jQuery does not purport to be a JavaScript application development suite, it is a common DOM API and some widgets, nothing more nothing less anyone trying to make jQuery something else is doing it wrong. If you want to build applications like GMail or a trader platform you need to be looking at a comprehensive JavaScript application development toolkit like Dojo or bolting on complementary products to jQuery like Backbone, RequireJS, and underscore. Even then Dojo has more maturity is this space, there are most certainly two levels of Javascript development in the industry, the "lets just sprinkle some in" crowd who rightfully so are using jQuery for it's ease of adoption and then those of us who are writing full on JavaScript application as the face to a RESTfull Service Oriented Architecture, the latter should not be solutioning in jQuery, if they are they are doing a disservice to their clients. I personally use Dojo for my application architecture and jQuery on top of it, to take advantage of all of it's ready built widgets.