A beginners view on React vs Angular

Malek Darwiche
Sep 2, 2018 · 2 min read

Context: I am a third year university software development student who’s doing a web dev subject this semester.


As a novice in the realm of web development and only prior experience in the field was derived from Java EE & JSP i found the concept of modern web dev to be delightful yet overwhelming with the possibilities and options available.

From learning the concept of node.js to delving into the depths of Javascript frameworks I was posed with the question a beginner such as myself was forced to ponder about. Angular or React?


Angular

An initial glimpse into angular was delightful, it had everything a beginner was looking for,

  • each component was automatically generated using ng generate component <name>
  • Component were seperated into folders automatically
  • Overall structure of project was readable from the get-go
  • typescript for proper type handling
  • Ease of API importing
  • Two-way data binding for real-time data connection

However it did not take long to realise the amount of files and overhead code my group’s project was going to have the further along development we got. Similarly, as our group’s idea was creating a simple event/society management web application for our university the agreed upon notion was that utilising Angular was going to be too complex for our medium scaled project added on with the fact that learning the framework properly was going to eat up much of our time in an already time-limited window.


React

Alternatively, upon looking into React, my initial thought was the direct opposite of my notion of Angular. The concept of handling states and parent/child relationships in React was initially overwhelming and confusing and having both code logic and HTML rendering in a single file (now aware that this can be seperated however initial tutorials of React showed everything in one file) was to get too confusing to read as the project progressed.

However, what React lacked was made up for it through it’s vast sea of documentation given it’s larger popularity and age when compared to Angular 2 and for this getting the hang of react and all of it’s intricacies was made possible as having experience with both, React simply was the easier framework to learn if one could overcome the initial confusion of it.


Summary

Although till now I am in no way a great or perfect developer of the web and have leagues to go before calling myself proficient in the arts. Web development truly captivated me on its possibilities and its plethora of libraries available one command input away and is definitely a field of programming I would like to pursue more of in the future.

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