VUE.JS VS REACTJS - A QUICK COMPARISON

VUE.JS VS REACTJS

A QUICK COMPARISON

As one of the most dynamic fields in software development, front-end is constantly progressing; so much that it sometimes seems impossible to keep up with its back-to-back emerging trends, tools and frameworks. With the adoption of ES6 and the functional nature of JavaScript, developers have started to abandon the imperative universe of jQuery and instead, are embracing the declarative, component-based way of structuring applications.

As of 2019, there are 3 dominant players in the front-end battleground React, Vue and Angular. Out of the three, React and Vue have the highest satisfaction rate (according to the State of JavaScript). Both of these offer developers a productive approach to build distinctive web products, but each has its own best use cases and responds to different business needs.

In this blog, we’ll examine the major differences in the way React and Vue work as well as the core ideas behind them.

Let’s get started.

REACT AND VUE: DIFFERENCES Though both the tools have Virtual DOM, component-based architecture, and big proactive communities in common, differences still exist on the basis of: 1) Templating & Styling Templating and styling are essential parts of every UI library and the ones where the differences between React and Vue are the most obvious. The reason: they affect the code design. There’s a large contrast in the way both technologies approach it.

React

React relies heavily on its functional, JavaScript-y nature. The logic and the markup are regarded as a whole and therefore are mixed. This is achieved with the use of JSX which is not just an abstraction of React.createElement method and but helpful in creating Virtual DOM entities. Its syntax resembles HTML with some significant differences and seamless developer experience, debugging and better code readability than the createElement method. It’s also possible to use React without JSX. In terms of styling, the React community has come up with diverse solutions like JSS and Styled components. This is a proven example of the freedom and the rich choices that the community offers. For years, they’ve addressed the CSS`s flaws and come up with some great and revolutionary ideas.

Vue.js Vue takes a more conservative approach to templating and styling - one that’s separated from the logic. The markup is represented as templates that resemble old school HTML. In fact, every valid HTML is a valid Vue

template. Inside these templates, the framework offers several syntactic sugars like conditionals, iterations etc.

The same is true for the way Vue handles styling. In the style tag, you can write pure CSS or any pre-processor. Further, the „scoped” attribute allows styles encapsulation on the component level. Thus, styling in Vue feels more natural to beginners but lacks the flexibility that CSS-in-JS solutions from the React ecosystem provide.

2) Code Style And Learning Curve React

React uses JavaScript Expressions (JSX) which is a way of writing HTML within JavaScript code. This makes sense since React believes in functional programming. Initially, JSX could be a bit of a learning curve for some typical web developers, however, it is very similar to HTML and a react.js developer can grasp it with some practice.

In addition to this, React considers and treats everything as a component where each component has its own component lifecycle. React’s lifecycle methods handles these components efficaciously.

Vue.js Vue’s coding style is similar to what web developers had been doing before React came into being. Vue separates HTML, JavaScript and CSS like the traditional way of coding web applications. Yes, it does allow JSX, if that is your preferred code style.

Further, it also has component lifecycles, but they are simple and much more intuitive than React. Since it is a younger framework, it ensures to take the best of React and addresses some of the problems with React.

3) Building Tools

React and Vue, both have a pretty good development environment. With almost negligible configuration you can build applications that get you up and running with the latest practices and templates.

The difference is React has a Create React App(CRA) whereas Vue uses vue-cli. Both bootstrap tools give a comfortable, flexible development environment and a superior starting point to get you started with coding.

4) Community Support React

React is backed by professional developers from Facebook who continuously look for ways to improve it. Further, with a strong community support, developers can always get support to solve any issue.

Vue.js The Vue.js framework still has a very small market share in comparison to React. It is becoming popular at a fast pace, but, at the same time, issues at the time of development can go unresolved due to lack of community support.

Here’s a quick overview of the whole evaluation: CRITERIA

REACT

VUE

Type

JavaScript Library

JavaScript Framework

Both Web and Native

Primarily focused on Web Dev, but written to support other platforms with time

Ideal for

Developed by Facebook in March 2013, 141,925 stars on Github

Developed by Evan You in February 2014, 155,224 stars on Github

Redux

Vuex

React’s React Native is a widely used platform for native-rendered apps

Vue’s Weex is still evolving and aims to provide a flawless development experience

Model

Virtual DOM(Document Object Model)

Virtual DOM HTML-based templates

Function

Can be used as a base in the development of single-page or mobile apps

Web application framework capable of powering single-page applications

CRA (Create React App)

Official Vue-cli

Maturity

State

Management

Cross-platform Development

Bootstrap

Application

Notable

Features

data  One-way binding with props  Stateful components  Virtual DOM  Lifecycle methods  JSX (JavaScript XML)  Architecture beyond HTML

 HTML-based template  Reactivity  Components ( divide the whole app into small, self-contained, and reusable components)  Transitions  Routing

THE RIGHT TOOL DEPENDS ON YOUR NEEDS Both Vue and React are remarkable tools to build interactive user interfaces. To choose which one is better for your next project, you have to consider numerous factors including your specific use case, business needs, environment, developer availability, budget and of course the timeframe you’re working with.

BOTTOM LINE Regardless of the framework you choose, both have no considerable differences and the decision is highly subjective, based on your requirements. In case you want to integrate a front-end JavaScript framework into an existing app, Vue.js seems a better choice. On the other hand, if you want to build a web app with JavaScript, React.js is certainly the way to go.

And with this ,we have definitely tried not to be biased!