# Backbone.js

12 Hacker News commenters recommended Backbone.js and 9 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 7 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Light, plain JavaScript framework with no build step that people still like for simple webapps; critics find it painful at scale and stagnant.

## Why people recommend it

- Simple, light, easy to grasp (2 comments): "The simplicity of a backbone app, plain javascript with no build" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45861845)) "Backbone is pretty light and pretty easy to grasp" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46672601))
- Complete enough for building webapps (2 comments): "Very happy still with the Backbone way of building webapps." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48276976)) "It had everything you needed" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48332327))

## What people warn about

- Leaves developers dreading maintenance (3 comments): "I dread having to touch the one page we have that uses Backbonejs+Mustachejs." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47513006)) "I really wished it would just go away at the time" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46144180)) "my backbone.js induced ptsd therapy sessions" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47093737))
- Hard to scale to large codebases (3 comments): "I don't recall being pleasant enough to work with to want to make anything large in" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48905405)) "Each component had to manually manage all of its child components." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48890481)) "dealing with 100K LOC large Backbone.js codebases" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47309240))
- Stagnant and no longer maintained (2 comments): "no longer maintained backbone / 1.4 django frontend" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49951852)) "both of them are stagnant" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48334000))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [React](https://hackerapproved.com/p/react.md): 482 recommend
- [htmx](https://hackerapproved.com/p/htmx.md): 320 recommend
- [Svelte](https://hackerapproved.com/p/svelte.md): 151 recommend
- [Vue](https://hackerapproved.com/p/vue.md): 121 recommend
- [Angular](https://hackerapproved.com/p/angular.md): 82 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Backbone.js", https://hackerapproved.com/p/backbone-js/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).