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Comment by jb55 | Hacker News Reader

It's unfortunate that people still think they need monolithic libraries to get anything done on the client side. The node ecosystem showed this doesn't have to be the case. It becomes even more important on the client side to keep dependencies small.

My favourite ecosystem for client side development these days is component (https://github.com/component/component). It's similar in style to npm but faster and made for building apps from small modular pieces. It has a growing community and lots of modules already (https://github.com/component/component/wiki/Components).

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I've had this debate with a friend who's a big proponent of EmberJS (and to a lesser degree Angular). My friend feels that without one of these libraries you will simply be writing way too much unnecessary boilerplate code for a single-page app of significant size. I personally prefer to rely on small modular dependencies, so Component appeals to me, but I've only played with Ember/Angular a little bit so I don't necessarily know what I'm missing. Can you recommend a set of Components that would provide similar functionality and productivity?

I'm still using backbone.js within our app but a lot of people seem to be using things like:

* https://github.com/component/view for views built on top of reactive for declarative bindings

* https://github.com/component/model for models

* https://github.com/component/router for routing

So what we have so far from these 3 libraries is basically a decomposed backbone with declarative bindings. That will cover 99% of your typical app. I don't find there is too much boilerplate.

Take a look at the Ember examples at http://emberjs.com/. They're doing a lot more with a lot less code. Backbone had its day, but the world is moving on, and a new project that only offers Backbone-equivalent functionality won't garner much interest from me or probably anyone.

I agree in as much as the small component I use is quite well supported and popular. Its a sort of insurance that I don't have to worry about bugs and it running stale. A lot of components in component seem to be written by a single person, and don't get much attention, which to me, is a liability.

the issue is JS doesnt make things easy as soon as one wants to go modular. JS is so flexible that someone's script might not be compatible with yours.When JS gets a proper module system ,that doesnt really on voodoo modules, things will change.

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