Ben Nadel © 2008.
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Yesterday, Rey Bango alerted me to the fact that jQuery 1.2 was just released. I was not only excited by this, I was also surprised; I mean, jQuery is already so freakin hot n' sexy, how much could it possibly be improved? Well, taking a look at the release notes, I am seeing a lot of cool stuff. Nice new selectors and some very neat traversing methods. They've also trimmed a bunch of the fat, getting rid of features that were rarely used and only added dead weight to the core library.
jQuery is so powerful and so easy to use that I once had concern over it becoming my "Vibrator Dilemma". For those of you who don't know what this is, it concerns female masturbation. In this realm, the realm of female masturbation, there are two major players: manual stimulation with just the hands and manual stimulation with the aide of a vibrator. Of the women who have discussed this part of their lives with me, I have found a consistent theme and that is a fear of the vibrator.
This fear does not stem from the vibrator itself, but rather from a dependence on the vibrator. It seems that while a vibrator provides an easier and faster route to climax, these women, the ones I have talked to, almost prefer not to use it. This confuses me; I know that if there was a way that I could learn faster or build muscle faster with the aid of a small device, I would certainly not hesitate to you use it. So, naturally, I question this fear and ask for an explanation. The reasoning most often provided: no one wants to end up in a situation where they do not have a vibrator on hand and discover that they can no longer get "off" without one.
I had always thought this idea to be quite silly ... until I met jQuery. Then, suddenly, there was something very real about it. jQuery provided me with a way to write really powerful Javascript code with very little effort. What used to take me a good deal of time writing user defined functions, wiring event hooks, and lots of Google searching, suddenly took only a few seconds with a jQuery selector or two, an event binder, and an each() method call.
It was just too easy. And, after the initial high wore off, the panic set in - what if jQuery was my "Vibrator Dilemma"? What if its awesome feature set and ease-of-use slowly eroded my ability to write powerful Javascript on my own (without the help of jQuery). I finally understood what these woman were saying; sometimes (maybe a lot of the time), what we can do on our own isn't as good as what we can do with help and that loss of independence (for lack of a better term) is very scary. So scary, in fact, that we then choose to perform at a sub-optimal level just so we can say that we did it on our own.
Well, not me - not this time at least. I know that jQuery is awesome. I know that jQuery allows me to write better code than I could have written before I met it. I am OK with this and I embrace it. There is no dilemma to be had - jQuery is easier, faster, better and I will use it. It is simply "the way".
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Go back to your lame vibrator and leave the jQuery programming to the real men! :) Thanks though for posting this bit of news since I really didn't expect the 1.2 release till probably the end of the month. I didn't think it would be a few days after the blog announcement. I'll upgrade my library tonight and see if I'll be using any of the new features.
Posted by Javier Julio on Sep 12, 2007 at 10:16 AM
You might want to run the "jQuery, the last vibrator you'll ever need" slogan past the jquery marketing team dude. You might be onto something there. :)
Posted by Todd Rafferty on Sep 12, 2007 at 10:31 AM
Thanks for this lovely analogy that I will share at many social events from now on, as well as pointing me to this tool that for me was a first getting to know, and will probably fall in love with as well.
Cheers!
Pablo
Posted by Pablo Vos on Sep 12, 2007 at 10:33 AM
Just hope you guys like jQuery as much as I do :)
Posted by Ben Nadel on Sep 12, 2007 at 10:35 AM
Ben,
You need help: http://www.sa.org
:)
Posted by Tony Petruzzi on Sep 12, 2007 at 10:42 AM
Ha ha... if I needed their help, I wouldn't spend so much time in front of a computer :)
Posted by Ben Nadel on Sep 12, 2007 at 10:48 AM
Yeah, make sure that the jquery marketing team dude knows about it. Who is that guy anyways? ;)
Posted by Rey Bango on Sep 12, 2007 at 11:33 AM
If you think you're excited now, wait until this Sunday when they release the first version of the jQuery user Interface toolset.
Posted by Andy Matthews on Sep 12, 2007 at 11:36 AM
@Ben
What?!? No banner ad for this? I would have surely thought you would have made a banner of a vibrator with JQuery written across it. Maybe do it in flash and have it actually vibrate when you do a mouse over /w some moaning sounds!
LOL
Posted by Dustin on Sep 12, 2007 at 11:38 AM
@Dustin,
That makes the monkeys running around in my head want to work over time... I will see what I can come up with :)
Posted by Ben Nadel on Sep 12, 2007 at 11:42 AM
@Andy
You got it right on the dot man. After reading this I wasn't so excited about jQuery 1.2 anymore. I've known they were going to revamp the UI plugin for jQuery and was wondering when it would come around. I didn't expect it so soon. Some very nice surprises.
@Dustin
A great idea and with Ben's talents he can create something like that. It sure would be funny maybe inappropriate but I'm sure the guys in the jQuery would love it and get a laugh out of it.
Posted by Javier Julio on Sep 12, 2007 at 11:42 AM
Some women have never had an orgasm until they got a vibrator. For them, it was a new an unexplored world. That's me with JavaScript. I could never write decent JavaScript, and now I can achieve awesome results without having to learn to program.
Programmers (most of them) don't write in assembly language anymore. With each new programming paradigm, it makes better user experience available with less and less programming knowledge. But this just raises the bar, so that people want to achieve more and more. So the programmers can do more to get their fix.
So the bar is being raised. To get your fix now, you need to create complex jQuery plugins...not just JavaScript basics.
Posted by Glen Lipka on Sep 12, 2007 at 11:58 AM
@Javier: hmmm. I'm thinking no. ;)
Rey
jQuery Project Team
Posted by Rey Bango on Sep 12, 2007 at 11:58 AM
I've heard that jQuery 1.3 will require 2 'D' size batteries to fully utilize all it's goodness.
Posted by Jim Priest on Sep 12, 2007 at 12:01 PM
@Rey
I agree definitely no but I'd love an opportunity to poke fun at Ben for making a banner like that! By the way great job on jQuery Rey. I'll be trying out 1.2 tonight and hopefully next week I'll get a chance to try out the UI plugin. Keep up the great work!
Posted by Javier Julio on Sep 12, 2007 at 12:03 PM
@Javier: Thanks man!! :D
Posted by Rey Bango on Sep 12, 2007 at 1:52 PM
If the vibrator doesn't do the trick, try whips and handcuffs, or failing that, hot wax.
Posted by Slava Pestov on Sep 13, 2007 at 3:51 AM
That was really unexpected.
Posted by Sean on Oct 24, 2007 at 5:38 AM