[corford]

You may well be right but just to add a small data point in the other direction: I'm solo founding a new start up right now and chose to go with Marionette (which is essentially Backbone + some very handy batteries). Its been bliss (and this is coming from a backend guy who normally loathes frontend programming in JS).

[kcent]

Same. FWIW, I have used Backbone for a bunch of past projects (personal as well as large-scale apps for work). In my latest projects in both, I'm using Marionette on top of Backbone and I've been pleasantly surprised at how well it's working out when managing a complex SPA. I really appreciate Angular and what it's doing but every time I've tried to use it, it hasn't been the right fit. I'm hopeful for it though. Maybe eventually I can find a useful application for it!

Backbone is doing a good job thus far establishing itself as a decent and reliable JS framework. Marionette addresses the specific pain points of view and event management in a larger app that Backbone leaves up to you out of the box.

[AdrianRossouw]

I've recently really come to appreciate marionette's application and module containers too, and I have really come to rely on all the event bus stuff that comes from backbone.wreqr.

Basically, marionette gets better.

[willbill]

Derek Bailey is a boss. His lost techies blog is great even if you aren't using marionette.

[psgibbs]

I'm not saying people aren't still choosing Backbone/variants today, just that 2 years ago, Angular was (1) not a nearly as viable an option and (2) not nearly as well known; so any time /company-size correlation will push the results in one direction.

edit: although interestingly, looking at the respective wikipedia entries, AngularJS has an initial release listed in 2009, Backbone.js is listed as October, 2010