Backbone.js vs. JavaScript InfoVis Toolkit vs. Underscore.js vs. jQuery Comparison Chart

Backbone.js gives structure to web 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 API over a RESTful JSON interface. When working on a web application that involves a lot of JavaScript, one of the first things you learn is to stop tying your data to the DOM. It's all too easy to create JavaScript applications that end up as tangled piles of jQuery selectors and callbacks, all trying frantically to keep data in sync between the HTML UI, your JavaScript logic, and the database on your server. For rich client-side applications, a more structured approach is often helpful. With Backbone, you represent your data as Models, which can be created, validated, destroyed, and saved to the server.

Underscore is a JavaScript library that provides a whole mess of useful functional programming helpers without extending any built-in objects. Underscore provides over 100 functions that support both your favorite workaday functional helpers like map, filter, and invoke, as well as more specialized goodies like function binding, javascript templating, creating quick indexes, deep equality testing, and so on. You may choose between monolithic and modular imports. The project is hosted on GitHub. You can report bugs and discuss features on the issues page or chat in the Gitter channel. Underscore 1.x is backward compatible with any engine that fully supports ES3, while also utilizing newer features when available. Collection functions work on arrays, objects, and array-like objects. We have recent confirmation that the library is compatible with Adobe ExtendScript. There is support code present for IE 8, which we will retain in future Underscore updates.