[granitepail]

Having worked on a sizable AngularJS project for a good while, now, I can't begin to imagine where you're coming from. The strength of Angular, in my opinion, is that I write ~1/10th the code I'd write using jQuery & Underscore. Event handling, display logic, data binding, directives, resource factories – all of these and more mean I can focus on my business logic as opposed to re-binding events when I update the DOM and the dozens of other trivial bits I have to care about when using jQuery (or Backbone, really).

Obviously jQuery/Backbone setups have their place, but to claim that AngularJS makes you less effective is absurd.

[bdicasa]

I've used both Angular and Backbone pretty extensively and I think client side MVC in general makes you less productive. I've been starting to use PJAX with a splash of jQuery for most pages. Only using Backbone / Angular for pages that really require it. Have seen a big productivity boost and apps are as responsive. Too many people are seeing client side mvc as solution to everything. I did at first as well.

[abrkn]

Then you are bad at programming. 1/10th? Code or it didn't happen.