[grumblestumble]

I'm not aware of any jQuery alternatives. Most things that predate jQuery (prototype, mooTools, YUI) have long since fallen out of favor, and the 'alternatives' to jQuery are mostly API-compatible subsets (jqLite, zepto). What exactly do you mean by 'abundance of jQuery alternatives'?

[warble]

I might be an edge case, but I use Dojo a lot because it's much better structured for larger JS applications than jQuery which quickly becomes a mess if you start doing a lot in JS.

That said, it does everything jQuery does, and more, and in a very nice way IMHO. If you're used to the jQuery syntax sugar, you probably don't like it, but I never liked sugar.

So yeah, a jQuery dependency is a killer for me.