I still think the only reason to use jQuery is if you need IE11 support.

Otherwise, it's really simple to do all the things you mentioned without the complexity/heaviness of jQuery. Something like this:

``` const $ = s => { const r = {}; const els = [...document.querySelectorAll(s)]; r.text = t => (els.forEach(e => e.textContent = t), r); r.on = (ev, fn) => (els.forEach(e => e.addEventListener(ev, fn)), r); // ... return r; }; ```

Makes sense to me. Their motto was "Write less, do more", i.e. its conciseness was a major selling point, but that seems to have been forgotten now that its other selling points have been rendered obsolete.

I recall scripts ending up as little as one-third the size of vanilla JS, when rewritten using jQuery (where the website was otherwise using jQuery anyway).