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Backbone.js VS Angular.io

Compare Backbone.js VS Angular.io and see what are their differences

Backbone.js logo Backbone.js

Give your JS App some Backbone with Models, Views, Collections, and Events

Angular.io logo Angular.io

Angular is a JavaScript web framework for creating single-page web applications. The code is free to use and available as open source. It is further maintained and heavily used by Google and by lots of other developers around the world.
  • Backbone.js Landing page
    Landing page //
    2018-09-30
  • Angular.io Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-25

Backbone.js features and specs

  • Lightweight
    Backbone.js is minimal and lightweight, which means it has a small footprint and adds very little overhead to your project.
  • Flexibility
    Backbone.js provides a flexible structure to developers by allowing them to build their own MVC or MVP architectures using models, views, collections, and routers.
  • Ease of Integration
    Backbone.js can be easily integrated with other libraries and frameworks, such as jQuery or underscore.js, enhancing its capabilities without much difficulty.
  • Large Community
    Backbone.js has been around for a long time, resulting in a large community and a plethora of plugins and extensions that can be leveraged.
  • Detailed Documentation
    The official site offers comprehensive documentation which includes tutorials, examples, and a detailed API reference, aiding developers to understand and utilize the library efficiently.

Possible disadvantages of Backbone.js

  • Steeper Learning Curve
    New developers might find Backbone.js difficult to learn due to its non-opinionated nature and lack of enforced structure.
  • Sparse In-Built Features
    Backbone.js provides only the basic building blocks, requiring developers to write more boilerplate code or rely on external libraries for additional functionalities.
  • Outdated
    As newer frameworks and libraries (like React, Vue, and Angular) have emerged with more robust features and better performance, Backbone.js has somewhat fallen out of favor in modern development practices.
  • Event Binding Complexity
    Managing event bindings in Backbone.js can become complex and sometimes messy in large applications, which can lead to difficult maintenance and debugging.
  • Limited Two-Way Data Binding
    Backbone.js does not provide two-way data binding out-of-the-box, unlike other frameworks such as Angular, necessitating additional code to sync views and models.

Angular.io features and specs

  • Two-Way Data Binding
    Angular's two-way data binding simplifies the synchronization between the model and the view, ensuring that changes to the user interface are reflected in the application's data model, and vice versa.
  • Dependency Injection
    Angular's dependency injection system is powerful, making it easier to manage and inject dependencies, which promotes the development of modular, testable, and maintainable code.
  • Comprehensive Documentation
    Angular.io provides extensive and well-maintained documentation, which makes it easier for developers to find information and resolve issues quickly.
  • Component-Based Architecture
    Angular's component-based architecture allows for the creation of reusable, encapsulated elements that can significantly improve code maintainability and scalability.
  • Strong TypeScript Support
    Angular is built with TypeScript, which brings static typing to JavaScript, leading to improved developer productivity, better refactoring, and early detection of bugs.
  • Large Ecosystem and Community
    Angular has a vast ecosystem of third-party libraries, tools, and a large, active community which can be invaluable for support, shared solutions, and third-party integrations.
  • Built-In Testing Utilities
    Angular comes with built-in testing tools such as Karma and Jasmine, which facilitate unit testing, ensuring that applications are robust and maintainable.

Possible disadvantages of Angular.io

  • Steep Learning Curve
    The comprehensive features and complexity of Angular can result in a steep learning curve for newcomers, making it harder for them to get up to speed quickly.
  • Performance Overheads
    Angular applications can sometimes suffer from performance overheads due to their size and the complexity of the framework, which might necessitate optimizations.
  • Verbose Code
    Due to the use of TypeScript and extensive configuration, Angular code can often be verbose, leading to increased development time and potentially harder code maintenance.
  • Frequent Updates
    Angular is updated frequently, which can sometimes lead to breaking changes. Keeping up with the latest versions can be challenging and may require significant effort to maintain compatibility.
  • Opinionated Framework
    Angular is a highly opinionated framework with strict conventions and a rigid structure, which can limit flexibility for developers who prefer more freedom in how they organize their code.
  • Heavy for Simple Applications
    For simpler applications, the use of Angular can be overkill due to its size and complexity. In such cases, lightweight frameworks or libraries might be more appropriate.

Backbone.js videos

Introduction to Backbone.js

More videos:

  • Review - Introduction to Backbone.js
  • Review - Backbone.js Code Review w Backbone.js Mentor Jonathon

Angular.io videos

No Angular.io videos yet. You could help us improve this page by suggesting one.

Add video

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Backbone.js and Angular.io)
JavaScript Framework
28 28%
72% 72
Javascript UI Libraries
37 37%
63% 63
JS Library
19 19%
81% 81
Web Frameworks
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Backbone.js and Angular.io

Backbone.js Reviews

20 Next.js Alternatives Worth Considering
A veteran on the scene, Backbone.js is all about giving structure to your JavaScript-heavy applications. It’s standing the test of time, enabling you to keep your data logic and display logic neatly side by side, all while being lightweight.
9 Best JavaScript Frameworks to Use in 2023
Backbone.js is based on the Model View Controller (MVC) design pattern. The library supports seven components: Models, Views, Collections, Routers, Events, Sync, and Options. Backbone.js also provides an asynchronous communication layer that allows the application to communicate with a backend service.
Source: ninetailed.io
JavaScript: What Are The Most Used Frameworks For This Language?
Backbone.JS is a lightweight JavaScript library that provides a framework for developing structured and scalable web applications. It offers a set of tools for building client-side applications that interact with RESTful APIs. Backbone.JS is well-suited for developing single-page applications (SPAs) where most of the user interface is rendered in the browser, rather than...
Source: www.bocasay.com
20 Best JavaScript Frameworks For 2023
Backbone.js is a JavaScript-based framework that connects to an API via a RESTful JSON interface. Backbone.js is known for being small and light because it only requires jQuery and one JavaScript library, Underscore.js, to use the entire library.
Top JavaScript Frameworks For Mobile App Development
Backbone JS is a JavaScript framework based on the MVP app design. As the name suggests, it acts as a strong backbone to your project. It is lightweight in nature and hence, is considered ideal for developing single-page applications. It offers a simplistic frontend and makes the best use of JavaScript functions.
Source: medium.com

Angular.io Reviews

Top 10 Next.js Alternatives You Can Try
If you are looking for a high-performance framework, Angular is a leading platform with a user-friendly interface. This Next.js alternative focuses on highly interactive apps to deliver complex UIs efficiently. Angular has introduced an enhanced v17.3 version of its output API for safer and more consistent API outputs.
10 Best Next.js Alternatives to Consider Today
Angular Universal caters to developers working with Angular, offering seamless integration for server-side rendering (SSR). This integration enhances initial load times and boosts search engine optimization (SEO). Supporting both pre-rendering and dynamic server-side rendering, Angular Universal provides flexibility to accommodate various use cases while maintaining the...
Top Cross-Platform App Development Frameworks
Backed by Google, Angular is a dynamic, robust, and powerful framework known for creating web apps, single-page apps, and cross-platform applications. Built using NativeScript, Angular supports native OS APIs that developers can use for creating high-performance apps for Linux, Windows, Mac, iOS & Android (using NativeScript).
Source: www.pangea.ai

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Angular.io seems to be a lot more popular than Backbone.js. While we know about 287 links to Angular.io, we've tracked only 17 mentions of Backbone.js. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Backbone.js mentions (17)

  • JavaScript Views, the Hard Way – A Pattern for Writing UI
    Https://backbonejs.org/#View There is also a github repo that has examples of MVC patterns adapted to the web platform. - Source: Hacker News / 15 days ago
  • JavaScript evolution: From Lodash and Underscore to vanilla
    Underscore was created by Jeremy Ashkenas (the creator of Backbone.js) in 2009 to provide a set of utility functions that JavaScript lacked at the time. It was also created to work with Backbone.js, but it slowly became a favorite among developers who needed utility functions that they could just call and get stuff done with without having to worry about the inner implementations and browser compatibility. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • React is 10 years old
    Got it thanks for the context. I've read the web app and it seems to me it is just https://backbonejs.org/ re-written in Typescript and allows JSX. I'm very certain Typescript and JSX will have improved the DX for Backbone like apps, but it doesn't address all of the other issues that teams had with Backbone. e.g. Cyclical event propagation, state stored in the DOM (i.e. Appendchild is error prone in large code... - Source: Hacker News / almost 2 years ago
  • Just Simply – Stop saying how simple things are in our docs
    Even further nowadays, docs are created using Docusaurus. I don't have problem with it but documentation should be good (eye) friendly than easy to write. Why not be creative while writing docs such as - Backbone.js - https://backbonejs.org Or https://backbonejs.org/docs/backbone.html as code annotation. - Source: Hacker News / about 2 years ago
  • The Emperor's New Library
    What we see, a decade ago, are that many of the "popular" libraries, frameworks, and methods, not surprisingly, have gone by the wayside, a lot that have remained in current code as difficult-to-removemodernize legacy cruft (Bower, Gulp, Grunt, Backbone, Angular 1, ...), and then we have the small minority that are still here. Some that remain have had their utility lessened/questioned by platform and language... - Source: dev.to / about 2 years ago
View more

Angular.io mentions (287)

  • ⭐Angular 18 Features ⭐
    All requests to angular.io now automatically redirect to angular.dev. - Source: dev.to / 12 months ago
  • Securing an Angular and Spring Boot Application with Keycloak
    In this article we'll be using Keycloak to secure an Angular application and access secured resources from a Spring Boot Web application. - Source: dev.to / 12 months ago
  • Episode 24/20: Angular Talks at Google I/O, JSWorld, TiL
    Angular an application development platform that lets you extend HTML vocabulary for your application. The resulting environment is extraordinarily expressive, readable, and quick to develop. For more info, visit http://angular.io. - Source: dev.to / 12 months ago
  • NestJS Builtin Anti-Pattern
    It all starts with Angular. The modular router API contained the following static methods:. - Source: dev.to / 12 months ago
  • Episode 24/13: Native Signals, Details on Angular/Wiz, Alan Agius on the Angular CLI
    Similarly to Promises/A+, this effort focuses on aligning the JavaScript ecosystem. If this alignment is successful, then a standard could emerge, based on that experience. Several framework authors are collaborating here on a common model which could back their reactivity core. The current draft is based on design input from the authors/maintainers of Angular, Bubble, Ember, FAST, MobX, Preact, Qwik, RxJS, Solid,... - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Backbone.js and Angular.io, you can also consider the following products

AngularJS - AngularJS lets you extend HTML vocabulary for your application. The resulting environment is extraordinarily expressive, readable, and quick to develop.

React - A JavaScript library for building user interfaces

ExpressJS - Sinatra inspired web development framework for node.js -- insanely fast, flexible, and simple

Vue.js - Reactive Components for Modern Web Interfaces

ember.js - A JavaScript framework for creating ambitious web apps

Svelte - Cybernetically enhanced web apps