[bronson]

Depends on the SPA. If you're trying to do something relatively simple, where the events and state clearly map to the UI, jQuery isn't too bad. It's even fun.

Once your SPA goes through an iteration or two with a few different programmers, you find your events have nasty ordering dependencies and your data becomes inconsistent all on its own. You have no idea why because you can't reproduce any of these issues on your own. You have to watch other people interact with your app just to reproduce bugs ("why the hell would you double click a link?") and git bisect becomes the most productive tool in your toolbox. Most project discussions end with a shrug. You yearn for the days when it was possible for a single human to ever understand the entire app, but that was six months ago and management steadfastly refuses to fund a rewrite. You look wildly around for any sign of hope...

As for Angular, agreed, but I'd rather work with it than a bunch of jQuery. React and Vue are quite pleasant.