As the author, I can assure you they are what I claim them to be: Points in the source code that identify some issue in some browser.
> The first two are actually the same thing,
Whoops! I thought I had removed the first one. Thanks for the bug report. The second is true, we received bug reports when we used we had issues with "use strict" in Firefox. I removed the first one anyway.
> The third is just noting that a jQuery function doesn't work in some contexts.
Wrong, it's a note about IE reporting the wrong value.
> The fourth and fifth (which, like #1, are two lines from the same comment) are just documenting a try/catch block because something jQuery is doing might throw an exception.
Because a particular browser has abnormal behaviour.
> The seventh is just an attribute named "support".
I thought removed that. It matched "support:", so you're still wrong.
> So far it looks like this isn't actually a list of reasons you will need jQuery
Accept that it does with the exception of two things I thought I had removed.
To be perfectly honest, I think it's a bit of a reach to suggest that I "probably need jQuery" because strict mode limitations caused problems within jQuery once upon a time (like, isn't that basically jQuery fixing a problem it introduced?), or because jQuery includes a try/catch block for a case that I will never come across in my entire life. jQuery certainly needs those, but I don't.
I don't know exactly how many of the issues are real. Since of the ones I listed only 3 of 5 were real even by your count, I'd be surprised if none of the others were at all questionable. But even if we accept that they're all real, hair-on-fire problems with vanilla JavaScript, I still think you're going too far. At the very least, jQuery is not the only library out there that handles compatibility issues. Lots of people who use other libraries do not "need jQuery."
Basically, I think you have made a much broader claim than you have been able to support so far. I'm absolutely not trying to knock the hard work of the jQuery team or suggest that jQuery is useless. If you had just said, "jQuery is still really useful. Here's a few things it does for you that you'd never think of," I'd have said, "Great post — thanks for reminding everyone." Instead, you took a very hard line that came off as pretty combative, but your supporting examples were really shaky. So I disagreed.
> To be perfectly honest, I think it's a bit of a reach to suggest that I "probably need jQuery" because strict mode limitations caused problems within jQuery once upon a time (like, isn't that basically jQuery fixing a problem it introduced?),
No, the point was that it highlights an issue that exists with some browser.
Also, I didn't name this thread, notice in my gist it doesn't say anything about needing anything. I was merely presenting facts.
> I'd be surprised if none of the others were at all questionable.
If you'd like to spend the time going through each one of them with me, we can meet on IRC and work through them all. We might even be productive in eliminating some unnecessary code if we find issues that no longer exist in a browser's current and last current release. Let me know?
To your last point, I again, I didn't name or post this thread. Did you read what I wrote in the gist? I think you can't really argue with this:
"The following links will bring you to line in the jQuery (current master, is a 2.1.x build with no oldIE-specific code) source above. The line (and probably adjacent lines) will identify some existing browser issue that jQuery must account for when providing an API for consistent browser/DOM programming semantics."
That's all I said. So are we square? Wanna work on these with me? I'm a nice guy, I promise.
I read line 255 the same as chc: that the jQuery function fails in certain cases with IE8. It appears the corresponding bug (mentioned in the comment) supports this reading: http://bugs.jquery.com/ticket/2968
As the author, I can assure you they are what I claim them to be: Points in the source code that identify some issue in some browser.
> The first two are actually the same thing,
Whoops! I thought I had removed the first one. Thanks for the bug report. The second is true, we received bug reports when we used we had issues with "use strict" in Firefox. I removed the first one anyway.
> The third is just noting that a jQuery function doesn't work in some contexts.
Wrong, it's a note about IE reporting the wrong value.
> The fourth and fifth (which, like #1, are two lines from the same comment) are just documenting a try/catch block because something jQuery is doing might throw an exception.
Because a particular browser has abnormal behaviour.
> The seventh is just an attribute named "support".
I thought removed that. It matched "support:", so you're still wrong.
> So far it looks like this isn't actually a list of reasons you will need jQuery
Accept that it does with the exception of two things I thought I had removed.
You owe me an apology.