The DOM isn’t slow, you are.

[rich]

Edited post-HN: Wow, big response! WARNING: May contain traces of opinion, and naughty words like ‘shit’ and ‘internet explorer’.

TL;DR:

• Use jQuery for what it is meant for, not everything.
• If you do stupid shit with the DOM, it will perform poorly.
• If your web-app is slow, it’s because of your code, not the DOM.
  

Whenever the native versus web argument arises, the biggest issue people usually have with web is performance. They quote figures like ‘60fps‘ and ‘scroll speed’, and, back when browsers were just getting good, i would say “OK, there’s work to be done, but they will get there”, which was met with anything from “Yeah maybe” to “No it will never happen!”.

http://blog.korynunn.com/javascript/the-dom-isnt-slow-you-are/