Unlike jQuery, Backbone is a library that's concerned with creating higher-level abstractions for the application. Things such as models, collections, and views are concepts that the Backbone programmer extends to provide seamless integration with the API data.

Backbone recognizes its own strengths and utilizes other libraries such as jQuery and Underscore to implement certain things such as fetching and saving data. This is a job well suited for jQuery as is rendering views in the DOM. For lower-level tasks, Backbone utilizes Underscore's capabilities. Because Backbone leverages these libraries, it's able to maintain a small code footprint. Moreover, since it follows simple patterns, it more or less stays out of the developer's way, letting them adapt the library to specific use cases.

There's an entire ecosystem surrounding Backbone, and Lo-Dash is a part of this ecosystem. Since it was originally conceived as a drop-in replacement for Underscore, Lo-Dash integrates closely with...