Introduction to Backbone.js for Front-end Developers and Designers

Monday, Feb. 4th from 5:30 - 7:00pm

Azat Mardanov, Engineer, Storify

Backbone.js is a Model-View-Controller (MVC) framework for building rich front-end applications, examples are GMail, Google Docs, Google Maps.

MVC frameworks in general are great at reducing the cost and a headache of maintenance. Backbone.js achieves this by allowing web and mobile developers to organize JavaScript and HTML code into templates, models and collections. Backbone.js also provides many features to simplify and speed up engineering processes, e.g., views, model.fetch function, event binding and build-in support for Underscore.js template engine. 

Through lecture, discussion and a live coding demo, students will learn:

• The general concept of how most of the single-page interactive web and mobile applications (e.g., GMail, Google Docs, Google Maps) are built and maintained
• Advantages of using a JavaScript MVC framework and specifically, Backbone.js 
• What are Underscore.js, ADM and Requre.js
• How to create a Backbone.js-driven application architecture from scratch
• About Backbone.js templates, nested views and models, best practices and solutions
• How to use a Backbone.js starter-kit/skeleton to jump-start your own projects

Level & Prerequisites: Aimed at beginner and intermediate level front-end developers, HTML-coders and designers. Basic understanding of programming concepts such as objects, functions, as well as web development fundamentals including HTTP requests, AJAX/HTTP calls, DOM, HTML, CSS, etc. will be needed. Students with some JavaScript knowledge and experience with frameworks such as jQuery will get the most out of the class.

Required class materials / software: None.

Azat Mardanov has over 12 years of experience in web, mobile and software development. Azat worked as a CTO/co-founder at company, Gizmo — an enterprise cloud platform for mobile marketing campaigns, and has undertaken the 500 Startups accelerator program. Previously, he was developing mission-critical applications for government agencies in Washington, DC: National Institutes of Health, National Center for Biotechnology Information, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and Lockheed Martin. Azat is a frequent attendee at Bay Area tech meet-ups and hackathons (AngelHack hackathon ’12 finalist with team FashionMetric.com).

Currently, he is an engineer Storify.com. He mentors entrepreneurs as a hacker in residence at StartupMonthly, and he has just released a technical book about Node.js and JavaScript — Rapid Prototyping with JS. In his spare time, Azat writes about technology on his blog: webAppLog.com. He has a Bachelor’s Degree in Informatics and a Master of Science in Information Systems Technology degree. Follow him on Twitter @azat_co.

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