Angular vs React vs Vue, Which One should I go for in 2020?

 Hello guys, Today in this blog we will talk about Javascript. Every day, JavaScript is becoming more and more widely used. Modern JS is also adapted for applications designed for processing large amounts of data because of its wide variety of tools and ability to write clear and concise code. We have so many options for Javascript frameworks and libraries. So, deciding on a JavaScript framework for your web application can be overwhelming.

code snippet ReactJs

Today in this blog, I will share my thoughts on Angular, React, and Vue because these three are very popular these days. I would love to hear your thoughts, so surely leave your opinion in the comment section, no matter if you agree with my opinion or not. I am looking forward to your thoughts. 

Now let's have a look at my comparison. So how do I want to compare these three javascript frameworks and libraries? First, I want to have a look at the key characteristics of each because that is super important. This will determine whether you like a library or framework or you don't. Then We will look at their popularity. This also matters if you’re looking for a job working with this, or if you want to know where the industry is moving. Then we will look at the Job Market. Then Learning Curve, which is very important and last but not least We will look at performance. Performance obviously matters. 

So let's start with the key characteristics of each.!!

- Key Characteristics of Angular: 

Let's have a look at Angular. 

1) Angular is developed and maintained by Google. 

 

2) It is extremely popular and used by many large companies like Google who has developed Angular, YouTube, Upwork, Freelancer, Udemy, Telegram, and many other large companies.

     

3) Angular is a complete framework, a rich set of tools, and follows a component-driven approach that helps you with developing modern web applications. The cool thing about angular is that it includes Routing, state management solution, form validation, HTTP all these things that help to scale your application, or helps to build a bigger application.

 

4) All these tools you'll need for very large applications ship as part of angular, developed by the angular core team, so you don't need to rely on third-party vendors. If you want to turn your application into a progressive web app, well there is an official package for that. It has all the packages of the all core features you might want to add in your application. This, of course, gives a developer a lot of power to add such features easily.

5) Angular uses TypeScript, a superset of JavaScript that is considered a separate programming language. TypeScript has a lot of significant advantages, such as autocompletion and navigation, as well as advanced refactoring possibilities. Those make TypeScript a primary choice for large-scale projects; however, if you do not know it, you cannot jump right in. You have to learn TypeScript first, It's not hard though. Angular is not suitable for Mircoapps and Microservices. 

6)Angular is more suitable for single-page applications rather than microservices. Angular uses two-way data binding that enables singular behavior for the app which minimized risks of possible errors. If you don’t know what is Two-way data binding, It is referred to as the mechanism where UI fields are bound to model dynamically. When UI elements change, model data is being changed accordingly. On the other hand, in one-way data flow means only the model can change the app’s state.

 

- Key Characteristics of React: 

Now Let's have a look at React. 

1) React is developed and maintained by Facebook and that, of course, it's a very large company which actively uses react in many or pretty much all its applications and therefore obviously react is actively maintained, gets updated regularly, gets new features or enhancements regularly.

2) It’s extremely popular and used by many large companies like Netflix, New York Times, Dropbox, and many other large companies. 

3) React Known as the JavaScript library for building user interfaces, follows a component-driven approach. As React is a library, It's not a complete suite of tools if we comparing it to angular. Components are basically reusable UI elements. 

4) React uses JSX, It is basically HTML in JavaScript, but not entirely HTML, for example, you can’t use Class when we assign a CSS class, It’s a ClassName instead. Generally, it is okay. The main reason I don’t like this because mixing HTML and Javascript all together makes the code kinda messy. It may have its advantages. There are people who loved this approach and overall it's just how React works. As already mentioned react is Library and it is not a complete suite of tools. For example, you need to add routing and that is not included in react. Instead, there is a pretty popular library react-router. It's the same for state management, there is Redex for us. But these packages are not from the react core team. These are developed and maintained by the React community. So, you have to rely on third-party vendors, and for some packages, you have additional things to learn. That is something you might or might not like.

5) React provide flexibility to select the things which are important for the app, So react offer more flexibility for developing micro-apps and microservices. In my opinion, this is one of the best parts of the React. React uses one-way data binding. So, it updates the model first, and then it renders the UI element and only the model can change the app’s state. You can also build mobile apps with the help of React-Native. React native is very popular and very good in performance as compared to Ionic.

Key Characteristics of Vue

Now Let's have a look at Vue.  

1) Vue has nice features from both React and Angular. In my personal opinion, Developers of Vue has picked good features from Angular and React and merged them pretty well. Vue is yielding almost the best of both worlds.

2) Vue is developed and maintained by a former Google employee named Evan You. It is also extremely popular amongst developers. But unfortunately, very few large companies using Vue. Though it's slowly picking up and it's getting adopted by more and more companies. Xiaomi, Alibaba, EuroNews, Gitlab using Vue.

3) Vue is a complete framework like angular though a bit reduced, and has fewer features than angular, and also follows a component-driven approach. In Vue, you also got routing and state management provided by the core Vue team. And that of course, makes moving towards larger applications a bit easier since you can rely on these packages always being available since developed by the core Vue team. So that's pretty cool to have. It has less package then angular does have.

4) Vue uses native Web Apis, it uses HTML templates, CSS. It is pretty similar to Angular regarding that from a syntax perspective. But it has some ideas from React and it really merges in a nice way. I personally like its syntax a lot. Because it looks very nice, clean, and well structured. 

5) Similar to React, Vue provides flexibility to select the important things for the app, So it offers more flexibility for developing micro apps and microservices. Vue uses both two-way and one-way data binding. One-way data binding is Default. Vue is all primarily used for web apps, you can also build mobile apps with the help of Native script. Native script supports both Angular and Vue.

 

So Those were the key characteristics. Now Let's have a look at popularity. 

How popular are these solutions?

 

Well, React is pretty popular if we measured the monthly NPM downloads. Let's compare NPM downloads at https://www.npmtrends.com/angular-vs-react-vs-vue. Here we can see the NPM download graph of these three and we can see React is quite a bit more popular than Angular at least if we just look at these downloads. 

            

                                             Now that is not the only measure, to be honest, but it gives us some indication that Reacts seems to be getting used a bit more. Now Vue, even less, still is highly liked in developer circles, if you look at Github stars. On Github you can see, Angular has 43 k plus stars, React has 116k plus stars and Vue has 120k plus. Vue is super popular, but regarding usage and NPM downloads, it is a week but rapidly rising.

 

Next, Let's look at the job market. Popularity and job market kinda go hand-in-hand. If we see this NPM downloads it indicates that React has more job offers and then angular and Vue has very fewer job offers. It is estimated that React has 78 percentage job offers, Angular has 21 percentage and Vue has at least 0.8 percentage. The job market also depends upon the location for example in India there are lots of jobs offer for Angular. In the United States Reacts jobs are a lot and in China Vue Jobs are a lot. And I love to hear which framework is popular in your area.

 

Let's have a look at the learning curve. This is I think very important If you want to start learning any one of these three. You need to make sure it is easy to learn and you are comfortable with it. Let's start with Angular. Angular uses Typescript. As I have already mentioned, Typescript is considered a separate programming language. However, if you do not have knowledge of Typescript, you cannot jump right in Angular. You have to learn TypeScript first, It's not hard though. Some of the Angular features like dependency injection are pretty cool but also a bit more complex so you have to invest a bit more to learn these. So There is definitely a steep learning curve for Angular. Although React is considered much easier to learn compared to Angular, and more difficult than Vue. In particular, to create applications on React you will need experience with JSX. Learning JSX is easy, It is basically HTML in javascript. Vue is pretty easy to learn. It uses pure Javascript. And coding in Vue feels very clean and well-structured. Companies switch to Vue because it is extremely easy to introduce new developers in Vue project. And Vue can be used for medium to Large scale web applications. I think this is the main reason it is very popular in the developers' circles.

 

 Now, let's take a look at the summary of so far we have compared. All three frameworks and libraries are great. You can build the same type of apps with all of them. There is no better or worse one.  I can only encourage you to at least briefly dive into each of them. And get an idea of how the code looks and then dive into one deeper or to, if you have the time, learn two of them in a more focused way. What is your opinion on these three? Share your opinion on these in the comment section. I am looking forward to your thoughts.