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jashkenas
backbone
JavaScript2010–2026
jashkenas / backbone

backbone

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

Explore on GitHubRead Hacker News discussions
48Distinct people
55Mentions
1Explicit recommenders
28.1KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

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

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use was verified in the last source check.

What people are saying

It's somewhat hidden on the project page, but I love the annotated source view: http://documentcloud.github.com/backbone/docs/backbone.html Edit: It looks like it's taken…

tkaemming used a recommendation phrase. One indexed comment matches. This is a phrase match, not a verdict.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:56:07 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year55 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2010-10-13 17:50:30 UTC to 2026-01-18 22:02:29 UTC.

0369122010-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2011-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 comments20102011-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 10 mentions; 2 submissions, 8 comments2012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 11 mentions; 2 submissions, 9 comments2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 10 mentions; 2 submissions, 8 comments2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 comments2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 5 mentions; 3 submissions, 2 comments2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 0 submissions, 4 comments2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 1 submissions, 0 comments2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments20182019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 1 submissions, 0 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments. Incomplete calendar period.2026*

* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20102010-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2011-01-01 00:00:00 UTC303
20112011-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC1028
20122012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC1129
20132013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC1028
20142014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC303
20152015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC532
20162016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC404
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC110
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC110
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
2026 (partial)2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101

From the project README

An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 13, 2026.

Read the project’s introduction
____ __ __ /\ _`\ /\ \ /\ \ __ \ \ \ \ \ __ ___\ \ \/'\\ \ \____ ___ ___ __ /\_\ ____ \ \ _ <' /'__`\ /'___\ \ , < \ \ '__`\ / __`\ /' _ `\ /'__`\ \/\ \ /',__\ \ \ \ \ \/\ \ \.\_/\ \__/\ \ \\`\\ \ \ \ \/\ \ \ \/\ \/\ \/\ __/ __ \ \ \/\__, `\ \ \____/\ \__/.\_\ \____\\ \_\ \_\ \_,__/\ \____/\ \_\ \_\ \____\/\_\_\ \ \/\____/ \/___/ \/__/\/_/\/____/ \/_/\/_/\/___/ \/___/ \/_/\/_/\/____/\/_/\ \_\ \/___/ \ \____/ \/___/ (_'_______________________________________________________________________________'_) (_.———————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————._) Backbone supplies structure to JavaScript-heavy applications by providing models with key-value binding and custom events, collections with a rich API of enumerable functions, views with declarative event handling, and connects it all to your existing application over a RESTful JSON interface. For Docs, License, Tests, pre-packed downloads, and everything else, really, see: https://backbonejs.org To suggest a feature or report a bug: https://github.com/jashkenas/backbone/issues For questions on working with Backbone or general discussions: security policy, https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/backbone.js, https://matrix.to/#/#jashkenas_backbone:gitter.im or https://groups.google.com/g/backbonejs Backbone is an open-sourced component of DocumentCloud: https://github.com/documentcloud Testing powered by SauceLabs: https://saucelabs.com Many thanks to our contributors: https://github.com/jashkenas/backbone/graphs/contributors Special thanks to Robert Kieffer for the original philosophy behind Backbone. https://github.com/broofa This project adheres to a code of conduct. By participating, you are expected to uphold this code.
Read the full README on GitHub

What Hacker News says

55 sources
zzzeek·Oct 12, 2020
SQLAlchemy author here. The critique of "Backbone" and the original quoted author's note at https://github.com/jashkenas/backbone/issues/2888#issuecomme... expresses an issue that SQLAlchemy has as well. A fine-grained development library has a ton of "surface area". Like Backbone, a large portion of our bugfixes necessarily infringe upon some previously undefined behavior that will now "break" for people who relied upon that. If SQLAlchemy were pure semver, we too would be at SQLAlchemy 48.0.0, the third digit for us would usually be fixed at "0" and mostly useless, and we would have no way to distinguish between a "major feature release with semi-breaking changes and removal of things that have been deprecated for years" which is what we normally have in our 1.2, 1.3, 1.4 etc. vs. a "major release with significant backwards-incomp
Read the rest
atible changes" which is what we will have in SQLAlchemy 2.0. We necessarily include extremely detailed change documentation for a 1.x to 1.y release and our versioning system is described in great depth at https://www.sqlalchemy.org/download.html#versions . I didn't provide an easy word like "romantic" for this website to mock but we're doing essentially the same thing AFAICT. When Jeremy says "This allows folks, immediately upon hearing about a new release, to get a rough sense of its scope.", that is exactly what we are doing as well when we are suddenly calling an upcoming release "2.0". The scope is dramatically broader than the scope in which we move from 1.x to 1.y. It's fun for semver purists to make clever (and definitely funny) websites mocking this need but that does not change that fact that semver does not work for every kind of project.
In Sentimental Versioning
paulddraper·Feb 11, 2019
https://github.com/jashkenas/backbone/issues/2888#issuecomme... > So, as I like to joke — not "semantic" versioning, _romantic versioning_. > Given a version number MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH, increment the: > MAJOR version when you make a major new release, or significantly update and/or stabilize the API. > MINOR version when you add minor new features. > PATCH version when you make tiny changes, likely to go unnoticed by most. > This allows folks, immediately upon hearing about a new release, to get a rough sense of its scope.
In What's next for SemVer
at-fates-hands·Nov 4, 2016
The last few commits appear more about cleaning up some of the documentation. I guess on Jeremy Ashkenas twitter feed he called Backbone "finished" in terms of API and feature set after the 1.0 version. When you look at the contributions graph, its practically non-existent: https://github.com/jashkenas/backbone/graphs/contributors Add in the Google trends graph compared to Angular and React: https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=backbone%20js,angula... Then when you look at the other libraries in the ecosystem, its like a ghost town. backbone.forms - Open Issues: 172, Issues closed in 2016: 14, Last Release: Jan 21, 2016 backbone.localstorage - Open Issues: 45, Issues closed in 2016: 1, Last Release: Jan 22 2015 backbone.paginator - Open Issues: 20, Issues closed in 2016: 7+, Last Release: Feb 3 2016 backbone.validation -Open Issues: 7
Read the rest
9, Issues closed in 2016: 1, Last Release: May 8 2015 So not only is interest waning, the creator has called the library "finished" with not much more in terms of features coming and the ecosystem surrounding Backbone has all but dried up. I would be hard pressed to say it still has a bright future.
In Visual Studio Code 1.7.1
acdha·Feb 2, 2016
> Their business is failing; they risk the financial collapse of the world's leading institution of journalism (IMHO), and they are investing resources in republshing old stories that hardly anyone reads They're actually profitable – not enormously so but the situation doesn't warrant the hyperbole: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/30/business/media/new-york-ti... They're already doing quite lot of good work on the IT side, which has included projects you probably interact with regularly (e.g. https://github.com/documentcloud/document-viewer, https://github.com/jashkenas/backbone), so it also seems somewhat overblown to make it sound like they're putting the entire team on a small side-project.
In How to Build a TimesMachine

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