Just something I thought to myself, reading another thread on this same forum, that I would like to share is the discussion surrounding whether people that are new to javascript should start with the basics, not programming basics but rather basics on how to manipulate the DOM, or go straight into jQuery.

Now for those of you that do not know, jQuery is a popular javascript library that makes the use of javascript as a programming language "easier", in some cases I fully agree it does, but as with all libraries or frameworks this comes at a disadvantage, being the size of it, where sometimes all you need to do is hide a div, which can be written in a total of 1 line of code.

<rant>Every time you then need to go hide that div, this whole library will be loaded, yes it is small but the fact still exists that using the library for something so simple is bloating websites/applications all over the net, just to have a quick look at the uncompressed version of the latest jQuery library which is 120kb, sounds small hey? Coming in at 4327 lines of code it really is not that small.</rant>

Without going completely off topic, I reckon a user should first know what the DOM actually is, what are elements, how do you manipulate the DOM, what is ajax actually, before jumping into a library which will help reduce the amount of code for larger/complex web applications.

So, basics or jQuery?

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