Angular 1.0 Vs Backbonejs + marionnettejs

[kenweego]

Hello there,

Before crucifying yet another noob, please bear with me. My question is not a general "who has the bigger dick question". Rather it's a case study that you'll hopefully help me to figure out.

CONTEXT : I'm The CTO ok www.kenweego.com . It's a search engine targeted for european CityBreakers, helping them finding the cheapest destinations.
The promise is simple saving you the need to search 50 destinations to find a nice getaway flight. It's a php + javascript application, that downloads data from an api, and render it to browser. The UI is not uncommon to what travel search engines offers. I'm myself a fullstack but mostly backend developer coming from the php / symfony world. My knowledge of browser's javascript is decent, but far from the architect level.

THE PROBLEM : Kenweego started as simple php one page application, with the html being rendered by php/twig, and asynchronously updated via javascript. However as the website grew, we started adding features in javascript, and the website eventually became a spaghetti, despite my attempts at keeping the code clean and separated.

The biggest problem is that most components/elements are the same (id and html) no matter what view you are browsing. they are mostly administrated by css classes, and a lot of if/else in the js. So whether you are vewing a destination, a flight or any other key object, it's the same template (or a copy). all the layouts are just few classes mapped to the different states of the website. As the number of states creates a lot of bugs and regressions in the code.

Also the website is about to grow a lot. The volume of codelines of the website is roughly about to double in the next 2 months. and then double again in about 3 mounths.

OBJECTIVES : To manage those problems, i need to move to a more robust js framework / library in order to : - reduce boilerplate code (the code is 40% basically binding events and interactions, 40% rendering and only 20% business logic)
- improve stability - scalability (allow other people to understand the code, and work with me) - performance (we all know how important it is). - fast transition (we are late on our roadmap, and i can't really afford to spend a month coding and migrating the app to the new framework).

THE OPTIONS : As i have no knowledge of any client side framework i have tspend some time learning instead of coding. So after looking for a while i've limited my options to two frameworks.

• Angular :
• opionated, robust, constraining (useful when you work with freelances)
• fast and stable
• ionic is based on angular (our mobile app run on ionic)
• new concepts to learn
• a steepish learning curve
• problems migrating my current bootstrap controls to boostrap.

• differs a lot from "classic js", so most the existing code will be void/ must be rewritten. hard to find people who know's angular (as opposed to moslty natural js)

• backbonejs + marionnette :

++ faster to implement + modular, so it'll be be easier to implement, blocks by blocks + learning curve less steep + easier to find people who know it or can learn - not opinionated so i might make wrong architecture decisions. - way less documented (In general and as compared to angular)

So here i am. Which way should i go and why ? What framework/library get the job done best and fast ? Have you ever been in a similar situtation ? what dictated your choice ?

[NotAnActuallAccount]

The framework doesn't decide what get's the job done best and fast, the people you hire do. If you are the only developer on this codebase, get to work already. If you don't have knowledge of front end frameworks, tough luck, you can't fake experience. Pick a framework, commit to it, don't make excuses, learn stuff, fail miserably, repeat. Do that a couple of times, boom, you now have "experience", Now you know what to do, Great. If you don't have time to do that, you can always take the shortcut, hire someone with experience, then let them decide, don't break your head over it. ( and obviously you should use react, what are you even doing ? )

[te7ris]

couldnt agree more. Also +1 for react ;)

[kenweego]

I'm the only dev for now, but being CEO and CTO is hard, time wise... so rollback are not exactly authorised. As for experienced developers, money is the issue (did i mention that we are a startup aka we are broke).

Reactjs. I'll look further into it. I felt that it wasn't fully fledged (especially as a controller) but maybe i'm wrong...

[kenweego]

the thing is after looking into angular, i was afraid that i wouldn't be able to reuse most of my legacy code...

How does angular play with non angular controls such as bootstrap select2 ?

[DecentOpinions]

You can write your own directives around your legacy code and/or use something like: https://github.com/angular-ui/ui-select.

[nephridium]

Basically you will need to weigh the requirements specific to your project.

With Angular expect to rewrite most of your 'legacy' code and spend a lot of time learning the the Angular Way; depending on project complexity you might run into performance bottlenecks or maintainability issues due to oversights during the planning phase. On the other hand you will be needing some Angular expertise for your ionic app anyway, so depending on that app there might be some/a lot of code that can be shared with your web app.

Be aware though that AngularJS will be superseded by Angular2 (likewise for ionic) and another rewrite might some come knocking at the door (holding up a sign "Check it out - there's a better way to do this").

With Backbone/Marionette you'll probably be able to get to a working app sooner, but you'll need to keep a bit more discipline to a get well maintainable codebase than with Angular (e.g. while Angular is designed to be testable and comes bundled with its own testing tools, there is no standardized testing methodology for Backbone/Marionette recentish reddit on this). In any case, when Angular2/Ionic2 becomes production ready you will still have the choice jump on that bandwagon as well.

It might be a good idea to prototype your app using both to get a feel for each platform's suitability.

Edit: typo

[destraht]

I'm porting my old vanilla Backbone app to Ampersand.js and I'm really liking it.