Document distinguishing features from alternatives

[addyosmani]

One question we regularly receive is how Aura differs from extension libraries like Marionette, Lumbar, Chaplin and so on. I wonder if we should perhaps try to make this more clear in our docs.

[TimothyKrell]

As a new comer to the JavaScript web app development world, this would be very helpful to me. I have been trying to infer these differences myself but am still a bit vague on what Aura does differently compared to the other libraries. TodoMVC helped me a lot in evaluating JavaScript MV* frameworks. Now I want a TodoMVC for all these Backbone libraries! If Aura would provide documentation that explains things from its angle in comparison to the others, that would really help.

[addyosmani]

Closest thing to this at the moment is http://lostechies.com/derickbailey/2012/06/13/why-should-i-use-backbone-marionette-instead-of-%E2%80%A6/, but it doesn't cover Aura just yet, We'll address this soon.

[sbellity]

Not sure this one still applies to where Aura is headed.. As Aura is not really an alternative to these other frameworks

[addyosmani]

I would change the title on this, but we do need to properly document where Aura fits. At minimum we need a single sentence that articulates what it offers in a way that is easily understandable, but ideally longer docs.

Challenges:

• Aura is a widget assembler - "what does that mean? It puts widgets together? is it a build process?"
• Aura is an architecture for scaling apps - "so does it do MVC? what does it give me that MVC doesn't?"
• Aura is glue layer between widgets - "isn't RequireJS a glue layer between modules/widgets?"

[addyosmani]

We've had this discussion in a few places. I'm going to try capturing in the readme.