Sorry if this sounds naive, but... do people still use jQuery for new projects? I was genuinely surprised to see it was getting releases anymore, given how much of its functionality can be done with native JavaScript now.
Yes. Technically you could always use native JS in place of jQuery and have the same functionality. But jQuery's power came from abstracting away some of the messier and more complicated elements and giving developers a more intuitive set of tools. Some part of this are less necessary today than when jQuery v1 came out (like `querySelectorAll()` vs `$()`), but other parts are still enormously helpful (like `$.ajax()`). So like always, it's a trade off. But it's still one that comes up as worth it as often as not.
`$.ajax()` has been replaced entirely by `fetch()` [0]. The only remaining use-case I can see for jquery is the animation capabilities but even that can be replaced with animejs [1].
[0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Fetch_API/U...
That's only mostly true. If you are working with anything that needs to support older browsers (which, for example, is unfortunately still a requirement in many medical, government, and financial sectors), then you can't use `fetch()`.