”. True, but irrelevant.

“The developer decides exactly what runs”

That only works while the app is small.
Once async data, caching, streaming, retries, and partial renders enter the chat, someone must orchestrate — either React or your future self at 2am.
So yes, orchestration matters.

But the real question is not who owns it, it’s whether it’s standardized or improvised.

jQuery gives freedom.
React gives constraints.

Experienced devs know constraints are what keep large systems sane.
Doing everything yourself doesn’t make you the orchestrator — it makes you the bottleneck.
Abstraction isn’t loss of control, it’s delayed chaos prevention.

Team coordination is not something React invented or enables. It's Git that have solved that problem.

Version control is what allows 10 or more developers to:

Work on the same codebase safely

Review each other’s changes

Enforce conventions and architecture

Revert, bisect and audit behavior over time

That’s orchestration at the human level and it’s orthogonal to whether the code uses React or jQuery.

React doesn’t “formalize control so teams can work together”; it formalizes a particular runtime model. That model may be helpful, but it is not the same thing as enabling collaboration. Teams collaborated on large systems long before React existed, operating systems, databases, browsers, many of them written without frameworks like this.

The claim that “every handler, mutation, and side effect is your responsibility forever” isn’t a flaw of jQuery; it’s the reality of all software. React doesn’t remove responsibility, it relocates it into conventions, lifecycles and hidden scheduling rules. When those rules change or fail, responsibility doesn’t disappear; it just becomes harder to trace.

What React actually standardizes is not teamwork, but how complexity is expressed:

jQuery makes orchestration explicit and developer-owned

React makes orchestration implicit and framework-owned

So this isn’t about 10 developers inventing chaos versus React saving them.
It’s about whether coordination happens:

through version control, review and discipline (Git + explicit code), or

through a runtime abstraction that enforces patterns at execution time (React).

But collaboration comes from Git and process, not from React deciding when your code runs.

MindHacker9009:
Team coordination is not something React invented or enables. It's Git that have solved that problem.

Version control is what allows 10 or more developers to:

Work on the same codebase safely

Review each other’s changes

Enforce conventions and architecture

Revert, bisect and audit behavior over time

That’s orchestration at the human level and it’s orthogonal to whether the code uses React or jQuery.

React doesn’t “formalize control so teams can work together”; it formalizes a particular runtime model. That model may be helpful, but it is not the same thing as enabling collaboration. Teams collaborated on large systems long before React existed, operating systems, databases, browsers, many of them written without frameworks like this.

The claim that “every handler, mutation, and side effect is your responsibility forever” isn’t a flaw of jQuery; it’s the reality of all software. React doesn’t remove responsibility, it relocates it into conventions, lifecycles and hidden scheduling rules. When those rules change or fail, responsibility doesn’t disappear; it just becomes harder to trace.

What React actually standardizes is not teamwork, but how complexity is expressed:

jQuery makes orchestration explicit and developer-owned

React makes orchestration implicit and framework-owned

So this isn’t about 10 developers inventing chaos versus React saving them.
It’s about whether coordination happens:

through version control, review and discipline (Git + explicit code), or

through a runtime abstraction that enforces patterns at execution time (React).

But collaboration comes from Git and process, not from React deciding when your code runs.

Nobody said React invented collaboration. Git handles[b] human coordination[/b] — agreed.

React addresses a different problem: software coordination at runtime.

Git can’t prevent two components from fighting over the DOM, duplicating side effects, or desynchronizing UI state. React can.

Saying “React just relocates responsibility” is true — and that’s the point.

It relocates it into shared, enforceable constraints [/b]instead of personal discipline.

Discipline doesn’t scale reliably; constraints do. That’s why large systems standardize behavior instead of trusting every dev to be careful.

Yes, complex systems existed before React.
They also required massive internal frameworks, strict conventions, and armies of reviewers.

React is that framework, packaged and reusable, instead of every team reinventing one with jQuery and good intentions.

[b]“Explicit orchestration” [/b]sounds nice until async data, partial renders, retries, caching, and concurrency show up.

At that point, either:
• you write a framework, or
• you use one.

[b]Pretending jQuery avoids that choice is just romanticizing manual control.

So the real distinction isn’t Git vs React.
It’s:

Implicit rules you discover by breaking things
vs
Explicit rules you learn up front.

jQuery favors freedom.
React favors predictability.

Neither is moral superiority — but only one survives scale consistently.

Git coordinates people.
Frameworks coordinate behavior.
Mixing the two is category error.

MindHacker9009:
1. Not all React complexity is state complexity

Yes, some bugs originate from state, but many of the “React wahala” issues I mentioned are framework-induced, not just state mismanagement. Examples:

Hydration mismatches in SSR

Strict Mode double-invocation surprises

Scheduler and concurrent rendering edge cases

These are not things a developer can fully control, yet they create bugs that don’t exist in jQuery simply because jQuery doesn’t abstract rendering. This is different from “complex state”, it’s complex runtime behavior baked into React itself.

2. Predictability vs. simplicity

You argue React centralizes complexity, which is true for maintainability. But that centralization introduces a single point of failure: when React behaves unexpectedly, you often cannot inspect or patch the internals directly. In jQuery, each DOM mutation is visible and traceable, it may be messy, but a developer can see and fix it immediately. React trades direct control for structure.

3. Manual vs automatic analogy nuance

The “manual gearbox breaks less” analogy actually fits jQuery better in small apps: fewer abstractions, fewer hidden layers, predictable direct behavior. React is like an automatic gearbox, you get smoother operation and fewer errors at scale, but when it breaks, the fix can require deep understanding of the system. That’s exactly the trade-off: predictable but opaque vs. transparent but scattered.

4. Scaling isn’t just about team size

I agree that jQuery apps get unmanageable at scale, but the claim that React is inherently easier at scale assumes perfect adherence to patterns. In reality, large teams still encounter subtle React bugs that are not trivial, hooks misuse, async race conditions, hydration mismatches, which are easier to overlook than scattered jQuery issues because they appear under specific conditions.

5. Early complexity vs deferred complexity

React exposes complexity early, yes. But some of that complexity is framework-internal, not just developer-managed state. jQuery hides complexity until it explodes in subtle side effects. So the difference is not just “manual vs structured,” it’s also visible control vs. opaque orchestration.

6. Security Issue in React vs jQuery
A great recent example of this is CVE‑2025‑55182, nicknamed “React2Shell”, a critical security vulnerability in React Server Components that allows unauthenticated remote code execution (RCE) on vulnerable servers. This means an attacker can send a malicious request and run arbitrary code on the server without any user authentication or developer missteps.

This bug exists in the core React library, specifically in how React Server Components deserializes incoming payloads, not because someone wrote a bad hook or forgot a dependency. Even a perfectly written app using these features could be vulnerable if the library itself is flawed.

The flaw scored 10.0 (maximum severity) on the CVSS scale. It was actively being exploited in the wild and affected a huge slice of cloud apps using React Server Components and related frameworks.

True, jQuery apps can get messy and incur bugs caused by manual DOM state and event handlers. But those bugs are about developer poor practice, not insecure behavior baked into the library itself. A critical RCE in the framework is not something a developer caused and it undermines the idea that React’s abstraction always buys safety at scale.

All the new front-end frameworks are used by developers to create on-going work for themselves, which the end user does not need, instead of just focusing on delivering what the user wants on time using jQuery

You cant form coherent arguement without quoting text from a gpt

Interesting discussion on React and jQuery, except the one by Kaczynski

or 4 me i think i will use alpine which is like mid level between jquery and vue js. i use it alot with juery when i need to do alot of dom manipulation instead which are complex to do with jquery i just use alpine it is sweet, light weight and that virtual dom nonsense doesnt exist. think of peering both together u will love it

With comment I am seeing omor people wey AI go replace go plenty , imagine writing a code u are paid for is considered a stress what are u rushing to

You just suffer yourself