title: _.bindAll function
body: <p>My question most likely requires a very simple answer, which, nevertheless, I was not able to easily find. </p>
  
  <p>A Backbone application I am working on has several views. When defining the different views, I use _.bindAll in the initialize function to connect the "this" view object with the view's render function. For example:</p>
  
  <pre><code>DiscussedItemView = Backbone.View.extend({
      ...
          initialize: function() {
              _.bindAll(this, "render");
          },
  
  
          render: function() {    
  
              this.$el.attr('id', 'li-meeting-task-' + this.model.getId());
  
              this.$el.html(JST['tasks_sandbox/agenda_task_item']({ 
                  taskName    : this.model.getName(),
                  taskId      : this.model.getId()
              }));
  
              return this;
          },
      ...
  });
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>To create a new instance of the DiscussedItemView, I do the following:</p>
  
  <pre><code>...
          var discussion_agenda_row = new DiscussedItemView({model: task});
          discussion_agenda_row.render();
          this.$( '#meeting-items-list' ).append(discussion_agenda_row.$el); 
  ...
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The code works fine. Still, I do not understand why there is a need for the explicit use of the render() function on discussion_agenda_row. I thought that the initialization of a new DiscussedItemView instance would automatically call the render function, but if I remove the <code>discussion_agenda_row.render();</code> row, the HTML will not be displayed. Where am I mistaken?</p>
  
  <p>Thank you,
  Alexandra</p>