WordPress without jQuery - Is this possible?

Question

Relatively new to WordPress development. I am creating a new custom theme from scratch and would really like to just write vanilla javaScript without slowing things down with all the bloat of jQuery. I was thinking I could just simply dequeue jQuery.

Would this break anything behind the scenes for WordPress to function or is there no dependency?

Answer 1

jQuery is unlikely to slow you down as it's simply a bunch of optimized DOM selectors/DOM methods/utility functions.

You should be able to proceed with Vanilla JS unless any plugin or library you are using depend on it.