A few years ago I might have agreed with your statement. It was the reason why I used Prototype instead of jQuery: prototype extends the HTMLElement classes directly instead of requiring a wrapper object like jQuery does.
But for various reasons I've switched to jQuery half a year ago, and I've never looked back. I can't say that the $() stuff is that much of an issue: it's clearly documented, easy to use, and I find the general DOM methods to be so useless that I'm only using the Prototype/jQuery methods 90% of the time anyway.
Your claim that it's an anti-pattern is way exaggerated.
It boils down to philosophy. Not all developers like the $() function. And it's not even specific to JQuery anymore, most libraries are doing this now. And for old school JavaScript developers, the "ninja-javascript" just doesn't sit right.
But for various reasons I've switched to jQuery half a year ago, and I've never looked back. I can't say that the $() stuff is that much of an issue: it's clearly documented, easy to use, and I find the general DOM methods to be so useless that I'm only using the Prototype/jQuery methods 90% of the time anyway.
Your claim that it's an anti-pattern is way exaggerated.