“I really don’t care about how much David Mark hates John Resig or any of that Object sh1t”

LOL. It’s the other way around.

what a bitter troll….

…sorry if I used the wrong terminology but as far as I was aware a ‘troll’ was…
“An individual who posts flames of an idiotic or pseudo-intellectual nature on public forums and private websites. Many of these people actually become emotional about what is said on the afore-said mediums and feel it is their duty to punish those who disagree with them. They too may pursue this object in an obsessive-compulsive manner”

I post JS code reviews (and help) to a technical group on Usenet, where such things are on-topic. That’s not flaming or trolling.

Now, this post on this site is definitely a flame. If you popped into CLJ and posted a link to it, you would be trolling. Of course, these are not hard and fast rules.

@Martin

I think i know the situation of David…
He’s frustrated !
Frustrated because he sits on a mountain of knowledge and knows how Javascript should be written, he knows when its done wrong… He’s frustrated because he feels deeply for the language – and thinks that developers who use jQuery aren’t paying attention to its shortcomings (and lack of perfection).

No, as mentioned, I get frustrated when jQueried sites fall apart under my feet on the Web. That’s irritating.

Other than that, I am elated with the general incompetence of these open source JS libraries. It leads to a lot of work cleaning up broken sites, removing bad libraries, etc.

And it’s not just that jQuery is imperfect. It leaves years of futility in its wake. Read the reviews. Or, for a picture:-

http://www.cinsoft.net/mylib-testspeed.html

Now, the idea of a CSS selector query engine wasn’t necessarily bad. However, the execution over the years has been so abominable that even experts would (and do) shy away from needlessly over-complicating their applications with such nonsense. Try out the SlickSpeed test in just the very latest browsers (in their default configurations). Terrible. Now go back to the last (usually “deprecated” by the library developers, but not the end-users) version of each. Oh jeez. Once QSA support drops off, these things drop dead. It is _not_ “cool” to take something that is virtually fool-proof in (literally) all browsers (e.g. DOM traversal with standard host methods) and turn it into a complete catastrophe, even in the very latest browsers. Think about that.

And imagine a neophyte Web developer (the target demographic for jQuery) who wants to “just get things done” testing just the very latest “supported” browsers and asserting that he/she “doesn’t care” about the rest of the “unsupported” browsers (quotes indicate the jQuery developers have no idea what works and what blows up). I had a similar talk with Resig in CLJ years ago. Hopefully you take more from this than he did.

@James

You (and others) spend a lot of time telling me what _I_ have to do to get “people” to listen. Why don’t _you_ concentrate on listening yourself.

@Martin

No, I don’t need a blog. I post code reviews to Usenet where they belong and are easy to discuss. Blog comments are terrible for discussions (as we see here).

As for cinsoft.net, there will be a home page there in the near future. The domain was originally for a corporation I formed early in the century. Long story, but I ended up working as a independent consultant rather than running my own corp, so the domain sat idle. The “new” cinsoft.net will be all about browser scripting libraries (with mine chief among them). I’m sure you will find it very interesting and informative.

And to anyone reading this who is pondering using jQuery to build a site on the Web, you should think again. There is a much faster, far more compatible and better supported alternative. It’s not even a horse race at this point. And yes, I wrote it. That’s a _good_ thing. Maintenance on it has been virtually nil (the best thing for a Web site owner, unless they like flushing their money down the toilet). I also support it, which is an even _better_ thing. Contrast that to the “support” you get out of the jQuery reps. Would you be willing to file a ticket on that?

exactly…

and to my early discovery of David not having a real homepage – i think he should promote his library more + make a real website/blog

I think it would solve most battles…

I think i know the situation of David…

He’s frustrated !

Frustrated because he sits on a mountain of knowledge and knows how Javascript should be written, he knows when its done wrong… He’s frustrated because he feels deeply for the language – and thinks that developers who use jQuery aren’t paying attention to its shortcomings (and lack of perfection).

I know how he feels – because i feel the same way about religious people. Being an Atheist (or Anti-Theist) – i’m frustrated about people not being able to see the obvious truth eg. the world being 4.6 billion years old for one thing…

so i guess the solution to this whole mess has to come from both sides:

- David should write blog entries on his own blog (if he has one) about all the problems and shortcomings of jQuery he finds

- People who use jQuery (and other libs) should read his blog

in this way, David doesn’t need to argue for his cause on ill-informed users blogs or in newsgroups or whatever… he should simply post a link to his blogposts about the current subject.

arguing about jQuery, is a too big and complex thing to boil down to simple responses on a comment… and thats why it becomes ‘personal’.

Hi David, in response to…

Trolling, sigh. Do you understand what that word means?

…sorry if I used the wrong terminology but as far as I was aware a ‘troll’ was…

“An individual who posts flames of an idiotic or pseudo-intellectual nature on public forums and private websites. Many of these people actually become emotional about what is said on the afore-said mediums and feel it is their duty to punish those who disagree with them. They too may pursue this object in an obsessive-compulsive manner”

…and as my only dealing with yourself has been via this site I had to prefix my response with the word ‘apparent’ as not to falsely label you (or confuse others by making that part of my response sound like I was stating a fact).

Again, if my understanding of what a ‘troll’ is is incorrect then it would be beneficial to myself and others if you clarified the real meaning of the word ‘trolling’ as I believe most people think a troll is how it has been described here.

Gosh, David, you seem quite the devious individual.

In what way?

I have to say, your responses are almost civil, but don’t be mistaken; no amount of sugar-coated smiley-interlaced prose will make us forgot your frank and continued rude attitude and your slanderous tendencies. CLJ is open for all to see.

In what way did they fall short in the civility department? The whole post and previous discussion was fairly insulting to me after all. I didn’t have to respond at all, leaving you to whatever misconceptions you may have about jQuery and cross-browser scripting in general.

You may be technically sound in what you say but that doesn’t negate nor soften the obvious spite and bitterness with which you write.

That’s your analysis. It’s not accurate, of course, but you aren’t alone in that misconception.

I don’t know what kind of person you are away from the keyboard, but I don’t think you’d get along with the rest of the people in your field, most of whom are forward-thinking and well behaved.

You don’t have any idea. And in what way do you find my thoughts backward? And would you prefer that I told you jQuery was great and don’t worry about it. That would be a disservice. You should try to appreciate that I took the time out to help you.

Although, I dare say you should seriously take up Dalton’s suggestions and speak at one of the upcoming conferences, for I think it would offer you a bit of perspective, and perhaps a reality-check.

In what way would speaking at one of the upcoming conferences give me a “reality-check?” I think you are a bit out of touch with reality yourself.

I may be young, and yes, I may have been a mere toddler when you first happened upon the world of browser scripting but what I don’t have in years, I have in respect. That’s respect for individuals, older or younger, that have knowledge, humility and at least some decorum; three qualities that you can’t seem to portray all at once.

Stick around a couple more decades. You might lose some of that wide-eyed optimism.