The way I see it, there's a big difference between making fancy websites and making fancy web applications. Making a fancy website, presenting information to a user and maybe collecting a bit of data along the way, you're unlikely to collide with the frustrations outlined in the article. jQuery is more than adequate for the majority of things.
Making a desktop-style web application, however (such as his examples), is a whole different kettle of fish. Once you're dealing with state that exists outside of the DOM, you're going to be struggling to keep up without some variety of model/view concept to rely on.
They're really two separate domains. One was born in the world of desktop applications, the other was born in static HTML.
If you have a huge dataset with complex validation rules, implement a server side validation engine, and do the same in client side and expose the rules to both parties, it's not hard at all.
jQuery is not only about the DOM, it's a tool, it doesn't force you to write code like this:
$('#foo').hide();$("#foo").css('color':'white');
You can write very clean structured code in JavaScript using jQuery.
Making a desktop-style web application, however (such as his examples), is a whole different kettle of fish. Once you're dealing with state that exists outside of the DOM, you're going to be struggling to keep up without some variety of model/view concept to rely on.
They're really two separate domains. One was born in the world of desktop applications, the other was born in static HTML.