To be honest I haven't looked very deeply at the example. However, I recently started working on a backbone project and while it's definitely overkill for basic

To be honest I haven't looked very deeply at the example. However, I recently started working on a backbone project and while it's definitely overkill for basic stuff, if your data visualizations and paths become more complex then it definitely helps you make sense of all the stuff going on. Also, a custom solution is good and might possibly work better and be smaller/more-efficient/etc. However, the one benefit of frameworks that's often overlooked is the fact that other people might work on the same thing. If I, as developer X work on a project and develop it in backbone then it's likely that developer Y (a backbone developer) can come in and continue working on it. However, if I were to write a custom solution it could take developer Y a while to get into it. For example, I can picture how complex the Google Analytics dashboard code must be. If google invited me to work on it, I would have to learn whatever it is that they use to do stuff like that. If it used backbone, I would probably pick it up faster. Just an example. But as code bases get larger, structure becomes really important. I think that's really where backbone comes in. Your points are of-course valid too, just wanted to share :)