Popular posts

Oof, you're here for the dicey questions huh? I give you props. Get it? Props? Ok anyways...

The truth is, I like working with both of them, and I still use React, even though I'm super down with Vue. I think they're both amazing tools for frontend and I feel lucky that as a developer I get to live in an age where JavaScript is a veritable playground. So instead, I'm going to tell you what I think shines most for me about both of them. This isn't even going to be comprehensive, either.

React has an amazing ecosystem and community. Want a React tool? Someone made it. Want to improve that tool? They're looking for contributions. People are so creative with what they make with React, and if you're looking for help, the community is more than happy to answer questions. That's a pretty damn exciting thing to be involved in. React also has done a good job of not getting so far away from the metal- that is to say that there's a lot you're learning about JavaScript itself while you're working with it, and that's valuable.

Vue is elegant as all get out. I feel like because Vue came after React, it's right behind it in terms of community at the moment (following the same trajectory), but what they gained in coming a bit later was to pervue the landscape of frameworks and take all of the best bits of everything. You'd think that this might make it clunky and disorganized but Evan You has a brilliant mind in this way. It feels seamless to work with.

It's possible to be productive so quickly because so much is available to you and you don't have to reinvent the wheel for common problems. What's crazy awesome about it is that sometimes when you find frameworks with these nice abstractions, they sometimes fail because you need to do a thing it can't do. Here's what's cool: they still give you access to all the lower level stuff, too. Not only can you do things like build custom directives, you can also hook directly into the reactivity system with things like watchers that give you a distinct opportunity. Computed properties allow you to quickly cache data that won't update until something changes in it's dependencies. This is HUGE. When I work with Vue, I feel like everything I need is right at my fingertips, along with some extra candy that I didn't even expect but love working with too.

I've used both of these tools in large production sites, and I can recommend using either one of them. It's true, Vue fits me better and I prefer working with it, but I can clearly see why anyone would prefer React, and I think it will mainly come down to a matter of personal preference, as both of these tools continue to grow and learn from one another.