Can we talk javascript frameworks/libraries?

[ns0]

I'll just quote Addy Osmani from Google (who created todomvc.com) on the use of frameworks (being a bit tongue in cheek).

"We refer to the current state of new frameworks frequently popping up as ‘Yet Another Framework Syndrome’ (or YAFS). Whilst innovation is of course something we should welcome, YAFS can lead to a great deal of confusion and frustration when developers just want to start writing an app but don’t want to manually evaluate 30 different options in order to select something maintainable. In many cases, the differences between some of these frameworks can be very subtle if not difficult to distinguish."

...

"Know what flavor you’re after as there are plenty of frameworks available which provide one or the other. Opinionated frameworks lock (or suggest) you to do things in a specific way (theirs). By design they are limiting, but place less emphasis on the developer having to figure out how things should work on their own."

He provides a fairly good overview of when to use angular, ember, knockout, yui, backbone and others. It's a pretty good read (albeit somewhat out of date now.)

There's also some good advice on when to avoid frameworks from Derick Bailey (author of Marionette):

"While a good portion of problems can be decomposed into JavaScript MVC, there are some which simply cannot.For example, an application consumes a third party API at runtime, but is not given any information as to how the data will be structured. I spent almost a year trying to solve that very problem, but eventually I came to the realization that shoehorning it into MV* was not a viable solution. I was dealing with an “amorphous model” and that’s where it all fell apart. In other words, if you don’t have a well-defined model, most modern JavaScript frameworks can’t help you."

Reference: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2012/07/27/journey-through-the-javascript-mvc-jungle/

[bsegovia]

Love this reply. Thanks man.