“React really shines in this type of complex UI space.”
“Vue is popular for smaller side projects.”
“Our home-grown tech ecosystem was more compatible with Angular.”
There might not be a “perfect” answer to which library or framework is best for tackling front-end web development projects, but that doesn’t mean software developers don’t have their favorites.
In fact, the two developers we spoke with had strong opinions on the usability of Vue vs. React vs. Angular.
Edward Orsi, a front-end team lead at Kensho, which builds analytical products for financial institutions and the U.S. intelligence community, said his team turns to React for its rich ecosystem with broad developer support.
But Lester Echem’s team at life insurance agency Haven Technologies prefers Angular due to its support for two-way data binding and TypeScript right out of the box.
Developers from NYC tech guided us through the pros and cons of each option, comparing their key features, industry popularity, performance and more.
Since launching in 2016, React has grown to be one of the most popular JavaScript tools available. That popularity — along with its extensive open-source libraries and maintainability — is what made Orsi decide it was the best implementation for Kensho.
Of the three programming tools, which is your team’s favorite?
We have several applications under development and the team prefers React for all of them. We like React because of its rich ecosystem with broad developer support combined with high-performance rendering. We are big fans of its functional components and the new Hooks API. The widespread popularity of React also allows us to attract top talent to our team.
We like React because of its rich ecosystem.”
Where has your team used this tool recently and why was it the right choice?
Our two most recent projects are an analytics app and a platform for searching, viewing and annotating documents. React was the right choice for both projects due to its ease of new developer onboarding, extensive open-source libraries and the maintainability of the declarative style. React really shines in this type of complex UI space. A less flexible tool would struggle to provide the necessary escape hatches to work directly with Document Object Model APIs in a reasonable way.
Do you have experience using Angular or Vue? And how do they compare to the work you’re doing with React?
The team and I have worked with Angular extensively in the past and a few folks have dabbled in Vue. While Angular has some pros to its use, developers had to learn the “Angular Way” of doing things. In React, developers can stick closer to ES6 best practices and jump right into functional components.
Vue is popular for smaller side projects where teams can reap the advantages of a more terse and opinionated framework, without encountering the eventual trade-off on flexibility. The strengths of modern frameworks outshine legacy tools like Ext, Knockout and Backbone, but refactoring should be done on a case-by-case basis.
Echem and the Haven Technologies team prefer Angular because of how well it meshes with the tech foundation that already exists at the life insurance agency. And Angular’s functional aspects, like its TypeScript availability, make it the ideal choice for the agency’s front-end work.
Of the three programming tools, which is your team’s favorite?
The Haven Technologies team uses Angular. It was a difficult decision to make initially, but after running through different prototypes with React and Angular, we chose Angular due to its support for two-way data binding and TypeScript right out of the box. We found that our home-grown tech ecosystem was more compatible with Angular and required less dev work. We didn’t consider Vue, as the hiring pool for experts was limited during the time we were in the market for a new front-end library and framework.
Because Angular comes with reactive forms, it’s an awesome tool for creating dynamic forms from metadata.”
Where has your team used this tool recently and why was it the right choice?
We’ve been using Angular in one of our most recent projects: suitability forms. Our existing tech stack, which includes Angular, has served us well for this project. Because Angular comes with reactive forms, it’s been an awesome tool for creating dynamic forms from metadata. We found that metadata-driven forms scale well and reduced our time to market from months to weeks. An added bonus is that it uses TypeScript to bring type safety into our programming.
How would you compare your experiences with React and Vue to the work you’re doing with Angular?
I have experience using all three. I definitely miss working with a less opinionated system that’s more performant, which React and Vue both provide. Yet, they’re not as scalable as Angular, which has tons of added benefits, including a standardized set of conventions and libraries. These benefits enable our full-stack engineers to efficiently build production-grade web applications without the need to modify the core Angular code or work around it. For example, it already has the excellent webpack and server-side rendering integrations built in.
