I've learned jQuery, should I go back and learn "proper javascript"?

I'm primarily a server side developer, working professionally with PHP. For javascript I always use a framework (jQuery/mootools), will this be a professional disadvantage for me down the line? Should I put the time in to learning straight javascript, or are most developers moving over to frameworks anyway?

Thanks.

Unless you want to make JS a core competency, I think you're good.

It's a good thing to know how to program well in JavaScript, because knowing jQuery won't protect you from writing insecure and inefficient code. It will just give you some tools to speed up your coding.

This is not specific to Javascript, but learning lower level concepts can often help when writing higher level code. It's about learning the whys as well as the hows.

So if you have the time and motivation, I'd recommend it.

actually, yes. After a few years of jQuery, it's good to learn JS so that you know whats going on behind the abstraction layer that jQuery sets up. It will help you work better with jQuery or any other framework you might move to.. also it'll help you modify those frameworks if such a need ever arises.

I think it is certainly worth the time to learn the core language. If you only know the framework, then you're locked into the framework's way of doing things.

While the frameworks offer much more powerful and cleaner code in many cases, sometimes it is overkill and there is a much simpler solution to a problem in the core language.

It doesn't matter, so long as you remember the [Law of Leaky Abstractions][1].

[1]:

[To see links please register here]

It depends. If you're asking about **DOM manipulation**, it has many quirks and inconsistencies across browsers. While it can be good to know these, most of the time you're shielded from having to worry about them by your framework. Learning everything on your own is rewarding, but difficult.

As to everything besides that in straight JS, such as closures, private functions, object syntax, prototypes, etc., you should **definitely** learn these, as they are just as applicable within a framework as without it. At the root, you are *still coding in JS*, just with the assistance of a framework for some common tasks.

## Not where it overlaps

You already need to know some "pure" javascript for things like string and array manipulation, right? Beefing up on that stuff could be good.

And there may be specific cases - like making bookmarklets - where knowing how to find a DOM element with straight JS would be useful.

But for most production code, a good JS framework is so much better that I think using pure JS is silly.

Learn what you can actually use, but if it's purely academic, I'd say spend that time learning another, truly relevant, skill.

I'm pretty much in the "don't bother until necessary" camp. In fact i consider it a kind of premature optimization to dive in the underlying language if not necessary. While you may indeed need to squeeze every millisecond out of a script, as long as it's usable i would say don't bother.

Even then, jQuery lets you wiggle for room with selector optimization and stuff like that.

Of course that could be me talking from the pain inflicted by "proper" javascript all those years before those wonderful frameworks :)