jQuery vs Underscore

Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!

jQuery

190K
66.7K
+ 1
6.6K
Underscore

1.7K
588
+ 1
290
Add tool

Underscore vs jQuery: What are the differences?

## Introduction
In web development, both Underscore and jQuery are popular JavaScript libraries that aid in simplifying and enhancing coding tasks. However, they have key differences that set them apart from each other.

1. **Syntax**: Underscore uses a functional programming syntax, making it more suitable for developers familiar with functional programming concepts. On the other hand, jQuery employs a more imperative approach, making it accessible to developers with varying programming backgrounds.
2. **File Size**: Underscore is smaller in size compared to jQuery, making it a more lightweight option for projects that require minimal library resources.
3. **API Design**: Underscore focuses on providing utility functions for common tasks like manipulating arrays, objects, and functions. In contrast, jQuery primarily concentrates on DOM manipulation and event handling, making it particularly useful for interactive web applications.
4. **Dependencies**: Underscore has no external dependencies, which means it can be easily integrated into projects without worrying about conflicting dependencies. In contrast, jQuery has a few dependencies, such as Sizzle for selector engine, which may require additional management.
5. **Community Support**: jQuery has a larger and more established community compared to Underscore. This means that there are more resources, plugins, and documentation available for developers using jQuery, making it easier to find solutions and assistance when needed.
6. **Browser Compatibility**: jQuery is well-known for its compatibility with older browsers, ensuring that web applications built with jQuery function correctly across a wide range of browsers. Underscore might not provide the same level of seamless compatibility with older browsers.

In Summary, Underscore and jQuery have distinct differences in terms of syntax, file size, API design, dependencies, community support, and browser compatibility, making them suitable for different types of web development projects.
Decisions about jQuery and Underscore
Malek Boubakri
Web developer at Quicktext · | 0 upvote · 208.2K views

The project is a web gadget previously made using vanilla script and JQuery, It is a part of the "Quicktext" platform and offers an in-app live & customizable messaging widget. We made that remake with React eco-system and Typescript and we're so far happy with results. We gained tons of TS features, React scaling & re-usabilities capabilities and much more!

What do you think?

See more
kazi shahin
CTO at Blubird Interactive Ltd. · | 3 upvotes · 101.2K views

I've an eCommerce platform building using Laravel, MySQL and jQuery. It's working good and if anyone become interested, I just deploy the entire source cod e in environment / Hosting. This is not a good model of course. Because everyone ask for small or large amount of change and I had to do this. Imagine when there will be 100 separate deploy and I had to manage 100 separate source. So How do I make my system architecture so that I'll have a core / base source code. To make any any change / update on specific deployment, it will be theme / plugin / extension based . Also if I introduce an API layer then I could handle the Web, Mobile App and POS as well ? Is the API should be part of source code or a individual single API and all the deployment will use that API ?

See more
Manatsawin Hanmongkolchai
Chose
jQueryjQuery
over
ReactReact
in

When I started TipMe, I thought about using React frontend. At the end, plain, simple jQuery won.

I had to build this iteration of the site fast and by using jQuery I could keep using Django as a full stack development tool. One important point is Django form (combined with Django Bootstrap3) means that I don't have to reinvent form rendering again, which will be the case with React.

Over time, more interactivity seeped into the site and React components start making its way into the codebase.

I now wish the site is built using React so that I could add more user friendly interfaces easier (no more fuddling with server states) but I would still say jQuery helped me get past those early days.

See more

Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) provides standard data objects in JSON format for the healthcare industry. Since JSON objects are hierarchical and tree-like, we had a need to defensively 'pluck' fields from our JSON objects and do lots of mapping. We tried jQuery and Underscore and a few other technologies like FHIRPath; but Lodash has been the most well supported, works in the most contexts, has the cleanest syntax, etc. We particularly like the ES6 version of Lodash, where we can import the method names directly, without resorting to * or _ syntax. We got hooked on the 'get' function to defensively pluck fields from objects without crashing our user interface, and have found countless uses for the other lodash functions throughout our apps. Lodash is great for developing and optimizing algorithms.

See more
Get Advice from developers at your company using StackShare Enterprise. Sign up for StackShare Enterprise.
Learn More
Pros of jQuery
Pros of Underscore
  • 1.3K
    Cross-browser
  • 957
    Dom manipulation
  • 809
    Power
  • 660
    Open source
  • 610
    Plugins
  • 459
    Easy
  • 395
    Popular
  • 350
    Feature-rich
  • 281
    Html5
  • 227
    Light weight
  • 93
    Simple
  • 84
    Great community
  • 79
    CSS3 Compliant
  • 69
    Mobile friendly
  • 67
    Fast
  • 43
    Intuitive
  • 42
    Swiss Army knife for webdev
  • 35
    Huge Community
  • 11
    Easy to learn
  • 4
    Clean code
  • 3
    Because of Ajax request :)
  • 2
    Powerful
  • 2
    Nice
  • 2
    Just awesome
  • 2
    Used everywhere
  • 1
    Improves productivity
  • 1
    Javascript
  • 1
    Easy Setup
  • 1
    Open Source, Simple, Easy Setup
  • 1
    It Just Works
  • 1
    Industry acceptance
  • 1
    Allows great manipulation of HTML and CSS
  • 1
    Widely Used
  • 1
    I love jQuery
  • 85
    Utility
  • 55
    Simple
  • 40
    Functional programming
  • 32
    Fast
  • 28
    Open source
  • 20
    Backbone
  • 16
    Javascript
  • 8
    Annotated source code
  • 6
    Library

Sign up to add or upvote prosMake informed product decisions

Cons of jQuery
Cons of Underscore
  • 6
    Large size
  • 5
    Sometimes inconsistent API
  • 5
    Encourages DOM as primary data source
  • 2
    Live events is overly complex feature
    Be the first to leave a con

    Sign up to add or upvote consMake informed product decisions

    What is jQuery?

    jQuery is a cross-platform JavaScript library designed to simplify the client-side scripting of HTML.

    What is Underscore?

    A JavaScript library that provides a whole mess of useful functional programming helpers without extending any built-in objects.

    Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!

    What companies use jQuery?
    What companies use Underscore?
    See which teams inside your own company are using jQuery or Underscore.
    Sign up for StackShare EnterpriseLearn More

    Sign up to get full access to all the companiesMake informed product decisions

    What tools integrate with jQuery?
    What tools integrate with Underscore?

    Sign up to get full access to all the tool integrationsMake informed product decisions

    Blog Posts

    What are some alternatives to jQuery and Underscore?
    Bootstrap
    Bootstrap is the most popular HTML, CSS, and JS framework for developing responsive, mobile first projects on the web.
    JavaScript
    JavaScript is most known as the scripting language for Web pages, but used in many non-browser environments as well such as node.js or Apache CouchDB. It is a prototype-based, multi-paradigm scripting language that is dynamic,and supports object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles.
    React
    Lots of people use React as the V in MVC. Since React makes no assumptions about the rest of your technology stack, it's easy to try it out on a small feature in an existing project.
    AngularJS
    AngularJS lets you write client-side web applications as if you had a smarter browser. It lets you use good old HTML (or HAML, Jade and friends!) as your template language and lets you extend HTML’s syntax to express your application’s components clearly and succinctly. It automatically synchronizes data from your UI (view) with your JavaScript objects (model) through 2-way data binding.
    jQuery Mobile
    jQuery Mobile is a HTML5-based user interface system designed to make responsive web sites and apps that are accessible on all smartphone, tablet and desktop devices.
    See all alternatives