This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Sylwia Laskowska
Everyone loves declaring jQuery dead.
And yet - 2025. It’s still here. Not starring in any conference talks, not topping npm charts…
but running quietly in production on ~78% of the top 1M sites (W3Techs) and hundreds of millions of websites total.
So maybe the real question isn’t “why is jQuery still alive?”
but rather:
Why do we expect old code to disappear just because we found a cooler way to write new code?
After a five-year break, I’m returning to the conference stage. On November 19th, I’ll be speaking at JS Poland about practical strategies for migrating legacy frontend systems to modern architectures.
To lead up to the talk, I’m publishing a short series of articles on legacy code, refactoring, and incremental migrations — this is the first one in the series.
If you’ll be there, feel free to say hi — I’m always up for a good legacy-code war story 🛠️.
jQuery is not “alive” - it’s installed.
jQuery isn’t winning the frontend race.
It already finished it years ago, shipped to production, and is now sitting in long-term maintenance mode…
exactly like COBOL in finance systems.
Nobody wants to rewrite an old COBOL banking backend - but they also can't just delete it.
jQuery is the same, just for the web.
🧠 Misconception: “Modern JS killed jQuery”
Yes - the browser finally caught up.
// jQuery
$('#btn').on('click', () => $('#box').addClass('active'));
// Modern JS
document.querySelector('#btn').addEventListener('click', () => {
document.querySelector('#box').classList.add('active');
});
Native DOM APIs finally do almost everything jQuery used to fix.
✅ Query selectors
✅ Class manipulation
✅ Event binding
✅ AJAX → fetch()
✅ Animations → CSS + Web Animations API
So why is jQuery still everywhere?
Because fixing the past is way more expensive than building the future.
🧱 The uncomfortable truth: refactoring doesn’t pay bills
Most jQuery code isn’t “bad.”
It’s just old, tangled, DOM-first, and impossible to replace safely in one go.
The real blockers:
| Problem | Why jQuery stays |
|---|---|
| 🧩 Business logic glued to DOM | no clean separation to migrate |
| 🔌 3rd-party plugins | no React/Vue/Svelte versions exist |
| 💸 Rewrite has no ROI | “Works now, don’t touch it” |
| 🛒 WordPress, Shopify, Drupal | ecosystems built on jQuery |
| 🧨 Migration risk | you break checkout → you lose money |
The business perspective is brutally simple:
“Does rewriting jQuery bring new revenue?”
No. It only reduces technical debt.
And debt is only paid when it starts to hurt.
📊 Data check: frameworks die faster than legacy code
| Thing | Average lifespan |
|---|---|
| JavaScript frameworks | ~5–7 years of relevance (React is a rare longer-lived exception) |
| Real commercial apps | 12–20 years |
| WordPress share of web | ~43% (jQuery in core) |
| Sites still using jQuery | ~78% of top 1M |
Frameworks come and go:
AngularJS (dead), Backbone (dead-ish), Ember (barely breathing), Meteor (remember that one?).
jQuery?
Not evolving. Not trending.
Just quietly on production servers, powering money-making code.
🧑🎓 Should juniors learn jQuery in 2025?
Short answer: No.
Not as a first tool. You don’t learn medicine by studying outdated procedures as your entry point.
jQuery doesn’t teach:
- components
- reactivity
- state management
- bundlers
- SSR / hydration
- scalable architecture
It teaches DOM scripting. And that’s not modern frontend anymore.
🧑💼 Should seniors understand jQuery?
Yes. Absolutely.
Not to write it - but to delete it safely.
A senior who can’t read legacy code is just a React developer, not a software engineer.
You don’t get paid to build shiny new things.
You get paid to keep existing things alive without breaking production.
Real senior skill today:
“I can refactor a jQuery-heavy feature into modern code without breaking the checkout button.”
🏗️ Why full jQuery removal rarely happens
Because real migrations look like this:
- Ship new UI in a framework
- Leave old jQuery modules running in parallel (strangler)
- Promise “we’ll clean it up later”
- Later never comes
You don’t “remove jQuery.”
You encapsulate it, shrink it, quarantine it.
And one day, after 5+ years, you realize only 3 old widgets still depend on it… and that’s good enough.
That’s not laziness.
That’s economic reality.
🧩 WordPress: the elephant in the room
- ~43% of websites run on WordPress
- WordPress core still ships jQuery (updated, but still required)
- Tens of thousands of themes/plugins depend on it
- Most won’t ever be rewritten
Even if every frontend dev stopped using jQuery today, WordPress alone would keep it alive for another decade.
🧨 The real punchline
jQuery isn’t “alive” because it’s good.
It’s alive because the cost of deleting it is higher than the cost of keeping it.
That’s not a technical decision.
That’s economics + risk management + legacy entropy.
🔚 Final verdict
Is jQuery the future? No.
Is it “dead”? Also no.
It’s the COBOL of the frontend - old, uncool, irreplaceable in millions of systems.
Modern frontend dev means two skills:
✅ Build the new stuff right
✅ Understand the old stuff well enough not to break it
🤔 Your turn
- Have you ever tried to remove jQuery from a production app? How did that go?
- Do you think companies should budget for refactoring - even without direct ROI?
- Will we still see jQuery in 2035? (I’ll bet yes.)
📬 Like content about legacy, migrations and real-world frontend?
I share more on my Substack:
No hype. No frameworks of the week.
Just real software reality.
This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Sylwia Laskowska
Sylwia Laskowska | Sciencx (2025-11-05T13:09:13+00:00) jQuery Will Outlive Half of Today’s JavaScript Frameworks – Here’s Why. Retrieved from https://www.scien.cx/2025/11/05/jquery-will-outlive-half-of-todays-javascript-frameworks-heres-why/
Please log in to upload a file.
There are no updates yet.
Click the Upload button above to add an update.