One thing I notice about jQuery is how it simplifies common tasks. A good example is something you do all the time with JavaScript, select DOM elements. In JavaScript selecting all li elements would look something like this:

document.querySelectorAll( "li" );

The same selection using jQuery is like this:

$("li")

At this stage of my learning, I can’t say I see the above as a major advantage. Yes, it’s shorter but you could argue it’s also less descriptive for the reader. Brevity isn’t always a net win in code. This is especially true when tools like Emmet and other text editor tricks auto-complete a lot of code. So it’s not 100% clear to me what the advantage is.

It will be interesting as my jQuery knowledge grows if my feelings toward it change. At this early stage, I can’t help feeling sceptical. Especially when I keep hearing about frameworks like Angular and React. I guess we will see.