I've built moderately sized applications in both angular.js and backbone, backbone is much more pleasant to work with if only for the fact that everything is obvious, even if that requires you to do more development legwork and thinking about your application structure. (this is a feature, not a bug)
Angular.js data bindings are great and things like ng-repeat are neat until you start to step outside of the bounds of the angular garden.
Want to fetch data yourself and not use the angular resource plugin? (The resource plugin restricts the shape of data you can return from your server, i.e. every resource.get() request must only return a single object, if you want to receive an array you need to use .query() ). If you want to use jQuery for ajax, for instance, you lose all data bindings because vanilla javascript doesn't have the angular secret sauce!
edit: angular provides utilities to alleviate this issue, addressed in comment below.
Well that's fine maybe there's an event somewhere you can hook into and trigger off of, right? Try to find this in the docs, I dare you! If this doesn't demonstrate the incidental complexity caused by using a tool like angular, consider the documentation for backbone and angular, or either projects source for that matter. You can read backbone's source in an afternoon, I couldn't say the same for angular (or ember, or knockout). Because of this I can be confident backbone is largely bug free, I absolutely can't say the same about larger projects like angular.
Angular.js is meant to have a low barrier of entry, but because of this the developer interface is a thin facade on top of astonishingly complex internals. Contrast this to backbone which provides a simple and solid base for your application, providing freedom and foundation rather than a cookie cutter solution.
When I consider the trade-offs between client-side tools for structuring applications backbone consistently comes out on top.
"If you want to use jQuery for ajax, for instance, you lose all data bindings because vanilla javascript doesn't have the angular secret sauce!"
Data bindings should work as normal...if you're running into issues, try using $scope.$apply().
Angular uses jQuery, internally, so there are events you can hook into -- jQuery events.
And comparing the complexity of Angular and Backbone's internals is a bit misguided. They aren't meant to solve the same problems. Angular is complete Javascript application framework, and Backbone isn't. To use a non-foolproof analogy, if Angular were Rails, Backbone is Sinatra.
You raise valid points about Angular's complexity and lack of documentation.
This is why I also mentioned knockout.js
Knockout is more explicit than Angular, it's well documented, and the tutorials are just amazing.
I used to be in the "dynamic" crowd, but now I'm starting to lean towards the "explicit is better than implicit" philosophy, so I'm somewhat torn between Angular and Knockout. I'm choosing angular - like you said - for the low barrier of entry but if it turns out to be complicated I will probably switch to Knockout.js
However, I don't see any reason why I should use Backbone. What exactly does it provide? I don't see it providing anything useful to me.
I can only speak of my personal experience with these tools, and I've only tinkered with knockout (though we do use it for one of our tools internally, and the developer of that project gave it glowing reviews). I would recommend using the tool that is the closest to your development style.
If you like opinionated frameworks that make it as easy as possible to do the most common tasks (like rails), maybe you'd enjoy something like ember.js (or knockout). For me the style closest to home is the ability to plug in My Favorite Solution to each particular problem as it arises.
A primary offering from backbone then is a simple structure for plugging all these previously disparate tools together, the serverside corollary to this is something like python's Flask or ruby's Sinatra where it comes with only a simple routing base and ways to plug your own components in.
Want to use your own templating library? Easy. Want to use your custom persistence style? No problem. Backbone isn't going to make these choices for you, you will need to make them yourself.
This may or may not be the right choice for you, just investigate and make the choice that makes the most sense for you !
Angular.js data bindings are great and things like ng-repeat are neat until you start to step outside of the bounds of the angular garden.
Want to fetch data yourself and not use the angular resource plugin? (The resource plugin restricts the shape of data you can return from your server, i.e. every resource.get() request must only return a single object, if you want to receive an array you need to use .query() ). If you want to use jQuery for ajax, for instance, you lose all data bindings because vanilla javascript doesn't have the angular secret sauce! edit: angular provides utilities to alleviate this issue, addressed in comment below.
Well that's fine maybe there's an event somewhere you can hook into and trigger off of, right? Try to find this in the docs, I dare you! If this doesn't demonstrate the incidental complexity caused by using a tool like angular, consider the documentation for backbone and angular, or either projects source for that matter. You can read backbone's source in an afternoon, I couldn't say the same for angular (or ember, or knockout). Because of this I can be confident backbone is largely bug free, I absolutely can't say the same about larger projects like angular.
Angular.js is meant to have a low barrier of entry, but because of this the developer interface is a thin facade on top of astonishingly complex internals. Contrast this to backbone which provides a simple and solid base for your application, providing freedom and foundation rather than a cookie cutter solution.
When I consider the trade-offs between client-side tools for structuring applications backbone consistently comes out on top.