While in principle I agree with you, the article references an extremely simple application for the sake of example. In reality, you would never build an application this simple in this manner. An article showing how to do this with a real webapp from beginning to end would nearly be book-sized.
When building an actual webapp, the Backbone method is going to be much easier to extend, test, and understand versus jQuery spaghetti.
Precisely the point I was going to make. This is a condensed example of translating jQuery-like thinking to backbone-like thinking. To quote kjbekkelund:
> [The backbone] code is more maintainable, easier to reuse and extend, and easier to test.
When building an actual webapp, the Backbone method is going to be much easier to extend, test, and understand versus jQuery spaghetti.