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If you went with Backbone.js (or similar) you would have been better off than the standard bag of jQuery methods. Curious what you ended up going with back then

by lojack 10y ago

If you went with Backbone.js (or similar) you would have been better off than the standard bag of jQuery methods. Curious what you ended up going with back then? Most projects I start these days tend to use React. I've looked into Vue, and liked what I saw. I also maintain a 5 year old project built with Backbone.js (by someone else) and I'd say it checks all the boxes for maintainability, stability, and testability. It has its flaws -- as any old codebase will -- but I'm happy they went with Backbone. I'd probably be saying the same thing for the other frameworks mentioned. Its easy to point out all the flaws from our past. Much more difficult to predict how thing will be in the future. Making a choice now, even the wrong one, is almost always better than clinging to things that are known to not work.

patates 10y ago
Exactly! So many people assume that the emerging of a new "best" way of writing front-end software renders all previous architectural decisions wrong. It even came to the point that some people reject using any frameworks or even a helper like jQuery and "take everything under their control" because they don't want to deal with "deprecated" libraries. Meanwhile, a small development team I know keeps using Knockout.js successfully in huge projects.
- aplummer 10y ago
  Yeah, anyone who rejects jQuery in ie8 legacy rejects has screws loose, or a massive ego problem.
- joquarky 10y ago
  I'm a web dev since the beginning. Of all the frameworks I've worked with, Knockout has the most utility for the least obtrusiveness.
tambourine_man 10y ago
Still rocking jQuery whenever I can. It can grow into an unmaintainable mess, sure, but it doesn't have to. First time I saw jQuery: Crazy easy and widely compatible, Ajax, selectors and animation - sold! First time I saw React: Split your UI into components, write them in JavaScript (with optionally mixed in markup to make it more tolerable) - Hmm O…K…. Managing UI state can be complicated, but to me, not enough to justify the amount of complexity and abstraction added by React. If you organize your code so that only a single function can act on a specific block and emulate OO/namespaces in CSS, instead of attaching functionality to every click and overwriting stuff with !important, you'll be fine. It's not that hard, but maybe that's just me. It's nice that the Virtual DOM is really fast (even thought I don't usually need that much speed) and that I can render it on the server (even though you can probably kiss your semantic markup good bye) and one way data binding seems a good idea, but again, I don't think it's a problem I have.
simplify 10y ago
The "jQuery === bad code structure" association is strong, even today. But the fact is you can write good code with jQuery – without Backbone – just fine. Most all web developers of that day were new to programming (experienced folk didn't take JS seriously), so naturally they did not know how to write well-designed software. The benefit of Backbone was not Backbone itself – it was the community push for thinking about code structure in general.

by lojack 10y ago

patates 10y ago

Exactly! So many people assume that the emerging of a new "best" way of writing front-end software renders all previous architectural decisions wrong. It even came to the point that some people reject using any frameworks or even a helper like jQuery and "take everything under their control" because they don't want to deal with "deprecated" libraries. Meanwhile, a small development team I know keeps using Knockout.js successfully in huge projects.

aplummer 10y ago
Yeah, anyone who rejects jQuery in ie8 legacy rejects has screws loose, or a massive ego problem.
joquarky 10y ago
I'm a web dev since the beginning. Of all the frameworks I've worked with, Knockout has the most utility for the least obtrusiveness.

tambourine_man 10y ago

Still rocking jQuery whenever I can. It can grow into an unmaintainable mess, sure, but it doesn't have to. First time I saw jQuery: Crazy easy and widely compatible, Ajax, selectors and animation - sold! First time I saw React: Split your UI into components, write them in JavaScript (with optionally mixed in markup to make it more tolerable) - Hmm O…K…. Managing UI state can be complicated, but to me, not enough to justify the amount of complexity and abstraction added by React. If you organize your code so that only a single function can act on a specific block and emulate OO/namespaces in CSS, instead of attaching functionality to every click and overwriting stuff with !important, you'll be fine. It's not that hard, but maybe that's just me. It's nice that the Virtual DOM is really fast (even thought I don't usually need that much speed) and that I can render it on the server (even though you can probably kiss your semantic markup good bye) and one way data binding seems a good idea, but again, I don't think it's a problem I have.

simplify 10y ago

The "jQuery === bad code structure" association is strong, even today. But the fact is you can write good code with jQuery – without Backbone – just fine. Most all web developers of that day were new to programming (experienced folk didn't take JS seriously), so naturally they did not know how to write well-designed software. The benefit of Backbone was not Backbone itself – it was the community push for thinking about code structure in general.