It's not as bad as it looks since not all frameworks are equal. And I don't mean that in terms of quality, I mean they serve different purposes. For example, B

It's not as bad as it looks since not all frameworks are equal. And I don't mean that in terms of quality, I mean they serve different purposes. For example, Backbone already uses underscore and most people use it with jQuery. Coffeescript could be thrown into that combination as well as it's often used with jQuery. If you're coding for the desktop: jQuery + whatever application framework If you're coding for mobile: who knows, the choice here is more difficult.