Spine and Client-Side MVC (Interview)

The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source

Wynn caught up with Alex MacCaw to talk about Spine, CoffeeScript, writing books, and working at Twitter.

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Featuring:

• Alex MacCaw – Website, GitHub, X
• Wynn Netherland – GitHub, X

Show Notes:

• Alex MacCaw, O’Reilly writer and open source developer now working on the front-end for Twitter.
• Spine Lightweight MVC library for building JavaScript applications, inspired by Backbone.
• Spine is written in CoffeeScript
• Eco is Alex’s favorite client-side templating engine.
• Alex suggests trying to use the same templating engine server-side and client-side, perhaps with Mustache, is a pipe dream.
• Spine integrates with Rails out of the box.
• Hem is like Bundler but for Node.js.
• Juggernaut enables realtime server push with node.js, WebSockets and Comet
• Spine.app “Effortlessly generate Spine, CoffeeScript and Hem applications. Spine.App gives your applications structure, CommonJS modules, a development server and more.”
• Alex is working on The Little Book on CoffeeScript in printed form for O’Reilly.
• JavaScript Web Apps covers building client-side MVC apps in a framework agnostic way.
• Twitter is hiring! Got the chops? Get in touch.
• Jeremy Ashkenas is Alex’s programming hero.

Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!