I've come across a couple questions, such as this one, and I really have to wonder why "Use jQuery" seems to be the answer when somebody asks how to do something in JavaScript. I understand that jQuery can save you a lot of time, and can help you out a lot, especially when you are doing a lot of fancy JavaScript in your site. However, in instances like this, and in many other instances, it seems like it's just jumping around the problem instead of answering the question.
I also feel like this builds too much dependency into libraries. I've seen way too many developers that simply rely too much on libraries, and if they encounter a situation where they didn't have the library, they would be completely unable to function. I feel like there are already enough developers who don't know JavaScript, without just telling everybody to not learn JavaScript, and use jQuery.
So, just to reiterate the question. Do you think there's too much of a tendency to use jQuery, for small pieces of JavaScript, when most of the functionality of jQuery isn't being used. Should developers be fluent in the use of bare JavaScript so they don't get too dependent on using libraries?
[Additional related conversation topic]
Does the existence of jQuery give too much slack to web browser developers who write the JavaScript engines? If we just have workarounds to cover all the inconsistencies in JavaScript, what pressure is there on browser makers to ensure that their JavaScript library works as it should. I feel like this extrapolates the same problem discussed in SO Podcast #36 of "be conservative in what you send, liberal in what you accept". By being so liberal with bad JavaScript engines, and using a common library to work around the flaws, we are promoting their use, and extending the problem.
