If you're a hacker and haven't tried jQuery, you are truly missing out. It is one of the most fun technologies I ran into last year.

Fun is the key to your point. I hated working with JavaScript before and now because of jQuery, I prefer it.

Any comments as to why it's better than Prototype? I've been dabbling into that for some simple tasks.

See the "Why would I use this library over other others?" section. But chaining is the best reason. The jquery ecosystem is also growing very quickly. You can always give jquery a try alongside Prototype...just set the noConflict to some other identifier since by default jquery also uses $.

seconded.

A 12 year old explains jQuery at Google:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mwKq7_JlS8

Here's another good resource that's not in the article (but is in the comments): http://www.learningjquery.com/