Now, one of the most interesting things (to me) about jQuery is that it takes full advantage of the functional aspect of javascript. The way its super-terse syntax works is using functions that return functions, or functions that return objects with members that are functions:

$("p.neat").addClass("ohmy").show("slow");

So ‘$’ is a function, that takes a parameter, which returns an object with the method ‘addClass’ which does the same and so forth, so the cool chaining aspect of javascript starts to come together. Its all vaguely reminiscent of ruby. Cool. Anyway, my only problem with all this (and its a small problem) is I think that this kind of slickness might actually be masking the basics of how JS works. And I notice it melts people’s brains. And by people I mean those who want to be front end engineers and start with jQuery and then have no clue what to do when they say, get to yahoo and need to use a different framework.

Basically jQuery is amazing for building apps fast. But I would almost say that if you really want to learn js you need to start without jQuery and only use it once you have an idea how you would accomplish the same tasks without it.