JavaScript and Web APIs, the death of jQuery?
I remember when I was in my first few months of programming and I’d read about Ajax. At first, I thought of an infinity of possible projects that could be implemented to the famous Asynchronous calls that would send and receive data without a page reload (the tedious refresh). At first, I decided to study the structure of this powerful work tool, and when I came across the complexity it performed while making calls via Ajax using purely JavaScript, I looked for alternative solutions to make my job easier. That’s when I met jQuery.
Besides Ajax calls, jQuery allowed me to manipulate the entire page with a few code lines, something that I was unable to perform with JavaScript which is relatively a simple thing to accomplish. On the other hand, jQuery was prepared for cross-browser and that meant I would personally not have any surprises when running my sites, for example, Internet Explorer, and so from that point I started taking advantage of all the tools I could possible use from jQuery.
At one point, while searching for new technologies to increase my possibilities, I’d read an article about Web APIs, and reading deeper into the Web API thing, I knew that many functions, such as Ajax, would have been simplified in some ways by getting jQuery like syntax with intuitive functions and extensions of language functions.
According to the Mozilla developer’s website:
“Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are constructs available in programming languages, which allow developers to create complex features more easily. Such constructs abstract the more complex code, providing the simplest of syntaxes in its place. The JavaScript language, especially client-side, has several APIs available. They are not part of the language itself, but are written about the core JavaScript language. “
While reading this, I asked myself – would this mean the death of jQuery? If the web API runs inside the JavaScript core, would there be a need to continue using jQuery? Then, I answered myself:
The web APIs can be a clear sign of the present and successful future of the JavaScript, but in the meantime, jQuery remains to be the best option due to its stability, its operation in different browsers and for satisfying most if not all of the basic necessities of the development frontend. That is, jQuery remains to be the best option to help you with the JavaScript code, but that doesn’t mean that web APIs should be left out our not used. One of the beauties of the developing life is to be able to live in a world of constant evolution… so there is no way you can stay still! What about you? What do you think about APIs web?