[agilebyte]

Once a project gets big I switch to the Publisher/Subscriber pattern through a main Mediator rather than using the default Model/Collection change events.

That is to say that I cannot relate to your 4th/any hell level.

[hackerboos]

Can you elaborate on this?

[agilebyte]

I would create a global mediator:

    export var mediator = _.extend({}, Backbone.Events);

And then use it to listen to messages in Views:

    m.mediator.on('change:page change:sort change:tags', this.renderTable, this);

And fire them from Models/Collections:

    m.mediator.trigger('change:sort', sortOrder);

Instead of listening to changes on them:

    this.paginator.bind('change', fn, this);

So I can plug & play different parts of the system together.

Edit: A link from Addy Osmani: http://addyosmani.com/largescalejavascript/#mediatorpattern

[steveklabnik]

Have you tried out functional reactive programming? How does it compare to the mediator?

[agilebyte]

You mean like Bacon.js? I have not, yet. Looking at it now it seems that it is used for filtering/mapping/combining values?

The messages I send are more light weight and usually say "this has happened" to which a View would respond by re-rendering itself or its part rather then me directly passing whole Models and Collections around.

[steveklabnik]

Yup! It sounds quite a bit like your mediator: make a stream, send events in the stream, certain things respond to the stream.

Check out this talk: http://vimeo.com/68987289