I think you will find that the JavaScript community is much like the Lisp community, in which it is so easy to roll your own that a good deal of people roll their own, it is why you see patterns talked about allot in JavaScript a good deal of people are just implementing the patterns that they need. Where the big patters (AMD=Requires.js, routing=Backbone) get turned into a community supported framework. A big portion of the other issues are dealt with by the particular toolkit you use, for example testing in Dojo is done via DOH. If you are looking for a structure methodology of application development like you get in the Java or .NET worlds, then you need to look to one of the large frameworks like Dojo. The jQuery/Backbone path is intentionally role your own, it is more like the Perl philosophy of grab the pieces you need and build it up from scratch. Where the larger toolkits give you a consistent development pattern.