Angular and React are two popular frameworks for building user interfaces.
Angular is a full-featured framework that can be used to build complicated single-page applications, but it also has a steep learning curve.
React is easier to learn and offers the same set of features as Angular, but may not be as fast in some situations due to its virtual DOM implementation.
In this article, we will compare Angular vs React against each other by looking at their performance characteristics and how easy they are to learn.
What is Angular?
The Angular framework is a comprehensive, robust, and powerful front-end development framework.
Angular is ideal for enterprise or large-scale applications that are complex in nature. It also includes built-in features for building mobile applications with native UI.
Angular contains all of the features you need to build a complex single-page application, which is why it has a high learning curve that requires patience to master.
How to use Angular?
Angular primarily uses TypeScript as its programming language, but you can also use ECMAScript 2015+ or JavaScript to create an app with this framework.
Angular is primarily used for developing large, complicated applications. It can also be used to develop mobile apps with a native UI.
Angular comes with features such as data binding and dependency injection built-in, so there is no need to implement these features on your own.
What skills do you need to use Angular?
To become a successful developer with the Angular framework, it requires knowledge of HTML and CSS. Additionally, an understanding of TypeScript/JavaScript is necessary since this is what’s used for building apps in angular.
Lastly, having experience using frameworks similar to React will help developers get started quickly with learning how to build applications on top of Angular.
What is Angular performance like?
In terms of raw speed, the virtual DOM implementation that React uses allows it to be much faster than traditional web application development platforms such as PHP or Rails.
However, when compared against other JavaScript technologies such as EmberJS and BackboneJS (which both use small amounts of code), then there isn’t too much of a difference in performance.
What is React?
React is a JavaScript library for building user interfaces that were initially released by Facebook, but it’s now maintained by the open-source community as well.
Even though React allows you to build robust and powerful single-page applications, it does not come with all of the bells and whistles like Angular has such as built-in data binding or routing (which can be added using libraries like react router).
There are many other frameworks similar to React such as EmberJS and BackboneJS; however, they both have fewer features than what React provides out-of-the-box.
How to use React?
It’s easy to get started learning how to write code with React since it can be used with a variety of different programming languages.
It doesn’t have the same steep learning curve that Angular has, so developers new to web development will find it easier to begin working on building applications straight away.
However, you also need to know HTML and CSS in order to write code for React because there is no built-in template engine or views like what Angular comes bundled with by default.
What skills do you need to use React?
There are many front-end libraries similar to how jquery works where they just add additional functionality onto your web pages without changing them too much from their original design.
However, this is not true with React as it completely changes the way in which we think about creating user interfaces within the web browser.
React does not come with its own templating language which means you need to be familiar with HTML and Javascript.
However, this also makes it easier to integrate React into an existing application that’s already written in one of the many popular front-end frameworks like Angular or EmberJS.
Quick Comparison of Angular vs React
Angular and React are both front-end libraries for creating interactive and responsive user interfaces.
React is a library released by Facebook and has been open-sourced since. Angular is a library maintained by Google.
Developers should be comfortable with HTML and CSS, as well as JavaScript or TypeScript if they want to learn how to develop Angular apps.
It would also be useful to already know some other JavaScript frameworks like React, EmberJS, or BackboneJS if you want to get started quickly with Angular.
Angular is primarily used for developing large, complicated applications that need a lot of speed.
React is mainly used for developing single-page applications that don’t require very much performance.
Constructing an application with React is also much easier than it would be when using Angular.
The Popularity of Angular vs React
Since both Angular and React are open-source projects maintained by Facebook/Google respectively, their popularity will always fluctuate depending on how often they release new versions.
There is more demand for developers who know how to work with either technology than what can be satisfied at this time due to a shortage in supply within the job market itself.
And similar to other JavaScript technologies such as EmberJS and BackboneJS, React is one of the more popular frameworks in use today.
React vs Angular Performance
The React library is fast.
React outperforms Angular in both regards to UI rendering performance and Virtual DOM-based state updates.
One reason for React’s superior performance is that it limits its own object model to what HTML can represent natively.
This means that React doesn’t need to worry about how to avoid reflowing or recalculating layouts when data changes, because it can simply diff the new value against the previous value, change the DOM accordingly, and let the browser update its layout accordingly.
Angular needs to be able to do all of these things on its own, which is why it has a long history of unfixable bugs related to any kind of dynamic visual change.
Lastly, React allows for much better developer tools and support since it’s not as tightly coupled with the browser than Angular is due to its use of native HTML elements which makes debugging a lot easier.
Conclusion
In today’s article, we’ve talked about Angular vs React, found out what each of these is, what are the differences between them, and how to use them.
We also talked about the popularity of Angular and React, what skills you need if you want to use them in your projects.
Finally, we briefly discussed the performance of Angular and React.
FAQ
I am not sure of the answer to this question, but it may depend on your level of experience with JavaScript.
My experience with Angular is mainly from a beginner’s perspective.
I had more experience using Backbone and React before I worked on any projects with Angular which were simpler in nature. Furthermore, Angular has a lot of dependencies which adds complexity.
For example, you need to know how to work with NodeJS in order to use that dependency. Right now, I am writing a React application that is going to be used for a large-scale project and it seems much more complicated than what I’ve done previously in Angular.
I am not sure of the answer to this question, but it may depend on your level of experience with JavaScript. My experience with Angular is mainly from a beginner’s perspective.
I had more experience using Backbone and React before I worked on any projects with Angular which were simpler in nature.
Furthermore, Angular has a lot of dependencies which adds complexity. For example, you need to know how to work with NodeJS in order to use that dependency.
Right now, I am writing a React application that is going to be used for a large-scale project and it seems much more complicated than what I’ve done previously in Angular.
It’s hard to say. Angular and React are both great frameworks for developing interactive user interfaces.
React has a lot of momentum right now but it’s unclear how long that will last given the fact that Facebook is not actively maintaining it anymore.
Angular on the other hand is backed by Google and they’re constantly releasing new versions with bug fixes and performance improvements so there’s no doubt in my mind that this framework will be around for many years to come.
I would recommend using Angular if you need your web app to perform well or if you want an easy way out when debugging your code because of its tight coupling with the browser. React is a much better choice if you’re building an app that does not require high performance and it’s easy for developers to work with.
