During the last several months of RightJS promotion, the absolute hit among the questions of 'what?' and 'why?' was understandable the question of what is the difference between RightJS and jQuery.
There were lots of talks about RightJS speed and then more about speed, and then we had some abstract talks about its philosophy and its way among the others and we also have that simple comparison page.
And what I find important in a brainwashing process is systematicness and methodicalness. We did some talks on an abstract matter, we did some talks on the opposite side of scale with performance tests, now lets touch something real. Something in the middle. And probably summarize some previous talks.
So here it is, your next session; my top 5 as I see it at this morning.
1. Syntax
When I'm saying "jQuery is like PHP", first of all I mean the nature of its syntax. When you boil it down to the essence, both of them are just collections of helper functions. And as PHP defines a new kinda language upon C, almost the same way jQuery defines a new language upon JavaScript.
RightJS on the other hand is built right into JavaScript itself. In 90% it is the good old JavaScript, where we bring features from later JavaScript specifications and spice it with some standard features from more serious dynamic languages like Ruby and Python.
As the result, when you learn jQuery, you mostly learn jQuery, I've seen many nice fellas around, who know jQuery quite well, but stuck when they needed to do simplest things in pure JavaScript.
When you learn RightJS, you learn the actual JavaScript, yes we have some funny shortcuts and features that make mature web-developers happily giggling like school girls, but all of them are built upon JavaScript standards.
RightJS makes you do the things in JavaScript and do them right. And because of that, whatever the future brings, your knowledge and skills will remain with you.
2. The Actual STL
When I read someone saying "jQuery is the JavaScript STL", it usually makes me laughing so much, that my neighbors probably think that I've finally went nuts and going to blow off the Kremlin.
Now, don't get me wrong, I have no problems with jQuery's popularity and I respect that. Well, at least, as long as it keeps me away from people who doesn't know the difference between popularity and standards.
jQuery is a DOM DSL at best. First of all it doesn't have anything to do with JavaScript itself, because it's a DOM wrapper, secondly there is nothing standard about jQuery in terms of JavaScript. Take for example a look at the .each() function where the arguments are in just the opposite order than they are in the JavaScript own Array#forEach method.
If you need something that actually follows the standards, you should take a look at RightJS. It brings many standard features from later JavaScript specifications, plus many other none the less standard features from server-side programming languages, for example methods like String#startsWith or Array#random.
The DOM interfaces are just one part of RightJS and it has much more. We even have a build of RightJS without DOM features which you can use on the server-side with Node.js or say writing scripts in Qt.
3. Multiple Paradigms
As jQuery is simply a wrapper over DOM interface, it doesn't give you any alternatives but use its own way of dealing with the things. Yes, you might imagine that you're practicing Lisp in JavaScript, but the reality is that 99% of jQuery code (including jQuery itself) is just a spaghettish pieces of crap.
RightJS on the other hand is not just a DOM wrapper, it is a multi-paradigm framework. We have an advanced OOP stack that allows you to write clean and properly designed applications that are easy to support and refactor. We also have most of the standard FP features, like binding, curring, chains and stuff. We also have some standard native units extensions that are most helpful in procedural programming.
RightJS gives you options and flexibility, so that you could deal with your work in the most effective way.
4. Open Sandbox
Maybe jQuery forces you to write a spaghetti code, but there is a bigger problem. Most of jQuery and its plugins code are closed behind anonymous scopes that makes it impossible to change them part by part.
You know, people are actually already invented OOP, inheritance, functionality injection and other fancy stuff to deal with those sort of things. And that's why in RightJS we have radically opposite architecture.
RightJS is built using proper OOP structures and modules and it represents an open sandbox where virtually everything is accessible and customizable. You can easily bend and tune RightJS for your needs, changing and replacing its parts, adding your own features, methods and so one.
And because of that it is super easy to write any sort of plugins and extensions for RightJS. Take for example a look at the right-rails plugin; couple of dozens of lines of code and RightJS API was completely transformed to have the naming system of Ruby, with underscored syntax and other features.
RightJS gives you the same flexibility and hacker's joy as Ruby or Python.
5. Official Plugins
I'm sure you know what they say "jQuery has a gazillion of plugins that will do everything for you". It kinda reminds me other folks who was saying "Everything in Java has already been done".
Normal people usually add on that "badly".
That gazillion of plugins has actually a pretty nasty back side. The problem is in the closed architecture and inflexibility. For every case there are usually half a dozen of implementations, and quite often the choice is like "bad, bad or bad?". At the end you might spend more time looking for a proper plugin than you could spend writing it yourself, and at the finish your app will look like a Frankenstein, all stitched of different parts.
Yes I know, I know, Frankenstein is a romantic figure in gothic culture, but there is so few romantic in supporting such an app.
With RightJS we don't have the luxury of too many plugins, but we have several good points on that matter too. First of all, many common and frequently used features that you have as plugins for jQuery, are already baked into the RightJS core, like for example, additional form features, Ajax via iframes functionality, cookies and stuff.
Then we have all the standard plugins, like D'n'D, JSON, Behaviors, plus most of the standard UI elements like Calendar, Autocompleter, Tabs, Lightbox, etc. already implemented and served in the official plugins repository.
And what's different about RightJS plugins is that all of them are implemented in the same way, using the same set of rules. All events handling, options, usage principles all are the same. So that if you had experience with one plugin, you will be familiar with the rest of them too.
Then all the plugins follow the open-sandbox principles of the RightJS Core. All of them are implemented using proper OOP approach and can be easily extended using inheritance, functionality injection or even monkey patching if you will.
This way you don't need a dozen of variations of the same plugin, you can easily tweak any standard one to do exactly what you need.
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