Comments on: Switching from Prototype to jQuery

By: Steve

Steve — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 23:04:57 +0000

It’s so funny, I read this over and over again and I just don’t see it. I mean, I get the performance benchmarks… and thus I’m reluctantly making the switch to jquery simply because I would like my app to perform that much better in IE. But… it’s been months and syntactically it’s still completely backward to me. I really just wish I could rip the selector engine out of jquery and retrofit it onto prototype. Most examples of jquery being “easier” really just betray the author’s ignorance of prototype… method chaining, adding multiple css attributes and then element attributes and then showing the elements, my lord I’ve been doing that all on one line in Prototype for years now. I cry for Function.bind() (I’ve already ported over that portion of prototype since it’s only a couple lines long on its own anyway… if any of my developers ever wrote a line like this=self I might choke… function () { … }.bind(this) is far more grokkable). And Object.extend? Element.descendentOf? And when I want one element, I want one element, not an array containing one element. I mean… there’s no excuse for being 4x slower than jquery… and I get that. But I love ruby’s syntax structure, it’s a model of readability, and yes, I loved being able to do the same things in Javascript. If the tables were turned, and Prototype had the better selector engine, I bet any sum of money that the bandwagon would just as easily say that Prototype had the better syntax and why would anyone go through all the extra trouble to have $(“#element”).hover? I hope sometime, in the not too distant future, someone manages to write a library that can traverse the DOM quickly, without tossing away all my syntactic sugar. If only I had the time.

By: Brendan

Brendan — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 02:48:27 +0000

Thanks for this.. I have spent a lot of time using prototype, always believing it was the only way to go and could never be bothered checking out JQuery, but now you’ve convinced me to give it a proper look.

By: Casimiro

Casimiro — Fri, 15 May 2009 12:21:01 +0000

I used to be a Prototype enthusiast until nine months ago, or so. A newcomer at work showed me the benefits of jQuery and I wouldn’t turn back to Prototype… oh man, jQuery rules for good!

By: Justin

Justin — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 23:30:34 +0000

I have been pondering this very question of switching from Prototype to jQuery the last couple of weeks after jumping on Prototype about a year ago. It definitely wasn’t a bad year with Prototype, however with every relationship comes ups and downs. Now i think it’s time for me to leave Prototype behind as Prototype has seemed to have left itself behind. With that said, now comes the time to create new branches on too many projects and start replacing js code in too many files.
Nice article.

By: Disable Selction on Menu Items with this jQuery Extension - Aleem Bawany

Disable Selction on Menu Items with this jQuery Extension - Aleem Bawany — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 21:22:45 +0000

[...] you are using jQuery, you can easily extend the core by adding a disableSelection function like so: PLAIN TEXT [...]

By: Chris Heald

Chris Heald — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 23:54:16 +0000

I came to the exact same conclusion about a month ago. I had a codebase about 18 months old that was wound around Prototype rather tightly. I’ve since ripped out Prototype and subbed in jQuery, and the result has been nothing short of sublime. I’m absolutely hooked.

By: Aleem

Aleem — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 16:13:04 +0000

Updated That. Thanks.

By: Nate

Nate — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 16:00:02 +0000

Just a heads up, the @ in attribute selectors has been depreciated for a while and was removed in jQuery 1.3. (Your [@name=purchase] should be just [name=purchase] to work in jQuery 1.3)

By: Duncan Smart

Duncan Smart — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 15:22:37 +0000

Back then I evaluated both jQuery and Prototype…

Shame on your former self for coming to the wrong conclusion! :-) I couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about Prototype, I thought it was ugly and very poorly documented. I think its problem was trying to shoehorn Ruby-isms into JavaScript.