Nowadays current browsers implement so many HTML5 APIs natively, that it is possible to write JavaScript applications without needing jQuery nor other polyfill libraries that emulate those APIs.
That was one the main topics discussed by Manuel Lemos and Arturs Sosins in the episode 74 of the Lately in JavaScript podcast.
They also talked about the mo.js library for Easy Web motion using SVG, using pre-compiled frameworks with just the parts you need, combining emoji Unicode characters to create new emojis, efficient aysnchronous loading of JavaScript for modern browsers, and realtime image scaling using the CSS zoom property.
This article contains a transcript and a 4 minute video summary of the podcast.
Listen to the podcast now, or watch the hangout video, or read the transcript text to learn more about these and other interesting JavaScript topics discussed in this podcast.