AngularJS is a JavaScript framework while ReactJS is a JavaScript library. Both of these technologies are popular and widely accepted for front-end web development. The number of JavaScript tools is growing day by day. There are a great number of JavaScript libraries, frameworks, and tools. As the number is growing, it’s becoming harder to make a choice. we will talk about AngularJS vs ReactJS here.
In this post, I will walk you through several aspects of AngularJS and ReactJS, such as market share, global interest, and use of use, so that it becomes easier for you decide which framework / library would be the best fit for your work.
Let’s first get an overview of AngularJS and ReactJS. This short overview will give you a clear picture of what these tools are.
AngularJS: Developed by Google, AngularJS is an open-source JavaScript framework for front-end web app development. It is a full-fledged MVC framework that lets you build mobile web apps and desktop web apps. It lets you embed JavaScript code into HTML code. This framework functions with the real DOM and it supports two-way data binding.
Official site: https://angular.io/
GitHub: https://github.com/angular/angular
ReactJS: Developed by Facebook, React is an open-source JavaScript library for front-end web app development. Keep in mind that it’s not a framework, it’s a library. It lets you build rich user-interfaces and also allows you to build mobile apps using React Native. React is a component-based JavaScript library. It lets you write HTML code inside JavaScript code and functions with the virtual DOM. React supports one-way data binding.
Official site: https://reactjs.org/
GitHub: https://github.com/facebook/react/
Market share
By looking at the market share of a technology, you can guess how good the technology is. If it’s adopted by great companies and startups, it gives a hint that it’s a great technology because it’s a common sense that great companies and startups will not use low-quality frameworks and libraries.
AngularJS and ReactJS are used by the greatest technology giants such as Facebook and PayPal. Let’s take a look at the market share of these two tools!
AngularJS: Some of the most popular web apps that use AngularJS are PayPal, jetBlue, Upwork, Lego, iStock Photo, Freelancer, Netflix, Weather, and so on.
ReactJS: Famous web apps such as Facebook, Instagram, Yahoo! Mail, Khan Academy, CodeAcademy, and Dropbox are using ReactJS.
Both these front-end development tools are used by great companies because both of them are powerful tools for front-end web development.
Global interest
A great number of people are showing interest in Angular and React. Why are so many people interested in these two tools? Obviously because they have come to know that these are among the best tools for front-end development. See the following chart to understand which tool has the greater demand.
On GitHub, Angular has 38,297 stars and 671 contributors while React has 106,128 stars and 1,198 contributors, as of writing this article.
Ease of use and learning curve of AngularJS vs ReactJS
Ease of use and learning curve are important topics that we should discuss. These aspects should be taken into consideration while choosing the right technology for your business. If a framework / library is easy to learn, you can save a lot of time and money. If you’re a business owner or a developer trying to learn a technology and if you find the technology easy to learn, you can actually save a lot of time, which is a great advantage for you.
And if you have employees, you can save a lot of money with an easy-to-learn framework because you won’t have to spend money in training them, they can learn on their own if the technology is really simple enough to learn.
AngularJS: It is an established fact that AngularJS is an amazing framework with lots of online docs, tutorials, and support from the community. But as the technology is not that simple, it is harder to learn in comparison with ReactJS.
Steep learning curve is one of the disadvantages of AngularJS. But if you’re focused on building a high-quality product, this shouldn’t be a concern because the main concern should be to build a highly successful product. So even if it takes a great amount of time and energy to learn this technology, it’s worth learning it because, with this framework, you can achieve great success with your web app.
ReactJS: On the other hand, ReactJS is a very simple library. It’s very easy to learn. So you don’t have to spend much time and effort in mastering this technology. Although ReactJS is easy to learn and AngularJS is not that easy to learn, keep in mind that setting up a ReactJS project takes more time.
Documentation, tutorials, and community support
Before choosing a particular framework or library for your work, you need to see whether that particular framework / library has a great number of learning materials and whether it has a good community support so that you can learn the technology easily and quickly and that you can get help easily when you get stuck somewhere.
If a new technology doesn’t have a great amount of learning resources, it can be hard to master the technology, which means you may have to spend too much time in learning it. And even after you master it, you may get stuck somewhere and end up wasting too much time in finding the solution or in fixing a bug if the community support for that technology is not good enough.
AngularJS: The AngularJS official site has a good amount of documentation and on the Internet, there are tons of AngularJS tutorials. The official Angular Youtube channel has a lot of videos that teach the framework. As there are a huge number of high-quality tutorials, articles, and videos about this technology, learning it has become very easy.
ReactJS: On the official site, ReactJS has a great amount of high-quality documentation. But it is still a very young JavaScript library which does not have a big number of tutorials and blog posts like Angular.
So what to choose in 2018?
In this post, I have given a quick comparison between AngularJS and ReactJS. We have understood that both of these technologies are good and popular. Now which one you should choose depends on your situation. One major difference that we have talked about in this post is that ReactJS is a simple library and easy to learn while AngularJS is a complex framework and comparatively difficult to learn. So if you want a front-end tool which can be mastered easily, go for ReactJS. But if you think you have the time to learn, you may choose AngularJS. Although these two tools are similar, they are not the same. There are advantages and disadvantages to both.
There are features that are present in Angular but not present in React while there are features that are there in React but not there in Angular. So before choosing a tool for your work, you have to know about their features. I suggest you visit their official sites to get a better picture of these tools.
You may also try them in small demo projects to see which one of them is suitable for the work you do. You can discover a lot of things about these tools after using them in your projects.
I hope you found this post useful. Happy coding!
