[jjnoakes]

I'm not advocating for or against jQuery or printf. I'm just pointing out that equating the two (in size, utility, or potential gains by avoiding them) doesn't make a lot of sense.

jQuery's ratio of size-versus-additional-utility is much larger than printf's, even more so if you consider typical use cases of each.

But it isn't even a fair comparison to begin with. How about comparing jQuery to libc. I'd still argue the ratio is in libc's favor, but no one would have written "I'm surprised that there's no youmightnotneedlibc.com".

[mhd]

libc seems much more substantial, maybe we can split the difference and call it "youmightnodneedstdio.com", although that sounds much less pithy.

I still wouldn't be so sure about that ratio. The people decrying the printf family of functions are often targeting small statically linked binaries. Where a few kb shaved off might be a bigger chunk than 30kb are for your usual multi-megabyte front page of today's web.

[jjnoakes]

People who target tiny static binaries are by far in the minority of libc users.