Vue vs React: What to Choose in 2019

Pretty much all companies have the same goal in mind: create the best possible web solution as quickly as possible. Practically speaking, developers have many Java libraries and frameworks at their disposal to find the one that works for them. Both Vue.js and ReactJS are tools that are rapidly gaining steam for frontend development, but both of them have their pluses and minuses. Let’s take a closer look at them so you can decide which one works for you.   

Vue.js vs React: An Overview  

Both tools enjoy great popularity among developers since they are open source and can be used for creating complex user interfaces. React uses DOM to interact with HTML documents and uses more of a declarative style of programming. The component-based approach gives you the agility you need in order to create complex apps.    

Vue.js is a very lean framework that builds on some of the things that we can find in Angular and React as well. It is being presented as a very progressive framework i.e. you can make migrate the projects that you are currently working on one feature at a time. Vue can be scaled from a lightweight library to a full-fledged network. Also, recently a new version of Vue came out 2.6.8 which eliminates a lot of the bugs that were found in the previous version such as an adjustable maximum for the tech stack, no more compressing the Unicode sequence and many other. 

HTML templating vs JSX 

One of the differences between these two frameworks is how they work with templates. Vue uses Single File Components, which is the old school approach along with separate blocks for HTML templates, styles, and JS. Most frontend developers are accustomed to seeing such a separation and can learn quickly when creating a web development solution. Also, it is very customizable:    

• Use SCSS for scoping   
• You can write the code in preprocessors  
• Use render function or JSX 

The decision of whether to go with JSX and templates is a matter of personal tastes. JSX can provide you with more power, while templates offer a separation of concerns, thus stopping you from inputting too much logic into the views. Designers and HTML developers may not be accustomed to JSX which could be a problem in terms of collaboration.   

State Management  

This term refers to all of the various ways information is passed on across UI components. As your system grows, it becomes increasingly harder for it to manage such a large amount of data. However, state management is a big part of React apps. There are lots of frameworks out there that can help you with massive states. They provide a single way of modifying the state thus making debugging easier.   

With React you need to rely on a third-party solution such as Redux for state management, Vue is equipped with its own tool called Vuex. With Vuex, the only way to change the state is through handler functions also known as mutations.   

Better Support Vue or React?  

This is where React is the clear winner. It boasts a vast community which means more courses and other educational materials available to developers. However, the most important part is that its library is maintained and supported by Facebook.  The only negative thing about React’s community is that it is somewhat fragmented which could make it hard to find solutions for common issues.   

Vue’s community is obviously smaller, but it is growing. It has the support of all major IDEs, but it cannot touch react in terms of third-party libraries, out of the box tools and other features.   

We hope this comparison between Vue and React was helpful for making a decision in terms of which one would be better to use for frontend development. In the end, it will all boil down to your specific situation. Pretty much everybody out there agrees that React Native is the best cross-platform solution available. There are plenty of React developers out there to choose from and since it has so many resources available you will be able to find a solution to any problem.   

If you would like to try out a rising technology that has made a lot of noise recently, you can do so and if you like it, you will be able to migrate your current projects to Vue. It has great documentation and its performance is better than React. Vue is easy enough to learn and set up quickly to allow you to provide a market-ready solution in a matter of weeks.  Taking all this into account there really is no bad option.   

There are, of course, many other differences between React and Vue, but we hope that what we have reviewed here will provide a good basis for understanding how these frameworks work. Frameworks are often analyzed when choosing a suitable platform for a new project. We hope this material will help make this choice.