[JimDabell]

jQuery was invented for basically two reasons, neither of them about making JavaScript suck less.

1. Introduce a "chaining" API.

2. Paper over the differences between how browsers implemented the DOM, with events being the big issue.

Note that the DOM is not JavaScript and JavaScript is not the DOM. The DOM is a language-agnostic API for manipulating markup-based documents.

[tasogare]

That's nitpicking. Javascript was the only language that could be used to manipulate DOM so it's normal to conflate the two.

[uk_programmer]

Well to nitpick your nitpick. Internet Explorer did allow you to use vbscript to manipulate the DOM.

http://www.herongyang.com/VBScript/IE-Browser-DOM-API-Docume...

Also you can use XSLT to create a new DOM tree in a browser from an XML document.

http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=24032&seqNum...

EDIT: I forgot about JScript vs JavaScript vs ECMAScript.

https://johnresig.com/blog/versions-of-javascript/

However much of this isn't relevant today.

[nickthemagicman]

So in other words: 1: to fix js chaining 2: to fix js compatibility Ergo to make js suck less.

[JimDabell]

No. The first is incoherent, the second ignores half my comment.

[nickthemagicman]

You're splitting hairs with that half of your comment so I ignored it.