Choosing the Right JavaScript Framework

IMO Backbone is overly complex and it's a lot harder to pervasively use data binding to templates. Didn't really feel like I realized huge productivity gains with that technique until I met Angular.

First time page load is heavy, yes. Then after that, it's much faster, as all the server has to hand over is JSON, which can turn a 150-500ms page load to a 15-90ms page load.

Furthermore, it allows for easier data portability- when you can 'collect' data as you go and have API calls that much faster, it's okay to make more expressive UI decisions.

Not to mention, at the end of the day I like having a separation between my frontend and backend. Frontend testing from Rails or Django always feels a little dirty, a little off, and in many cases is even a discouraged practice("If you need to test your view, you should be using a helper" logic). I also like not ever having to make model method choices based on what my frontend desires might be- the concerns can be completely separate.

And lastly, I frankly can do a lot more interesting things much faster in Ember than I can in Rails from a UI standpoint. Ember turned my favorite part of software development, UI design, into the joy it used to be when I was just using pad and paper.

> If you're just getting started with frameworks, I'd recommend Backbone.

Backbone only is not enough to do any serious kind of work today.One always end up with tons of plugins making it as complicated as EmberJS or AngularJS. There is no serious view layer,so one has to use React,Vue,or Ractive. The router sucks,frankly,so one has to replace it. The model layer doesnt handle relationships between model,so one ends up using something else...

There is nothing good in Backbone today frankly.It was one of the first successfull "clientside" framework ,yet refused to evolve(like underscore or coffeescript today),refused to incorporate good ideas from third parties that would have made it still relevant today.

There is no future in Backbone.Maybe there is still a place for a Backbone like framework that would still be based on jQuery and would incorporate a better view layer. But Backbone itself is dead.

I personally prefer AngularJS ,not because of its directives but because I strongly believe in IoC containers over any other way to build and wire objects. But I think EmberJS is as good.

How could I do something like http://ichord.github.com/At.js in React?

Marionette has a great community, and is super easy to get help with things. I've been involved in the marionette community for a while and it has always been absolutely wonderful. You can almost always get help directly from the core team on their gitter chat here (https://gitter.im/marionettejs/backbone.marionette), and I have met in person with all of the core team members at meetups, they are very smart, dedicated and friendly.

While angular has tons of beginner hype because of the bootstrap effect (don't learn a technology, just put it in your html tags!), I've found that marionette tends to attract a more mature developer crowd, and as a framework is much better suited to building large and complex apps anyway because of the strict modularity and separation of concerns. I say this from experience both seeing and working on very large and complex apps with marionette. And if you don't believe me, ask some of the developers at Etsy, who build with marionette.

The community is a hell of a lot smaller than something like angular, but I see that as a huge benefit, especially when that means no proliferation of beginner problems, and easy access to the core team for help or feedback.