I instruct my agents to build UI exclusively with bootstrap 5, jQuery, and HTMX.
Every app is fast, responsive, progressive, small, and most importantly: it fits in my brain and I can maintain it. No build step or really any tooling at all.
I instruct my agents to build UI exclusively with bootstrap 5, jQuery, and HTMX.
Every app is fast, responsive, progressive, small, and most importantly: it fits in my brain and I can maintain it. No build step or really any tooling at all.
Curious what jQuery brings for you these days? My favorite jQuery features got implemented in the vanilla DOM APIs (document.querySelector and fetch being the big one for me). Now I'm curious if I'm missing out.
I prefer the terseness of jQuery's API and things like chaining dom operations with the fluent API. I don't like the native DOM API. Too verbose
(I still read and review code)
I still think the only reason to use jQuery is if you need IE11 support.
Otherwise, it's really simple to do all the things you mentioned without the complexity/heaviness of jQuery. Something like this:
``` const $ = s => { const r = {}; const els = [...document.querySelectorAll(s)]; r.text = t => (els.forEach(e => e.textContent = t), r); r.on = (ev, fn) => (els.forEach(e => e.addEventListener(ev, fn)), r); // ... return r; }; ```
jQuery is 30kB, there's not a lot of heaviness. In a world of React, Vue, htmx and what have you, 30kB is nothing.
If you like the syntax and functionality of jQuery, or if you're just use to it now, there's very little reason to no use it, and speed and size certainly isn't a reason. 15 years ago, maybe, but not in 2026.
Right, I can cobble together my own worse version of jQuery if I wanted to.
Or I can just use jQuery.
Does anyone actually need IE11 support in 2026? It was released 13 years ago.
Makes sense to me. Their motto was "Write less, do more", i.e. its conciseness was a major selling point, but that seems to have been forgotten now that its other selling points have been rendered obsolete.
I recall scripts ending up as little as one-third the size of vanilla JS, when rewritten using jQuery (where the website was otherwise using jQuery anyway).
I've been thinking the same about the future of frameworks. Many of the complexities in today's frameworks exist for "developer experience", given that's less and less relevant by the month, it will be interesting to see the tech stacks chosen going forward.
I do boostrap 5 and htmx. works great
Also a solid combination for LLM assisted apps. Claude Code will just get it. It's good with Tailwind also though.
Even better than that - just use bootstrap 3
IMO it is literally not possible for a medium+ jQuery app to fit in a brain or be maintained easily (especially without TypeScript). That's why React et al were invented. It is smaller, faster, no build step for sure, but I would never reach for jQuery for any possibly ambitious app.
If you are using mostly agents and don't actually need to have it in your brain, then I'd probably go with strict TypeScript at the very least for verifiability purposes