Q:

Do jquery and backbone conflict with one another? 

This may be an ignorant question - So jquery using the "$" to call jquery functions.  It appears as though backbone uses the dollar sign as well when calling "el".  Is this a conflict? 

A:

It's not a conflict because in jQuery $ refers to jQuery (so $('a') means jQuery('a')) whereas in Backbone $el is just the variable name given to the jQuery-type root element of a Backbone View instance.  It's the same as writing 
$this = $(this);

Beginning the variable name with a $ is just a convention that is followed to indicate that the variable is a jQuery object(or a jQuery wrapped set)

