JavaScript Jabber: Backbone.js

http://javascriptjabber.com/004-jsj-backbone-js-with-jeremy-ashkenas/

by jashkenas • 14 years ago

99 20 14 years ago

jashkenas3• 14 years ago

For folks who don't have time to listen: The general topic was JavaScript Web Apps, as viewed through the lens of what Backbone and Ember agree and disagree about, specifically:

* Source of truth.

* MVC / MVVM / MVP / The model-ui spectrum.

* JavaScript pipe dreams.

* Arbitrary code vs. structured templating systems.

* Everything-is-public APIs. +Hooks

* Client Side Models are not mirrors of Server Side Models

... and so on.

zalew2• 14 years ago

cool. is there a twitter/google+ feed for the podcast?

jergason• 14 years ago

@JSJabber is the Twitter account. The RSS feed is right on the website.

wavephorm• 14 years ago

Yikes, that is a whole lot of pedantic argument over the semantics of MVC.

"Handlebars is a compromise between logic and logicless views... ladda ladda ladda"

doubleconfess• 14 years ago

Well, if you get a bunch of nerds talking about javascript MVC frameworks for an hour, there is bound to be some pedanticism. Despite that, I love this podcast.

iamgilesbowkett• 14 years ago

apologies, and I'm proving your point, but there's no such word as pedanticism. the word you were looking for is pedantry.

patrickaljord• 14 years ago

I was expecting an XMPP/Jabber implementation in Javascript using Backbone.js

_harry• 14 years ago

@jashkenas: Could you expand a bit about your thoughts on the growing ecosystem of community made patterns and modules on top of Backbone and how it might help direct [edit: 'help direct' is the wrong phrase, can I change this to shape?] the future of Backbone?

(referring to your thoughts around 38:00-42:00)

jashkenas3• 14 years ago

Sure. To expand a bit...

Backbone has always been intended to give you the smallest possible set of functionality that you reach for every time you work on a JS-powered web app. Model and Views and events to bind them together, collections with powerful functions for filtering and aggregating data, and shareable URLs.

There are lots of other directions and other needs that JS apps may have, but unless it's something that you're going to use pretty much every time, it doesn't belong in Backbone itself -- it belongs in an extension, or better yet, another standalone library. I'm talking about things like write-through localstorage caching, pushing data over websockets, TreeViews, query syntax for complex JSON, special cross-domain communication, specific HTML-generating strategies, or "mobile" widgets that mimic iOS controls.

Fact is, JS apps are still the wild west when it comes to patterns that work well -- there are plenty of fertile experiments to go around. You want a library that gives you a foundation, so that your app can rise up to meet it and extend it in new directions. I think that pretty much all of the apps in this list fit that description -- going far beyond what Backbone provides out of the box:

http://backbonejs.org/#examples

lukeholder3• 14 years ago

I think Yehudas point was, why do you want to have just the minimal functionality when you are constantly grabbing for Backbone Addons just to do the standard stuff.

Having a plugable architecture is great, but if rails never considered making a good thing standard (think bundler, or sprockets) really makes moving between rails apps so much easier.

For example I would say nested views, and view layouts is something that should be standard - isn't backbone built for the single page web app idea?

I have seen so many different layout managers, region managers etc.

lukeholder3• 14 years ago

Something I thought was very interesting was the thoughts (augments) around pure single page apps vs. progressive enhancement. I think Yehuda almost flat out said its too much work to do progressive enhancement. (rendering views / view partials on the server)

Progressive enhancement I think has really become a law of moses in recent times, probably mainly due to the speed in which browsers have progressed, and the powerful browsers on all modern phones - it just isn't practical.

To be honest, I think having your app work without javascript these days is a little naive view about the future of the web. Javascript is here to stay and not that many people will be on non javascript powered browsers.

Which also persuades me to really care even less about the semantic web. Twitter bootstrap is a good example - it really is DIVitis, but really who cares? its rapid application development, it make the web look and act far nicer and more consistent, and it progresses the web as a platform.

Having your web app still work (through non Ajax'd GET, POST etc) for the 7 seconds it takes to download the javascript just isn't worth it - especially with html5.

jashkenas3• 14 years ago

I think it's about more than just pain vs. gain.

Unless your web application happens to actually be a series of <form>s, your JavaScript probably starts to become your content. To use an example from today, how would one go about building this without JavaScript? Without losing the heart of it in the translation to static HTML?

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/02/13/us/politics/20...

lukeholder3• 14 years ago

exactly! why should we have that visualization be backed by a html table within the page? Especially when you probably have that data backed by an API anyway that could probably server up json, xml or whatever else.

JavaScript Jabber: Backbone.js

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