React Vs. Angular Vs. Vue

Features

React

• React is an open-source, front-end library developed by Facebook that’s used for creating web and mobile applications. React is termed as a library because, in an MVC architecture, it’s only the view layer and not a complete architecture.
• The plus point here is that React is very flexible and can be connected with several packages that have been developed for it, which helps in the development of a complete application.

Angular

• Angular is an open-source, front-end framework developed by Google, used for creating web applications. Angular is termed as a framework because it includes enough functionality out of the box for the development of a complete web application.
• The advantage here is that you don’t need to go through packages and then select from those. Instead, you can start working directly without worrying about adding functionalities via different packages.

Vue

• Vue is an open-source, front-end library developed by Evan You, an ex-Google employee. Vue is used for creating web applications, and like React, it’s not a complete MVC framework.
• The packages developed for Vue are lesser than that of React due to its lower popularity, which makes it a challenge to select packages that provide functionality relevant to a particular scenario.

Use Cases

React

React was initially released in March 2013 and is extensively used by Facebook in almost all its applications. React is also being used by many companies like Netflix, Airbnb, Uber, Dropbox, Twitter, Reddit, and Pinterest.

Angular

Angular is a TypeScript-based JavaScript framework and was initially released in October 2010. Though not as popular as React, Angular is also being used by many companies like Forbes, Nike, upwork, Sony, HBO, and Wix.

Vue

Vue was initially released in February 2014 by ex-Google employee Evan You and has become popular even though it’s not backed by a big company the development team has only about a dozen developers. Vue is being used by a few companies like Xiaomi, Adobe, Grammarly, Alibaba, and also in many small projects.

Performance

React

React keeps a lightweight representation of the Real DOM in memory known as the Virtual DOM.

When the state of an object changes, Virtual DOM changes only that object in the Real DOM instead of updating all the objects, and this makes things fast.

Angular

Since Angular uses Real DOM and not a Virtual DOM, it’s slower in comparison to React and Vue when rendering the web application. That means Angular updates the entire tree structure of the DOM whenever any object changes.

Vue

Vue uses Virtual DOM (VDOM) as an adopted concept of React. Like React, Vue updates only those objects that get changed in the “real” DOM, so the rendering speed is faster than Angular and similar to React.

Data Binding

“Data binding is a process that allows an internet user to manipulate Web page elements using a Web browser. It is used in Web pages that contain interactive components such as forms, calculators, tutorials, and games.”

-TechTarget

React

React uses the one-way binding. First, the model state is updated, and then it renders the change in the UI element(view). Since the data flows only in a single direction, this makes it easier to debug React applications.

Angular

Angular uses two-way binding. Any changes made in the UI element is reflected in the corresponding model state and vice versa. It’s easier to implement, but debugging is comparatively difficult.

Vue

Vue supports both one-way binding and two-way binding, which is called reactive two-way data binding. It automatically selects the correct way to update the elements based on the type of input.

Scripting Language

React

React combines UI templates and JavaScript logic, the concept which no framework had implemented before. The result is called the JSX. React makes use of a component, which contains both the markup and logic in the same file. React only requires the knowledge of JavaScript.

Angular

Angular uses TypeScript. TypeScript is a statically typed language, which means you must define the variable’s type (string, character, number, array, etc.). TypeScript is meant to be friendlier for the developers having an object oriented programming (OOP) background.

Vue

VueJS uses HTML, js, and CSS separately. The template-based approach for VueJS is straightforward, and new developers can easily adapt to this programming style promoted by Vue. 

Testing

React

Jest is used by Facebook to run tests on React, is embedded in every React library, and requires zero configuration. 

Angular

Angular uses Jasmine to run various tests. The Jasmine framework allows various functionalities to write different kinds of tests cases.

Vue

Vue CLI has built-in options for unit testing with Jest or Mocha. Vue’s single-file components make it straightforward to write unit tests for components in isolation.

Community Support

All three frameworks have a fair amount of community support available for developers, and the community continues to grow.

React

React has a massive number of GitHub repositories attributed to it. At the time of this writing, there are 1 million repositories, more than 5 million commits, and over 1 million issues posted on GitHub. A few popular Github repositories on React are reactjs101, reactjs.org, reason-react, react-paginate.

Angular

Angular also has a relatively large following on GitHub with over 556K repositories, 1 million commits, and 570K issues posted on GitHub. Angular, angular.js, angular-cli, angular-seed are a few Github repositories.

Vue

Vue has about 308k repositories, 812K commits, and over 302K issues posted on GitHub. Vue-awesome-swiper, vuejs.org, vue-Apollo are a few Vue GitHub repositories that have gained popularity.

Growth Curve

According to Google trends, React is on a much faster upward trajectory than Angular and Vue, which have lost much of its momentum. 

Enhance Your React Skills

Though these three frameworks have their pros and cons, you should now be able to decide which one to learn or use for your project. 

To learn more about frameworks, refer to Simplilearn’s YouTube playlist and watch videos that we’ve curated so you can dive into the world of React and more of the differences between React, Angular, and Vue.

Looking for further training? Opt into our React.js Training Course, which will give you a solid understanding of how React enables developers to master user interface development skills with ease. You’ll be able to build React.js applications using React router, data flow, and usage with React, Bootstrap, and CSS. You can even check out the Angular Certification Training Course and gain in-depth knowledge of Angular concepts like facilitating the development of single-page web applications, dependency injection, typescript, components, and directives.