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Backbone.js VS Vue.js

Compare Backbone.js VS Vue.js and see what are their differences

Backbone.js logo Backbone.js

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

Vue.js logo Vue.js

Reactive Components for Modern Web Interfaces
  • Backbone.js Landing page
    Landing page //
    2018-09-30
  • Vue.js Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-22

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  • Outdated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.

Vue.js features and specs

  • Easy to Learn
    Vue.js has a gentle learning curve, making it accessible for beginners. Its documentation is thorough and well-written, and the framework itself is designed to be straightforward and easy to understand.
  • Reactive Data Binding
    Vue.js provides a reactive data binding system, which allows for efficient and seamless synchronization between the model and the view, making the development of dynamic interfaces simpler and more intuitive.
  • Component-Based Architecture
    Vue.js uses a component-based architecture, which promotes reusability and modularity. This allows developers to break down the user interface into smaller, more manageable pieces that can be reused across different parts of the application.
  • Rich Ecosystem and Integration
    Vue.js has a rich set of tools and libraries, such as Vue Router for routing and Vuex for state management. It is also easy to integrate with other projects and libraries.
  • Flexibility
    Vue.js is highly flexible. It can be used for both large-scale single-page applications (SPAs) and smaller, more simple interfaces. It also allows developers to use it as a library or as a full-fledged framework.
  • Great Performance
    Vue.js offers high performance due to its lightweight nature and optimal rendering. Its virtual DOM implementation and efficient reactivity system ensure fast updates and rendering.
  • Active Community and Support
    Vue.js has an active and growing community, which means abundant learning resources, frequent updates, and a wide range of plugins and third-party libraries.

Possible disadvantages of Vue.js

  • Smaller Market Share
    Compared to frameworks like React and Angular, Vue.js has a smaller market share. This may result in fewer job opportunities and less community support in some areas.
  • Language Barrier
    Some official documentation and community resources are primarily in Chinese, which might pose a challenge for developers who do not understand the language.
  • Limited Resources for Larger Projects
    While Vue.js is growing, it still has fewer large-scale, enterprise-level tools and resources compared to more established frameworks like Angular.
  • Integration with Legacy Systems
    Integrating Vue.js into older, legacy systems might require more effort and experience, particularly if those systems are built with a different architecture or framework.
  • Overhead of Flexibility
    The flexibility that Vue.js offers can sometimes lead to inconsistencies in code structure and project organization, especially in teams where developers have varying levels of experience and coding styles.
  • Ecosystem Fragmentation
    The rapid growth of Vue's ecosystem can lead to fragmentation, where multiple plugins or libraries serve similar purposes, making it difficult for developers to choose the best solution.

Backbone.js videos

Introduction to Backbone.js

More videos:

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

Vue.js videos

Vue.js in 2019 & Beyond

More videos:

  • Review - Vue.js or React or Angular ... which is KING?
  • Review - Why 43% of Front-End Developers want to learn Vue.js

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Backbone.js and Vue.js)
JavaScript Framework
25 25%
75% 75
Javascript UI Libraries
16 16%
84% 84
JS Library
13 13%
87% 87
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 Vue.js

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

Vue.js Reviews

Top JavaScript Frameworks in 2025
Vue.JS uses MVC (Model-View-Controller) architecture and can be useful along with different architectural frameworks like CBA (Component-Based-Architecture). It has a unique ability to interact with various available frameworks, which has made Vue.JS a go-to choice for web development.
Source: solguruz.com
20 Next.js Alternatives Worth Considering
Like a breath of fresh air, Vue.js is that approachable buddy who’s also a powerhouse behind the scenes. Simplicity paired with flexibility, Vue.js is all about building slick, reactive single-page apps without the brain-strain. Its core library focuses on the view layer, making it tasty for integration with other projects and libraries.
The 20 Best Laravel Alternatives for Web Development
Vue.js — a sprightly little JavaScript framework — charmingly simple, surprisingly powerful. It’s playful, it’s approachable, and it makes building UIs and front-end applications feel like a walk in the park.
Top 9 best Frameworks for web development
The best frameworks for web development include React, Angular, Vue.js, Django, Spring, Laravel, Ruby on Rails, Flask and Express.js. Each of these frameworks has its own advantages and distinctive features, so it is important to choose the framework that best suits the needs of your project.
Source: www.kiwop.com
9 Best JavaScript Frameworks to Use in 2023
Vue.js: Vue.js is a lightweight and easy-to-learn framework that focuses on simplicity and ease of use. It has been gaining popularity in recent years and has a growing community.
Source: ninetailed.io

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Vue.js seems to be a lot more popular than Backbone.js. While we know about 393 links to Vue.js, 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
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Vue.js mentions (393)

  • Chapter 6 HTML part one
    The MVC approach is dominating the application market at the time of writing. The three main front-end frameworks which do this are React, Vue and Angular but there are many, many more. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • The problem with indirections
    Something I have already seen in many different code bases using frontend libraries like React and Vue is that developers use advanced state management solutions (e.g. Redux, Vuex, or Pinia) way too often. - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
  • 60 Best JavaScript Libraries for Building Interactive UI Components
    Vue.js Vuejs.org Progressive framework for building reactive interfaces. - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
  • How I Achieved a 74% Performance Increase on a Page
    Our monolith is built with Laravel and Vue.js, where Vue.js powers dynamic features at the expense of performance, since it runs completely on the client-side. For performance-sensitive features, we rely on Blade (Laravel's template engine) with raw JavaScript or jQuery, resulting in a more complex and less developer-friendly approach. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • Lexical 0.24 with Vanilla JS: Getting started
    Lexical is an open source project and considered the successor of Draft.js. It is primarily developed by Meta, licensed under MIT. It is not restricted to React, but supports Vanilla JS, too. The flexibility enables us to integrate it with other JS libraries such as Svelte and Vue. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Backbone.js and Vue.js, 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

Svelte - Cybernetically enhanced web apps

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

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.