I got a call last night from a recruiter who was looking for “A front end guy: Javascript, HTML, CSS.  But the real kicker is they need someone with experience in Backbone.  Do you know anyone with that?”

I said, “Sure. Me.” I told him about the tutorials I had written for Backbone, the current use of Backbone at ${DAY_JOB}, the stuff I had contributed to Backbone-relational, and for a while we talked about the difference between Backbone and Knockout on the one hand, and then those versus do-everything frameworks like Cappucino and Sproutcore.

But here’s what gets me wondering: is Backbone.js, a fairly small and smart library, by itself difficult enough to warrant its own recruitment category? Any competent Javascript programmer who’s had any experience writing enterprise-level code, working with any of the above frameworks (along with JavascriptMVC and Batman and… did Amber ever make it into the wild?  I can’t follow everything, you know!), should be able to get up-to-speed on Backbone within a week or so of using it.  Just write a tutorial, like I did, then re-write to figure out how silly your original try was.

Is “We need Backbone experience” even a reasonable request at this point?