you can use following helper function:
function content(divSelector, value) {
document.querySelector(divSelector).innerHTML = value;
}
content('#content',"whatever");
Where #content must be valid CSS selector
Additionaly - today (2018.07.01) I made speed comparison for jquery and pure js solutions ( MacOs High Sierra 10.13.3 on Chrome 67.0.3396.99 (64-bit), Safari 11.0.3 (13604.5.6), Firefox 59.0.2 (64-bit) ):
document.getElementById("content").innerHTML = "whatever"; // pure JS
$('#content').html('whatever'); // jQuery
The jquery solution was slower than pure js solution: 69% on firefox, 61% on safari, 56% on chrome. The fastest browser for pure js was firefox with 560M operations per second, the second was safari 426M, and slowest was chrome 122M.
So the winners are pure js and firefox (3x faster than chrome!)