I have been hearing about MEAN and MERN. Both look great, but which one will benefit a person more in a career? Which one is easier to use? Easier to learn? Better?
Will Cameron
JS, React, Node and all things web. http://camerow.github.io/
Well, both MEAN and MERN are easy to learn. Both of the stacks require the knowledge of MongoDB and Node.js. The only difference is React & Angular.
I used to write Angular apps a few years back before I switched to React. For me, unidirectional data flow and reactive programming made more sense. It's true that React is the view, but if you understand Flux architecture and use React along with it, this can be a great combo. Angular 2 is still in beta. Although you can learn it, you will need a stable release to build a production ready app. If I were you, I would start learning React and then slowly get started with other parts in the stack. The community support is great and we are seeing more and more companies adopting React everyday.
I got into web development in the past year as well. I actually got started with Meteor. It was a great experience and people I think still have not seen how easy developing in meteor is yet. All the other frameworks I have worked on have been a struggle at some point. Although Meteor does hide a lot of what is happening so I wouldn't recommend it as a first language.
I would have to say something like Angular or React would be a great first choice and then move up to Ember. I feel ember is leagues ahead of both frameworks and Angular 2 is copying a lot of what Ember already does. As far as usefulness in the working field I wouldn't know I still haven't landed a position in the field yet.
It highly depends on both your estimated production time, and what you need exactly. React covers only views, so the "V" in the MVC pattern, giving you freedom on what to use to implement the other parts. Angular, on the other end, gives you a full featured framework with the other parts as well (routing, HTTP client library, validation, and a lot of other things I'm not mentioning). There are also other frameworks (Meteor, Aurelia, Ember, others) worth mentioning, but again: it just depends on what you need.
As I said, your release date also plays a role: Angular is still in beta and I think it will stay there for some months still. React on the other hand is already stable.
I got started as a web developer within the last year. I just happened to have a need to learn ReactJS and I haven't looked back since. I love that it makes me think about my toolkit, learn the current ecosystem of tools, and challenges me to get my build tools just the way I want them. It wasn't easy at first, but once you get the patterns of passing data (unidirectional data flow) and component vs. app-state you will feel liberated to do what you want to do without fighting your view layer - and you'll have gained a better understanding of JS and the JS ecosystem as well. There are plenty of tutorials out there, most of them good.
That said I also feel like learning something else would be good for me, so don't feel the need to relegate yourself to one thing. If you've got time to explore, do it. You may find that Angular makes more sense to you.
In terms of benefits to employment, that really depends. I would say if you are looking to work with Javascript, just learn patterns and the language itself rather than a framework abstraction of the language - this is something I am always reminding myself, and trying to challenge myself to do. Often it means embracing a problem that someone has already solved for you, which is not always easy.