I have to say, I don't know that much of jQuery. I'm not a frontend guy, so I can use it, it's simple, but my vanilla JavaScript is certainly stronger (because I toyed with it to learn about the prototype chain and node.js).

I don't understand this website and I don't understand your comment too much. Yes, I think it's a bad idea to use jQuery if you have no idea about how JavaScript works.

That being said, I don't think anybody thinks you can't do do every-single-thing in vanilla js. I mean, it's written in javascript, nothing else.

The point of libraries is to make things easier. I'm not convinced by the majority of the examples shown. Why wouldn't I want to write to clearer, shorter code? (The exception being higher order functions like map/filter/foreach.. why the hell is that part of jQuery? edit: IE support, okay.)

Generally I would agree that adding useless libraries and frameworks is a bad idea, but jQuery? Most of the time, those couple kB are already cached anyways.

Are you just learning C or programming in general?

If C, others have suggested good choices.

If programming, don't use an IDE at first. I remember when I first switched to IDE, it felt like cheating. It could do all this things for me, but I already understood what's happening. I think that's the better road. Start with a simple text editor and terminal.