By Piyali Bhadra - Jul 30, 2024
React.JS and Vue.JS are two of the most popular frameworks among the front-end developers. Built based on JavaScript principles, VueJS and ReactJS offer an elite collection of syntaxes and components that enable faster and better development of front-end elements.
Among other top front-end frameworks, the developers often prefer ReactJS and Vue JS. But why? Why React JS and Vue JS? Let us find that out.
Both frameworks, built on JavaScript, have unique properties and benefits that make them an honest to good choice for front-end developers. These frameworks are developer-friendly and are designed to help developers complete tasks within a limited time frame, which promotes productivity and development efficiency. Hence, Vue.JS and React.JS are counted as some of the best tools for JavaScript web development.
Created by Facebook, now Meta, released React JS as a front-end development framework in March 2013. The framework is written with JavaScript XML or JSX, a notable JavaScript Syntax that supports developers to code on ReactJS using pure JavaScript coding practices.
Another popular benefit of ReactJS is, that it allows developers to modify the child components without making any changes to the parent components. Hence, any change in data can be uploaded to the live website without reloading the page itself. Although React.JS as a popular front-end library is widely used for creating state-of-the-art user interfaces (UI), this JavaScript library is highly effective in building high-quality single-page applications of SPAs.
Facebook and Instagram are two of the most popular social media sites created using React JS. Other than them, Dropbox, Reddit, Airbnb, and BBC are some of the renowned sites that use ReactJS for web development.
The Use Cases of React JS
React JS, with its large collection of components, can be used to support different development needs. Some of the most popular use cases of React JS are:
- Creating User Interfaces
- Building Single-Page Applications (SPA)
- SaaS (Software as a Service) Applications
- Progressive Web Apps (PWA)
- E-Commerce Websites
- Interactive Dashboard and Website Features
- Content Management Systems (CMA)
- Social Media Websites
- Mobile Applications
- Desktop Applications
- Enterprise Applications
- Data Visualization
- Educational Platforms
- Collaboration Tools or Applications
- Internet of Things (IoT) Applications and Gadgets
- Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality Applications
- Real-Time Applications
Vue.JS, released in 2014, is another popular front-end framework written using JavaScript, created by Evan You, a former Google engineer. Created to make web development a simpler, faster, and developer-friendly experience, Vue JS uses HTML and CSS templates instead of the JSX otherwise used by ReactJS.
Vue JS also enables the development of progressive user interfaces, as any altercations made in the sister components do not alter the parent components. Additionally, developers can add libraries like Vue Router and Vue X with the core VueJS to support your specific development needs.
GitLab, Xiaomi, Alibaba, Google Careers, and Behance are some of the top websites built with Vue. JS.
Use Cases of Vue JS
Vue JS with its developer-friendly coding practices, flexibility, and light-weight framework can be used to develop different efficient applications and interfaces.
- Building Single-Page Applications
- Building high-quality User Interfaces
- Website Design or Development
- Server-Side Rendering
- Static Site Generation
- Client-SIde Routering
- IDE Support
- Testing Tools
- Integrate TypeScript
- Desktop Applications
- Mobile Applications
- Enterprise Application
- Music Streaming Applications
- Team Collaboration Platforms
- Social Media Applications
Advantages of ReactJS
Reusable Components
The development components and codes written in React JS are reusable. Each of these components is built with logic and functions written in reusable HTML codes. This allows developers to use these components in multiple places as per the development or maintenance needs without having to rewrite the codes from scratch. This helps in promoting productivity while solving the bottleneck scenario of the development team.
Collection of UI Libraries
ReactJS boasts a large collection of libraries and UI templates that help developers build efficient user interfaces for their development projects. Additionally, the UI frameworks created using React JS tend to be simpler with a component-oriented development approach. React also enables the use of machine-readable codes that help in dynamic web application development.
Dynamic Web Application Development
The JSX extensions of React JS are used to render subcomponents under a particular syntax. The presence of Virtual DOM, modular components, and an extensive collection of resourceful libraries, plugins, and extensions make React JS a good choice for dynamic web application development.
Quick Debugging and Rendering
React JS supports rapid development rendering of web applications while maintaining high performance and quality. This library solves the traditional dynamic web development constraints by simplifying the coding process. JSX used in React JS development renders HTML tags and quotes in React subcomponents. The use of JSX in coding instead of HTML mockups also allows React developers to avoid code injections and provides error messages to ensure a better development process.
Cross-Platform Development
Another productive and efficient benefit offered by React JS is the library’s support for devices run on both iOS and Android operating systems. Using React Native, developers can build high-quality and efficient cross-platform applications. The JavaScript syntaxes used on React enable developers to build sophisticated interfaces for the native applications built for either of the operating systems.
Large Community
React JS, being one of the most popular front-end libraries, boasts a large online community of developers and designers. Being an open-source library, React is also free to develop, download, or edit by community members at any point, creating enriching experiences for everyone.
Developer and Beginner Friendly
React JS is easy to use daily for developers, programmers, or designers with previous experience with JavaScript. As React is built using JavaScript syntaxes, having prior experience with JavaScript, JSX, and ECMAScript helps you in your learning and development journey without any hassle.
Limitations of ReactJS
Complexity of JSX or JavaScript XM
React JS uses JavaScript XML or JSX to make the codes clean, readable, and user-friendly. However, using JSX can be highly challenging for developers unfamiliar with JavaScript.
Frequent Changes
React JS is prone to regular updates to improve its performance. While this is highly helpful for React JS developers in addressing critical bugs or other performance issues, keeping up with the changes at all times can be challenging. Due to the frequent changes, even experienced developers will constantly need to relearn the concepts.
Lack of Detailed Documentation
React JS receives frequent updates from its developers. Although this might help developers resolve a particular issue created by the limitations of earlier versions, the frequent updates make creating reliable documentation difficult. The constant changes require extensive changes to the existing documentation, making it a difficult task to achieve.
Does Not Support SEO
SEO or Search Engine Optimization is an important aspect of any online business to make itself known in the online marketplace. Without proper SEO strategies in a business’s marketing, it fails to reach the right audience at the right time. The search engine algorithms look for specific SEO elements of a website before ranking these web pages. ReactJS is a programming language that tends to underperform in the SEO parameters due to some of its limitations.
Advantages of Vue JS
Simpler Learning Curve
Vue JS is a JavaScript framework that can be worked on with ease if a developer has considerable experience with CSS, HTML, and JavaScript syntaxes and coding patterns. Vue JS syntaxes are beginner-friendly and provide clarity during the development process. With dependable knowledge of the aforementioned technologies, developers can master working with Vue.JS within a limited time.
Lightweight Framework
Vue JS is a lightweight framework that does not create extensive strain on memory, making downloading and working with the framework fairly easy. Being lightweight, applications written with Vue also tend to load faster, reducing the page load time which helps in the website’s SEO strategies.
HTML Coding Tags
Although written in JavaScript, Vue JS uses HTML tags and quotes to build the websites. As search engine algorithms prioritize HTML tags while crawling websites, being written with HTML helps the Vue JS websites with Search Engine Optimization or SEO.
Data Binding
The Vue JS reactivity feature allows excellent data binding between JavaScript and HTML coding syntaxes, streamlining the coding process. Anytime during the development, if the data is altered, the DOM changes along with it.
Vue Command Line Interface or Vue CLI
Vue CLI is an advantageous tool that helps developers create applications using Vue JS. The NPM package enables programmers to build a new project from scratch. CLI also helps developers work with several sections seamlessly without getting bogged down by the individual configurations.
Limitations of Vue JS
Language Barrier
Vue.JS was originally written and released in China. Hence, a significant amount of essential documentation or other relevant instructions and guides are published in Mandarin and other popular Chinese languages, which can be inconvenient for developers otherwise unfamiliar with these languages.
Limited Support and Resources
Unlike React, Vue JS has a limited number of libraries and extensions to support different development requirements. The limited availability of important plugins and extensions inevitably reduces the development possibilities for the Vue JS developers.
Restricted Testing Abilities
Vue JS does not provide many options for testing the codes written using the language which can create complications in the project development funnel.
Flexibility
The flexibility of any development language is generally considered a helpful feature for development. However, the excessive flexibility options provided by Vue leave considerable room for irregularities and development errors while working on a project.
React JS was released by Facebook in 2013, whereas Vue JS was released by Evan You in 2014. ReactJS and Vue JS, as mentioned above, are written using JavaScript. However, Vue JS and React JS also share a few other features between each other.
JavaScript
JavaScript is the programming language used for writing both Vue and React. React primarily uses ES6 while both ES5 and ES6 are in use for the latest versions of Vue JS. With JavaScript compilers like Babel, developers can use ECMAScript 6 with Vue.
TypeScript
TypeScript is a programming language written using JavaScript that enables static type-checking combined with the latest version of the ECMAScript. Both Vue and React support the use of TypeScript and dataflow.
Virtual DOM
Both React and Vue use Virtual DOM in their development procedure instead of Real DOM. The use of virtual DOM reduces direct manipulation of the Real DOM, which enables faster rendering and accelerates the development process. With Virtual DOM, developers can also create efficient UIs with declarative coding patterns instead of writing detailed, complex codes.
Component-Based Architecture
Both React and Vue use a component-oriented architecture for front-end development. The frameworks, plugins, and reusable components of these frameworks help developers build web applications and interfaces faster while improving performance and quality.
Coding Syntax
The first considerable difference between React and Vue is in its coding practices. While the React mechanism entirely relies upon JavaScript XML or JSX, Vue takes a simpler approach with HTML scripting. Although Vue allows developers an option to script with JSX, it focuses primarily on working with CSS and HTML.
Scalability
Between React JS and Vue JS, React offers better scalability options to the developers. Using JSX as the primary syntax, React enables superior scaling options to the developers. Developers can also leverage the reusability of its components in scaling their projects according to the requirements.
Although Vue JS offers scalability features to some extent, it is not as efficient as React. Developers will have to heavily rely on extensions and additional Vue.JS libraries for scaling their applications.
Performance
Although there’s no extensive difference between the performance of Vue and React, Vue shows better compatibility with handling application updates. Their differences in performance are also dependent on the efficiency of the virtual DOM used by the framework. The responsiveness of the virtual DOM in both React and Vue ensures quality performance and productivity for the JS library and framework respectively. However, some differences set them apart.
In React JS, any changes to child components does not alter the parent components. However, the child components would need to be changed individually in order to work the updates.
On the other hand, Vue JS updates faster with its self-tracking components automatically identifies and updates the components accordingly.
Mobile App Development
In order to build fast and efficient mobile applications, React offers a better options. The best feature of React JS that aids in mobile app development is its support to cross platform development. A React JS can build state-of-the-art mobile applications for both iOS and android devices by using the framework. Additionally, React JS developers with familiarity with React Native can easily switch to React Native which offers huge opportunities for mobile development.
However, with Vue JS, it does not have any built in component of tools for mobile app development.
Application Size
The performance of an application is quite reliant on its size and bulkier applications tends to perform poorly. Vue JS wins in this case as the codes written using this framework can be compressed considerably to lower the application size. On the other hand, React JS codes tend to be comparatively larger than Vue codes. The smaller code size in Vue can result in lower development time and higher performance output.
There is no definite answer to which framework or library you should choose. Both Vue and React has their own sets of advantages and drawbacks. It ultimately boilsdown to your project size, it’s requirement, and available resources.
Both these JavaScript tools have similar features with their unique feature and benefit. React developers and Vue developers can use the ready-to-use templates available with both of these technologies to build complex and capable solutions for your business. React JS perhaps gives you relatively more choice of libraries to build the application on. However, Vue offers a better performance, flexibility, and, an easier learning curve for the developers beginning with their development journey.
You will need to hire React JS developers and Vue JS developers with the right skill, technical competence, and industrial experience to build the application that suits your business the most.
