I started with simple in-line functions and event handlers, realized it was limited and bad practice, dove right into jQuery to do cool browser compliant things, now I’m back at studying the core language and the DOM. I’m especially interested after learning it’s applicable in the software I use for print files at my job. It would be nice to know how to batch process a load of .indd files to pdfs with a script.

Mootools is more JavaScript ish in its form, as like most js frameworks. I still stand to my point, most jobs will require you to learn an api on top of JavaScript, and if you know one and are good with it, you can learn another.

Thanks to everyone for their comments. It seems like the popular opinion is to learn both as I expected to be honest.

@rich97 – I compared it to jQuery purely because it’s what I use regularly and seems to be the most popular library out there. I’m actually in the process of attempting to pick up MooTools now after that fantastic article you linked to.

@Cedric Dugas – I disagree to an extent. Whereas knowing jQuery may assist in learning another framework, I don’t think it immediately makes it easy. As I said above, I’m trying to get used to MooTools and I have not found it very easy.

@Kevin Loyd – I think you last point sums it up best, that for simple fades, animations jQuery/other is the way to go, but if you want to be a serious javascript person, I think there is no way you can not learn javascript.

Once again thanks for all your comments, keep them coming

JF.

I think the answer is yes

Javascript is fine, the DOM is a mess, frameworks corrected that.

It was shocking ..but I learned alot..I created a sliding timeline (with images and tooltips as well) from scratch..It took me more code and time ofcourse..but I figured out the hard way that I should keep on improving my JS skills and not depend on frameworks only.

Thanks for the post

With that said, it all depends: If you’re a “Javascript Programmer” then you’d better damn well know pure JS, all the ins and outs. Also, it depends on what you are trying to accomplish. For me, the term “Web Developer” is just too broad to be able to cover everything thoroughly.

I will disagree with @Jason and say, if you’re going to only be doing shows/hides/etc, that is a perfect time to use a framework. (However, in my experience, it’s never just that). The benefit of real JS really shines when you’re doing very custom work.

I don’t claim to be a JS master. I’m not a big fan of JS anyway and when I do use it I mostly work with jQuery. But if I need to then I can work with raw JS. Though, if a JS expert saw my JS they’d probably slap me and tell me to go read a book on proper JS practice.

Also, this article does seem to be mostly comparing jQuery to Javascript, jQuery has very little functions dedicated to helping you code seriously in Javascript. It is mainly dedicated to traversing and manipulating the DOM. If you want to have a library that would help your average JS programmer you would pick something more like MooTools. There is a great article discussing this here

Finally, you’re missing a BIG point to do with client side libraries. jQuery is tested and working on all browsers. As I saw someone tweet the other day “I love jQuery, works first time as expected.” (or something similar). It cuts down debugging time hugely and does it with a relatively small file size.