I don't get it - why are people so interested in Backbone.js? It seems to impose the same kind of baggage in interfaces/front-ends that operating systems impose.

Lots of configuration, tons of conventions to learn, lots of little files... personally, in Javascript I create classes of things I want to draw, and they know how to draw themselves. Is that so bad? Now... granted, I don't build CRUD apps. I do visualization and data apps. But... it just seems like Backbone.js puts me in Java world in a browser.

Am I wrong? Why? How does backbone.js help you?

While I absolutely share your confusion as to why this particular link sat towards the top of HN for so long, there are lots of reasons to be interested in Backbone.js.

Ideally, there is little to no configuration, a very minimal set of conventions imposed by the library (especially when compared with others in the space), and as many or as few files as you feel like using. But to be specific:

Backbone.js is a minimal implementation of the foundation that many MVC-ish JavaScript apps tend to acquire during their lifetimes. I would imagine that in many of your visualization/data apps, you have models of the data, and UI components that render the data and react to changes in the models. Backbone gives you convenience methods for those basic operations: binding events to changes in the data, granular re-rendering of UI components, map, reduce, filter, reject, serializing models to/from JSON ... and leaves the rest of it up to you.

Off the top of my head, here's an example where having data modeled in Backbone was very helpful to implement a visualization: http://blog.documentcloud.org/blog/2011/10/entity-charts/

Thanks for taking the time to explain it!

backbone.js is made for CRUD apps. It's not surprising that a library designed for CRUD isn't immediately helpful in visualization. It may help you organize some of your data though.

I did the same thing but without Require.js:

Code: https://github.com/ccarpenterg/todolist

Wiki: https://github.com/ccarpenterg/todolist/wiki

Demo: http://todolist-app.appspot.com/

I have one that is mostly working with some bugs running on Heroku -> MondoDB -> Node.js -> Backbone.js w/ BrowserID

https://github.com/overshard/node-todobin/

Sweet, I've been looking for some MongoDB/Node.js paired with Backbone projects. Thanks!

I made a spine.js Todo list for any php back-end + couch/mongo/pgsql -- it jquery-polls a _changes feed to show todos that other people add

code https://github.com/voitto/structal.todos

demo http://todosdemo.structal.org

All i need is a piece of paper and a pen. No need for unnecessary complexity.

Very cool. Thanks for passing this along!