[rement]

You can define your own `$` function. This way you can have the clean code without the entire jQuery library

    function $(arg) {
        if (arg.charAt(0) == "#") {
            // HTML spec does not support ids to start with numbers [0]
            // (you may not need this conditional on your website)
            return document.getElementById(arg.slice(1))
        }
        return document.querySelector(arg)
    }

Using this function you can select your comment with

    $('#27677234')

jQuery does add many extra features but if clean code is the only thing you are after there are other options.

[0] https://www.w3.org/TR/html4/types.html#type-id

[rement]

The HN js actually does just this. The file isn't very long but has some great functions at the top

https://news.ycombinator.com/hn.js

[gunapologist99]

True, but jQuery does a lot more than just id selection with $!

You could just extend the function to detect '.' vs '#', and do a class selection as well. And then add all of the selectors, subselectors, etc. (similar to, but far more powerful than css3's selectors.) and if you go far enough, you reinvented zepto (but still a long way from jQuery)

(actually, since $ is basically synonymous with jQuery, it'd probably be better to choose a different function name. too bad you can't define it as #(id).)

[recursive]

> True, but jQuery does a lot more than just id selection with $!

Yes. For a high degree of jquery-compatibility, you can use my library.

    const $ = document.querySelectorAll.bind(document);