We decided to share the main advantages and disadvantages of each framework and help developers choose the best option for use.
Pros and Cons of Angular
Angular is a superheroic JavaScript MVVM framework, founded in 2009, which is great for creating interactive web applications.
Angular Benefits:
- Angular is used with Typescript. He has exceptional support for this.
- Angular-language-service - provides intelligent features and auto-completion of the HTML component template.
- New features such as generation Angular using the npm libraries from the CLI, generation, and component development using Angular.
- Detailed documentation that allows the developer to get all the necessary information without resorting to the help of his colleagues. However, this takes more time to learn.
- One-way data binding, which provides exceptional application behavior, which minimizes the risk of possible errors.
- MVVM (Model-View-ViewModel), which allows developers to work separately on the same section of the application using the same dataset.
- Dependency injection of components associated with modules and modularity in general.
- Structure and architecture, specially designed for high scalability of the project.
Angular disadvantages:
- The variety of different structures (Injectables, Components, Pipes, Modules, etc.) complicates the study compared to React and Vue.js, which only have “Component”.
- Relatively slow performance, given various indicators. On the other hand, this can be easily solved using the so-called “ChangeDetectionStrategy”, which helps to manually control the component rendering process.
Companies using Angular: Microsoft, Autodesk, MacDonald's, UPS, Cisco Solution Partner Program, AT&T, Apple, Adobe, GoPro, ProtonMail, Clarity Design System, Upwork, Freelancer, Udemy, YouTube, Paypal, Nike, Google, Telegram, Weather, iStockphoto, AWS, Crunchbase.
Pros and Cons of React
React is a JavaScript library developed by Facebook in 2013 that is great for creating modern single-page applications of any size and scale.
React Benefits:
- Easy to learn, thanks to its simple design, the use of JSX (HTML-like syntax) for templates and very detailed documentation. Developers spend more time writing modern JavaScript and are less worried about code specific to the framework.
- Very fast, thanks to the implementation of React Virtual DOM and various rendering optimizations.
- Excellent server-side rendering support, making it a powerful platform for content-oriented applications.
- First-class support for the Progressive Web App (PWA) thanks to the `create-react-app` application generator.
- Data binding is one-way, which means fewer unwanted side effects.
- Redux, React's most popular application health management platform, is easy to learn and use.
- React implements functional programming concepts (FPs) by creating easy-to-test and reusable code.
- Applications can be created using TypeScript or Facebook's Flow, with built-in JSX support.
- Switching between versions is usually very simple: Facebook provides “code modules” to automate most of the process.
- React skills can be applied to React Native development.
React disadvantages:
- React is ambiguous and leaves developers the opportunity to choose the best way to develop. This can be resolved by strong project leadership and good processes.
- The community is divided into ways to write CSS in React, which are divided into traditional style sheets (CSS Modules) and CSS-in-JS (i.e. Emotion and Styled Components).
- React is moving away from class-based components, which could be an obstacle for developers who are more comfortable working with object-oriented programming (OOP).
- Mixing patterns with logic (JSX) can be confusing for some developers when they first meet React.
Companies using React: Facebook, Instagram, Netflix, New York Times, Yahoo, Khan Academy, Whatsapp, Codecademy, Dropbox, Airbnb, Asana, Atlassian, Intercom, Microsoft, Slack, Storybook and many others
Pros and Cons of Vue.js
Vue.js is a JavaScript framework founded in 2013 that is ideal for building highly adaptable user interfaces and complex single-page applications.
Advantages of Vue.js:
- HTML reinforced. This means that Vue.js has many characteristics similar to Angular, and this, through the use of various components, helps optimize HTML blocks.
- Detailed documentation. Vue.js has very detailed documentation that can speed up the learning process for developers and save a lot of time developing the application using only basic knowledge of HTML and JavaScript.
- Adaptability. A quick transition from other frameworks to Vue.js can be made due to the similarities with Angular and React in terms of design and architecture.
- Awesome integration. Vue.js can be used both for creating single-page applications, as well as for more complex web application interfaces. It is important that small interactive elements can be easily integrated into existing infrastructure without negative consequences.
- Scaling. Vue.js can help with the development of fairly large reusable templates that can be done in almost the same time as simpler ones.
- Tiny size. Vue.js weighs about 20 KB, while maintaining its speed and flexibility, which allows you to achieve much better performance compared to other platforms.
Disadvantages of Vue.js:
- Lack of resources. Vue.js still holds a fairly small market share compared to React or Angular, which means that knowledge sharing in this environment is still in its infancy.
- Risk of excessive flexibility. Sometimes Vue.js may have problems integrating into huge projects, and there is still no experience with possible solutions, but they will certainly appear in the near future.
Companies that use Vue.js: Xiaomi, Alibaba, WizzAir, EuroNews, Grammarly, Gitlab and Laracasts, Adobe, Behance, Codeship, Reuters.
Conclusion
For an experienced developer, there is no significant difference in which framework to use, you just need some time to get used to the new one. In our company, we mainly use React and Angular, but Vue.js is also noteworthy. Each framework has its pros and cons, which means that when developing a product, you need to make the right choice for each individual case.