Pimp my Backbone.View (by replacing it with React)

I’ve been using Backbone.js in a couple of projects now and my feelings about it are quite diverse. On the one hand, I like how it provides you with guidelines on how to structure your frontend code. Although splitting model and view is a very basic idea in software development, it also is very powerful. Backbone.js is of great help by providing collections which aggregate model instances and by being able to sync these models with a server via RESTful APIs. On the other hand, it always (and I hope that it’s not just me) seems to be a pain in the b*** to figure out the best way to implement a proper view lifecycle and to keep track of all registered event handlers. If you aren’t careful when removing or even just re-rendering views, you can seriously mess up event handling and prevent proper garbage collection. If you are just a little sloppy, this leads to a slow frontend with an always increasing memory footprint.
I’m not saying that Backbone.js is bad in handling UI events, just that you have to care about too many things that are common to most web applications. This article describes an alternative to the Backbone.View component.

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19.12. Test Driven JavaScript Development

A couple of weeks ago, I was attending a three-day workshop for agile developer skills. The workshop was split into five topics: Colaboration, Refactoring, Design & Architecture, Continious Integration and Test Driven Development. Especially the session about Test Driven Development was very interesting. Although I know the principles of TDD I was really impressed by the demonstration of solving a simple exercise (a coding kata) done in Java by the instructors of the workshop. It was not so much the coding in Java that was interesting for me, it was the combination of writing a test, executing the test with a shortcut from the IDE, see the test fail, write the implementation and re-start the test again within the IDE. You will say “that´s test driven development- it´s nothing new!” and you are right! But is there a way to do Test Driven Development in the same way for JavaScript? I mean writing a test, execute the tests with a shortcut from the IDE, see the test fail, implement the method and re-start the test? Yes, there is a way! So let me show you what I have done to do the same coding kata (called Fizzbuzz) with JavaScript.

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06.12. Doctrine 2 – Zend Framework Integration

In yesterday’s article of our advent calendar, we explained the concepts underlying Doctrine 2. In today’s article, we want to use that knowledge and create a simple Zend Framework (ZF) application that uses Doctrine 2 to persist its business objects.

While explaining how to integrate Doctrine 2 into Zend Framework, we will create a generic sandbox that can be used for future projects building up on these technologies.

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Introducing Gigger, a Realtime Javascript Monitoring Framework

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Monitoring your web application is essential for professional maintenance and development. Especially if you have a high load on your website and you want to keep the current users on your site, you definitely should stay alert for problems
and be able to react fast in case of problems. Monitoring is also crucial for A/B tests, since you have to evaluate somehow which version
of your website performs better. Many big players also measure constantly how much revenue the website produces. For them it is important to monitor if a new
feature increases or decreases the revenue and take decisions based on that information.

Mayflower is currently developing a javascript framework which provides a smart tool for realtime monitoring and measuring. Read the full article for more information.

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Developing desktop applications by using web technologies

Looking how to develop a desktop application in a short term, I came accross "Titanium Developer". This Open-Source tool helps you to create desktop apps. The special feature about it is the possibility to use well-known Web-Technologies such as HTML, JavaScript and PHP. Thus, learning a new programming language is no longer necessary. Another advantage is that you can directly create binaries for Mac, Linux and Windows using the same code.

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