4 Main JavaScript Development Trends in 2019
This article was originally published on Codica Blog.
Web development is constantly changing and overgrowing. And since JavaScript is the top choice for everyone in frontend development, JS trends is a hot topic every year. New technologies emerge: up to date, we can see dozens of JavaScript technologies competing to become recognizable and popular among the programming community.
The leading technologies and tools are also changing very often. Numerous companies have been switching their tools lately. For example, last year it became clear that 9GAG turned from ReactJS to Vue.js.
Now, let’s take a look more precisely at the changes that 2019 is bringing.
Introduction
According to Stack Overflow 2018 Survey, JavaScript continues to lead among all the programming languages.
Thus, it seems reasonable to discover new JavaScript trends in 2019, if you work with it. All the libraries, frameworks and tools listed below are frequently the top choice for any web developer.
1. The rise of Vue.js
Despite being relatively new, Vue.js is becoming more and more popular every day. It has already managed to earn the trust of GitLab and Alibaba.
Here are the stats from State of JS, showing Vue’s popularity over time that proves its enormous progress.
Vue was created in 2014 by Evan You, a foregone software developer at Google. He was in charge with UI/UX prototypes and creative experiments. Afterward, he summarized his knowledge on web development and created an entirely lightweight framework having the idem capability.
Currently, Vue.js is regarded as one of the most drawing SPA frameworks having 127.000 stars on GitHub, which is surprisingly more than React has.
Furthermore, we can see 30.000 questions on StackOverflow with #vue.js and about 22.500 npm packages free for Vue developers.
Vue.js is a perfect option if you are seeking building lightweight and easy-to-fix applications. The learning curve is low that allows studying up the tool promptly and setting about software development.
Among the core features to expect from Vue in 2019 is its improved performance with Vue 2.x, native TypeScript support, SVG animations, proxy support, stable API, Nuxt.js framework for an extremely streamlined development experience.
In our opinion, Vue.js will continue growing and gaining popularity in the coming years. The situation will change fundamentally in 3–4 years. At that time, Vue will beat its competitors, and the community will massively switch the tool in favor of Vue.js.
2. ReactJS holds the leadership
React has been holding a position of JS tools leadership for the past three years and it’s not giving any chances to the rivals. We don’t currently see anything that could change this trend among Javascript frameworks in 2019. React goes on being the most popular choice for web development among the coders in disregard of Vue.js.
ReactJS was created by Facebook in 2013 and is still being implemented in their projects. React is considered to be the top choice for web development having 122.300 stars on GitHub.
We can see 125.000 questions within #reactjs on Stack Overflow. Furthermore, approximately 78.000 npm packages are created for React developers.
According to Stack Overflow 2018 Survey, React holds the second position of Most Loved technologies.
Furthermore, here are the stats of React downloads for the last year.
To conclude, up to date ReactJS is way forward the most popular JS tool with the biggest knowledgebase, support, and community which obstructs Vue.js to overtake its great rival.
3. AngularJS to Angular 7
Even being new to web development, you have definitely heard about Angular. It is a JavaScript-based open-source front-end web framework released by Google in 2010. It is used to meet many of the challenges encountered in developing single-page applications.
Over time, we have seen many versions releases from Angular 1 through 7 frequently, that in a sense deters many companies and projects from adopting it.
Let’s get acquainted with new Angular 7 features:
- Updated CLI prompts: using
ng neworng add, you can choose routing and go with CSS, SCSS, LESS for styles creation. - Addition of ScrollingModule that allows implementing virtual scrolling. For example, when elements become visible or invisible, DOM adds or deletes them.
- Addition of DragDropModule for drag&drop functionality: lists re-sorting, moving elements between the lists etc.
- Updated dependencies: Angular now uses Typescript 3.1, RxJS и Node.js 10.
According to the popularity, here are the statistics of Angular prevalence for the last two years.
Moreover, Angular is considered one of the most popular JavaScript technologies as per Stack Overflow 2018 Developer Survey.
4. GraphQL instead of REST API
Many consider GraphQL will become a replacement for the REST APIs in 2019. What does this technology stand for and why is it better than the previous leader?
GraphQL, designed by Facebook and having 11 thousand stars on GitHub, is a query language for APIs and a runtime for fulfilling those queries with your existing data. GraphQL provides a complete and understandable description of the data in your API, gives clients the power to ask for exactly what they need and nothing more, makes it easier to evolve APIs over time, and enables powerful developer tools.
Here are the three most important issues GraphQL solves:
- The need to request data several times. GraphQL allows you to get all the necessary data via a single request to the server.
- Client dependency on the server. Using GraphQL, the client communicates in a universal query language, which eliminates the need for the server to specify the structure or composition of the returned data rigidly.
- Ineffective ways of development. In GraphQL, developers describe the data required for an interface using a declarative approach. Developers are focused on what they want to get, not on how to do it.
Having said that, the big problem with the REST API is a large number of endpoints. This forces clients to make many requests to get the right data.
REST API does not offer the client a query language. The client does not affect what data the server returns.
Of course, in 2019 there will be a market niche for materials on working with GraphQL because many people are interested in mastering it.
Conclusion
Web development industry is rapidly growing and looking for new technologies and tools to implement. Many JavaScript programmers also follow trends to improve, simplify, and accelerate their development process. New versions of many JavaScript frameworks and libraries are released annually to meet those coders’ desires and become recognizable and popular among others.
The community is currently proceeding to React. Other web development tools are trying to follow the same technical steps. React is a promising and high-potential option, but you should also consider Vue.js since it’s developing steady and fast. It has already outrun Angular, but this tool still has some features to be improved. In our opinion, Vue.js needs several more years to beat its main competitor.
Concerning the connection between the server and frontend, you should pay attention to GraphQL as an outstanding and promising replacement for REST APIs.
To sum up, if you wonder what new JavaScript framework or tool to use in 2019, we recommend trying each one listed above. Having experienced all the options, you can make a choice and say which one works best for your project needs.
Originally published at www.codica.com.
