[wavephorm]

The OP asked, from an academic standpoint, whether jQuery should be used. My answer is no, and I gave the reasons. To extrapolate further, JQuery is for "developers" who don't know what a subroutine is. Designers love it because they can cut and paste unrelated snippets of code without worrying about architecture. People who overuse JQuery generally avoid any type of architecture in whatever they're building. And although it's possible to ship a product with half-understood jQuery snippets it does not necessarily make that person a real developer.