Cash: A small jQuery alternative for modern browsers

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Scope and purpose of Cash

  • Cash is positioned as a small, DOM-centric jQuery alternative for “modern” browsers (explicitly IE11+).
  • It omits AJAX and effects to keep size down; partial/custom builds can trim it further.
  • Some see it as a solid 80/20 solution when you just want selectors, chaining, and small utilities without full jQuery.

AJAX, Fetch, and HTTP semantics

  • Several commenters argue that fetch is now “good enough” for most AJAX needs and simpler than $.ajax.
  • Others highlight real limitations of fetch:
    • No request body on GET, despite HTTP allowing it in principle.
    • No native progress events and weaker support for some advanced features.
  • There’s debate about GET-with-body: technically permitted in HTTP/1.1, but long-standing proxy/caching behavior makes it unreliable; more recent specs strongly discourage it, and a new QUERY method is mentioned as the intended fix.
  • Libraries like Axios, SuperAgent, or a thin XHR wrapper are suggested for “full” AJAX features.

Size, performance, and dependency trade-offs

  • Skeptics question rewriting jQuery to save ~50–80KB when many sites ship megabytes of JavaScript.
  • Others push back:
    • Some teams target <50KB total JS, or ship web UIs in tiny embedded ROMs.
    • Page-speed and Lighthouse scores drive business decisions; extra HTTP requests and external CDNs can hurt scores.
    • Small dependencies accumulate; caring about size at every layer is seen as good discipline.

Native DOM APIs and micro-helpers

  • Many say modern DOM APIs (e.g., querySelector(All), closest, forEach on NodeList) make jQuery mostly unnecessary.
  • Common patterns: binding document.querySelector(All) to short aliases ($, dqs, dqsA), sometimes wrapping results in Array.from for array methods.
  • There’s debate over whether such two-line helpers should be separate modules or just copied into each project.
  • Some warn against mutating prototypes (e.g., making NodeList inherit from Array) due to “prototype pollution.”

Role of jQuery and alternatives

  • jQuery is still valued for:
    • Automatic list handling and chainable operations.
    • “Fire and forget” behavior when selectors match no elements.
  • Others would prefer stricter behavior (errors on empty selections) and show how to patch jQuery to enforce this.
  • Opinions diverge: some say “the jQuery era is over” and DOM should be derived from state via frameworks; others happily combine jQuery with tools like htmx and small PHP frameworks or use other micro-libs (Umbrella, alpine.js, Preact, etc.) for lightweight apps.