Nothing humbles you more than revisiting the front-end frameworks you used to swear by. What once felt like cutting-edge, future-proof magic now sometimes feels like... well, duct tape held together with hopes and jQuery.ajax().
Over the years, I've worked with all sorts of front-end stacks. Some have gracefully evolved with the times. Others? Not so much. So here’s a little trip down memory lane — four frameworks (or libraries) that didn’t age quite as well as we hoped.
1. jQuery
Ah, the OG. If you didn’t start with $(document).ready(), did you even front-end?
jQuery made JavaScript accessible. DOM manipulation was fun, and animations were chef’s kiss. But now? Most of what jQuery offered is native in modern JS. Not to mention, bundling it into your project today feels like installing Flash in 2025.
Still, respect where it’s due — jQuery walked so the rest could run.
2. Backbone.js
Backbone was supposed to bring “structure” to our spaghetti code. Models! Views! Events! But let’s be honest — it often felt like you were doing all the hard parts of MVC by hand. No templating, no built-in data binding, and definitely no component system.
It was lightweight, sure. But also like building a house with just a hammer and optimism.
3. Ember.js
Ember had ambition — and conventions. So many conventions. If you followed The Ember Way™, things could be smooth... but go off-script even slightly, and suddenly it was you vs. The Framework.
It had a loyal community and some really good ideas (like routing and CLI tooling). But the learning curve and the rigidity made it harder to stick with, especially as React and Vue gained ground with more flexible approaches.
4. AngularJS (1.x)
Before Angular was Angular (as in the post-2.0 kind), there was AngularJS. And it was a lot.
Two-way binding felt magical — until it didn't. Digest cycles, directives, controller-as syntax... it was powerful, but also complex and often confusing. When Angular 2 dropped, it wasn’t even backward compatible, basically saying, “yeah we’re starting over, sorry.”
Nowadays, even the Angular team doesn’t want to talk about AngularJS.
So... were they bad?
Not at all. Every one of these tools played a major role in the evolution of frontend development. They solved problems that needed solving at the time. But the web moves fast, and what once felt sleek now often feels... crusty.
Still, I can’t help but smile whenever I see an old class="container clearfix" in the wild. It’s like bumping into an old friend you haven’t seen since the IE8 days.
What about you? Got any frameworks you loved that didn’t quite make it to 2025 with style?
Top comments (1)
Great trip down memory lane! I'd love to see a post about old CSS frameworks (like Bootstrap 2, Foundation, or even 960 Grid) and how they compare to modern tools like Tailwind.