Amazing that it have only been 10 years. I remember when i learned and focused on mootools because jquery seemed just so far away from actual js while eating away, then valueable, performance.
Agreed, and I still prefer Moo for my own projects because of how it extends javascript instead of replacing it (like jquery does).
Back when I was learning javascript (2006/2007) it seemed like Mootools was for people who had a good grasp on the language and wanted more from it. I appreciated this, and still think it's better at this than jquery.
I wish Moo had gotten more attention over the years. I get why jquery has done so well, but I don't like its methods.
I still maintain that MooTools was the superior system over jQuery.
jQuery won the war, in the end, because it catered to the 'get it up and running now' crowd over the 'do it right' crowd. It was always easier to understand off the bat, especially if you aren't a trained developer, while MooTools makes for a more long lasting, quality codebase.
No jQuery won the war because it fit with what JavaScript does in the browser while MooTools lost because it was part of the Java/OOP fad of "Well it has a new keyword so let's extend classes with it!" that has (thankfully) been rendered to the dustbin of history where it belongs.
Agreed. It took me a long time to give up on Mootools because it felt like it made so much more sense. jQuery's tendency for chaining felt particularly gross to me - in retrospect I don't think I was wrong, either.
But the sheer number of plugins that depended on jQuery made it's dominance inevitable. Thankfully we're now coming back out the other side.
'Wrong' often reduces something multi-dimensional to the single dimension of right/wrong.
I think you were 'wrong' in the sense that the most common use case then for jQuery or MooTools was better served by jQuery. As in, you were probably not the most common use case.
But I think you were right, especially considering the current reality, in feeling that MooTools made more sense. Because in 'current-day' web development you can't usually get past understanding the level 'below' jQuery and MooTools (plain javascript/DOM). For example, I've never met a React developer who couldn't use the regular DOM API through vanilla js.
