React vs. Backbone in 2025
backbonenotbad.hyperclay.com
React vs. Backbone in 2025
1–10 of 245 posts
Re: React vs. Backbone in 2025
#2Components don't live in a vacuum. Which is why comparing one-offs like this make little practical sense in the long run.
Re: React vs. Backbone in 2025
#3I think about React vs Backbone from time to time, too, but have drawn different conclusions.
Backbone was one of my first "JS frameworks". I thought it was neat, but when React came out, I thought "oh, something actually useful, unlike Backbone, which is mostly application framework glue code, but doesn't actually do all that much for me. Concrete huge wins for me from React were:
- Not having to regularly touch the DOM
- Reactive state management
These two things not only made my life as a programmer much easier, but they also developed my ability to build software that wasn't spaghetti.
Re: React vs. Backbone in 2025
#4It feels to me that this specific toy example would be even simpler in vanilla JS. A comparison with a serious, large SPA would be more fair and more informative for comparing frameworks.
Re: React vs. Backbone in 2025
#5For something this simple that doesn't need to grow or interact with the rest of the system why would you need Backbone or React? And why would you expect any version to be shorter as it's mostly just the HTML and the data.
I remember writing Backbone applications with lots of deeply nested components. Trying to keep all the state in sync and reacting to events. It certainly wasn't simple and straightforward.
This just feels like a very silly article.
Re: React vs. Backbone in 2025
#6I'm ready for all the "what about x" comments, because I'm going to check them all. I'm choosing React over anything else right now because of how well my DevEx has been.
I can say the same about Angular, you really need to know how Angular works to know what you're doing. That's the whole issue with these frameworks. At least React doesn't try to abstract too much
Re: React vs. Backbone in 2025
#7I'm ready for all the "what about x" comments, because I'm going to check them all. I'm choosing React over anything else right now because of how well my DevEx has been. I can say the same about Angular, you really need to know how Angular works to know what you're doing. That's the whole issue with these frameworks. At least React doesn't try to abstract too much
[dead]
Re: React vs. Backbone in 2025
#8Components don't live in a vacuum. Which is why comparing one-offs like this make little practical sense in the long run.
I totally agree - the example they give doesn't really need react OR backbone. You could just as easily show vanilla js as the 3rd example and wonder why you would ever even need a framework.
One off it seems fine, but a huge backbone app gets really complicated for me. Show me a huge react app vs a huge backbone app and I will understand the react much more quickly.
"It's verbose, sure, but there's no mystery. A junior developer can trace exactly what happens and when. The mental model is straightforward: "when this happens, do this."
I don't think that's true. A large backbone app has a lot of code that you'll have to trace through multiple files in different directories - the template are here, the functions are there but the endpoints are over there and... maybe it's just the backbone app I have to update but it's much more confusing and abstracted than the react app I also have to update. And don't even get me started with adding a new component. I can drop a new component into the react app and import it anywhere and it's super fast and easy... backbone not so much.
Re: React vs. Backbone in 2025
#9Try typing a full word into each password box.
Then, try to undo (Cmd/Ctrl-Z, etc).
Backbone's undoes the typing, one letter at a time. React's behaves correctly and undoes the whole word.
Good job, React (I still see "controlled" inputs on the web today falling prey to the former)
Re: React vs. Backbone in 2025
#10For something this simple that doesn't need to grow or interact with the rest of the system why would you need Backbone or React? And why would you expect any version to be shorter as it's mostly just the HTML and the data. I remember writing Backbone applications with lots of deeply nested components. Trying to keep all the state in sync and reacting to events. It certainly wasn't simple and straightforward. This ju…
[deleted]