[alextgordon]

> Unless you’re working on a legacy application or have 3rd party libraries that depend on it, there’s no reason to include it. That means you need to replace $.ajax.

> I like to keep it simple and just use fetch. It’s promise based, it’s built in Firefox and Chrome, and it Just Works (tm). For other browsers, you’ll need to include a polyfill.

I laughed. Is this satire? There's no reason to have X, therefore you need Y and Z to replace X. It just works.

[jessep]

Seems like it makes sense to me. Here's an analogous situation to jquery:

X = a huge workshop with a million tools, a table saw, ladders, and yes, a hammer and some nails

Y = some nails

Z = a hammer

You need to hammer stuff as part of your job. Yeah, if you get rid of X you need to replace it with Y and Z, but it still seems like simplifying to me, if you're replacing a whole room full of tools with just the tools you actually need.

[alextgordon]

The workshop is free to use (it's on Google CDN), but the hammer and nails cost money. Seems like a no brainer to use the workshop.

If the hammer and nails were actually better, then fine. But there's nothing actually wrong with $.ajax, that I can tell.

[Kiro]

Why would you need the workshop if you're not going to use any of it except one thing?

[hughes]

Have you ever started a js app thinking you don't need jQuery? It usually goes great until you need to make a request. One look at `XMLHttpRequest` and suddenly including a 92kb (unminified) library starts to sound appealing.

I'd happily include a 9kb (unminified) polyfill and work off the assumption that I can remove it a few years down the road.

[BinaryIdiot]

It's not so bad honestly. Just a little awkward. For my little JavaScript library I wrote a small utility that lets me do Ajax calls that work in node and the browser. It's limited but it's all I need and it's pretty well tested (msngr if you're board).

$.Ajax is awesome and while XMLHttpRequest is awkward it's pretty straight forward.

[seanp2k2]

If that's all you're after, I'd suggest something like Zepto win only the Ajax module: http://zeptojs.com

[ChrisDutrow]

Perhaps I'm naive, but shouldn't very many users already have jquery cached from several CDNs? So if you use a popular CDN for it, it should affect load times too much in most cases?

[Joeri]

Odds are a single retina icon in your app is larger than jquery. Worrying about javascript code size is like worrying about the drag of a car bumper sticker.

[elchief]

Remember last year when $.ajax wasn't legacy? Those were good times.

[coldtea]

You would have a point only if X was smaller (or at least equal) to size, complexity etc to Y + Z.

And the whole point of TFA is that this is not the case. You can argue that it is, but not without getting into specifics.

Merely asking how can 2 things be simpler/smaller/better than 1 thing without taking into account what those 3 things are, makes absolutely no sense.

[alextgordon]

jQuery is an 86kB static resource that almost certainly already exists in the browser's cache. You can choose to use it, or not, but you can't get stop it from being there!

So I'm unsure what kind of complexity you're adding by using it. Mental? Spiritual? Metaphysical?

[Sacho]

Meh. I think a better reason to use something over $.ajax is the functionality and the API, not because "you don't need jQuery". $.ajax is very general purpose, whereas in most cases you simply need to be able to get and post json. Also, jQuery's promise implementation is one of the least-featured and most awkward to use, which drags down the $.ajax API.

[sotojuan]

? I always just install `isomorphic-fetch` or the browser-only version. Works fine. Why load jQuery instead of that?

[alias240]

fetch does not support cancellation or onprogess events.