Of course KO and backbone are just javascript. They are mature(ish), popular, well-known libraries that do very useful things. They aren't "code organization &

Of course KO and backbone are just javascript. They are mature(ish), popular, well-known libraries that do very useful things. They aren't "code organization & maintenance enablers" (based on what I believe you mean by that). You could of course update the DOM in real-time without KO, but KO basically provides a lovely declarative DSL for how to do that. Why throw that away? I don't know what your last comment meant. KO binds values to DOM elements, so when you update the value, the DOM element instantly changes. If you saw the Meteor video, its just like that.