on-entrepreneurs.html

---
title: Backbone Marionette 
summary: Fumbling through the darkness 
date: 2015-04-06 11:54:57 
tags:
    - computers
track: False
exclude: True
---
Over at Formlabs, we've been playing with Backbone + Marionette as we're building a few new frontend applications. It's been fun getting up-to-speed on new technologies. For me, at least, there's also been a steep learning curve. I really like to know the "right" way of doing things, and with Backbone, in general, there isn't ever a single answer. 

I'm coming to appreciate the strength of that as a design pattern, but it's not very friendly to novices. Think about a traditional craft apprenticeship, what few there are—you'd spend weeks, months, years, perfecting the simplest of gestures and motions. You copy the masters. The "right" way is usually "right" because someone else has done the hard, time-consuming work of fumbling through what works and what doesn't. 

OK — that's my rant on Backbone Marionette. At any rate, it hasn't proved to be an issue, because a number of the Marionette core-team members have documented their practices fairly well.

Interestingly (for me), I found that I learned a lot better watching videos rather than reading the thousand-odd assorted theories on Stack Overflow. In a video, you actually get more of the intention behind someones' thinking, which helped me bake better decisions.)

I found these resources the most useful—hat-tip to the Bocoup Crew for making this good stuff available. 
[Brian Mann - The tools and patterns for building large-scale Backbone applications](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWr7x9wk6_c)
[Jeremy Fairbank - Building modular and component driven architecture in Backbone.js and Marionette.js.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrQSpdWkN6Q)
[James Smith - Marionette The Backbone Framework](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvQnntaqVdE)

At any rate, so armed by the gesticulating of these friendly gentleman, I started to dive into the architecture of our application.