Backbone.js Was The Future

It turned how people wrote frontend apps on its head by introducing something revolutionary to the browser. Something incredible called MVC.

While it's no longer the newest framework its impact is still felt to this day.

0:00 Intro
1:27 Setting context
2:11 Using jQuery for apps
3:10 Using React for apps
3:53 Backbone introduced MVC to the web
4:43 What is MVC?
5:48 Backbone Model
6:24 Moving data into JavaScript
7:45 What a Backbone app looks like
11:25 Small source code
12:00 The limitations of Backbone.View
14:20 Replacing DOM content is bad
16:05 Why Angular got popular
16:55 Wrap-up

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[alegherix]

Really interesting video, amazing how much the Webbdev eco system has developed over such a relative short period of time.

[charisginn]

starting a new job at a company that's converting from backbone to react. this was a great overview, thanks Harry!

[joshr]

Thanks for the trip down memory lane. I too started out with Backbone + jQuery. You got it 100% right with the View layer being Backbone's biggest flaw. I always thought it would be nice if you could just "re-render" your views, but like you pointed out that does not work with a simple template + insert HTML approach. Thankfully React came out and finally gave us that functional programing style view layer :)

[ybtech]

What about backbone, marionette? I was surprised to see you leave that out. Great info. Thanks.

[bryku]

MVC existed for a long time, but backbone was the first major framework that sort of did it for you... especially on the client side. Otherwise, most people were writing their own, so when backbone came out it gave us a standard to use, that made it much easier to work with teams.

[abdella]

Interesting. I'm interviewing for a front end react position and their application was created in backbone. This helped me understand why they're switching.
Also their backend is rails so makes sense why they chose backbone for the frontend.

[rick-says-hello-world]

The one thing that Backbone still did (does) better than any of the other major JS frameworks, was the ability to truly isolate your HTML from your JS. It took some discipline, but it was at least possible. Angular and many other frameworks add magic attributes into HTML, and React and others interleave HTML and code. But Backbone could be done where you had the opportunity to let a designer build or adjust your HTML and CSS without having to retain or reintroduce coding directives into it.

[shrooobdude]

Still use backbone+marionette at my job 😂😂

[muharief]

I 'm seeing this while i have successfully find a way to use ionic component with backbone. And its awesome. Well its marionette js actually that helped me a lot.

[errinwright]

So with React can you still use event listeners? Or does react handle everything with the onClick?

[teosurch]

Interesting, thanks for so cool historical video

[simomed]

one day someone will create a similar video called "React was the future" and it seems that programmers don't want to get it, they keep themselves busy learning the frameworks and the latest features... same for typescript, back in the day I was writing coffeescript and I was thinking I am smart, until the time came when everyone started to move away from it and I had to rewrite all my code back to vanilla JS, people these days are writing typescript for similar reasons... some day they will get the lesson :)

[djpunisha]

Interesting, so many new tools and frameworks but still, everything is made on the same principles, there were no limitations to develop React back in 2010 ...

[IlhanNegis]

aaa goodoldays, knockout.js knocked my socks

[spirobel]

I really enjoyed this video! Thanks! :-) More people should look at this and try building something with this. There are people out there that are still not sold on the idea of SPAs and hate on react. If you are not sold on SPA -> try to build something with backbone.js; if you are not sold on react -> try to build something with ember.js. Why are you omitting ember in favor of angular btw? ;-D

[djpunisha]

do AngularJS, spent some time with it, kinda miss it :)

[borjinator]

On the oldest anarchy server in Minecraft…