React Vs. Angular: Battle for the front!
Wondering which one to choose for your frontend? Well, let’s find out together.
Recently I came across a blog that described both of these frontend technologies beautifully but left a vague idea about which suits whom better. Well, that is exactly what we are going to tackle in this blog. I am neither going to tell you to go for a particular one nor am I going to have a personal bias here.
Because what I have noticed and which is pretty obvious is that everyone has a different necessity and Tech preference. But sometimes even the best of us get confused. It extends to the point where you eventually lose faith in your chosen framework.
So this is what I am going to do: We’re going to contrast the two JavaScript technologies and try to detail down the pros and cons of both.
In the end, the decision of choice lies with you. But I will give you enough food for thought for you to choose the technology that suits you and your project best.
A QUICK INTRO OF BOTH TECHNOLOGIES —
ANGULAR :-
**Before we begin its important to know that here we are talking about Angular and not AngularJS since this is also an ingredient of confusion. To put it simply any angular version above the initial release i.e.(Angular1/AngularJS).**
- Angular, supported and introduced by Google in 2010, is an open-source software engineering framework used for building user interfaces (front-end).
- It is a Typescript-based JavaScript framework. For those of you who don’t know about typescript, it is a superset of JavaScript.
- It is used for developing SinglePageApplication(SPA) projects in a very clean and maintainable way.
TYPESCRIPT EXAMPLE →
// TypeScript
function getName(name: string, age: number){ // <-- static typed!
return name + age;
}REACT:-
- React is a JavaScript library developed and maintained by Facebook. It was released in March 2013.
- React specializes in helping developers build user interfaces, or UIs using JavaScript.
- Everything in React is a component which makes it easy to reuse components frequently. Try visualizing these components as Lego blocks used to build big forts or as in our case, complete applications.
JAVASCRIPT EXAMPLE →
// JavaScript (ES6)
function getName(name, age){
return name + age;
}DIGGING INTO COMPARISON —
ARCHITECTURE :
#One of the major difference between angular and react is that angular is a framework whereas react is a library.
- What this means is that being a framework Angular offers you strong opinions as to how your application should be structured. You don’t need to decide which routing libraries to use or other such considerations — you can just start coding. This could also be seen as a drawback as it provides less flexibility, you must use what Angular provides.
Angular provides the following features-
→ Templates, based on an extended version of HTML
→ XSS protection
→ Dependency injection
→ Ajax requests by @angular/HTTP
- React, on the other hand, gives you much more freedom. It only provides the “view”, rest is up to you. Due to this, you can choose any of your libraries as you see fit. But remember, each React project is different and requires a decision requiring its folder hierarchy and architecture. Some features provided by React are-
→ Instead of classic templates, it has JSX, an XML-like language built on top of JavaScript
→ XSS protection
→ React-router for routing
→ Redux or MobX for state management
🎯 CONCLUSION POINT — If you are working on a project and want more flexibility as to what to add and have a “clear plan of build” go for React. But if its a large project and you don’t know where to begin with or what libraries to choose, better let Angular do the structure work.
LEARNING CURVE :
#Even though Angular has one of the most elaborate documentation, you might think it will be easier to learn. Let me break it to you, it is not. The learning curve for Angular is comparatively higher than Reactjs currently. But it is worth it to give time at the initial phase to better enjoy developing the applications later on.
#React won’t ask developers to learn and fall into the complexities of learning logical structures. The first thing you’ll learn in React is JSX. It may seem awkward to write at first, but it doesn’t add much complexity. You don’t need to learn any new logical structures or loops since all of this is plain JavaScript.
To give you a clear idea, it is something like this →
🎯 CONCLUSION POINT- If you have a close deadline for a project, I won’t recommend learning angular from scratch. It is better to go with React as it is easier to grasp. But hey I did say a “close deadline”, it depends on the circumstances and in no way overcome personal preference(if you already know how to begin with).
TWO WAY DATA-BINDING :
#Angular uses two-way data binding. It helps in coordinating the two different data models of a framework, which helps in creating an interactive UI without interventions of several callbacks.
The ways of data-binding in Angular :
{{expression}} Interpolation
[target]="expression" Property
bind-target="expression" Attribute(target)="statement" Event
on-target="statement" Event[(target)]="expression" Two-way
bindon-target="expression" Two-way
#React does not follow the automatic approach to data binding and stick to its simplest but solid architecture. It does not let developers fall into the nightmare of the complex handling of objects.
🎯 CONCLUSION POINT- It is best to work in Angular for projects which require fetching the data from large ERP based software like medical software, accounting, and other software that demands a highly complex requirement. The bidirectional nature of Angular makes it easy to build enterprise resource planning software. However, such a feature is lacking in React(and quite aptly since its a library, not a framework).
COMMUNITY SUPPORT :
#Angular is less admired than React and faces a lot of skepticism, partially because of the unpopularity of Angular 1.0(Initial Version). Developers used to dismiss the framework as an overly complicated one as it required a lot of time to be spent learning.
#For React, the community support and development is huge. While the community tries to go forward with the latest documentation as swiftly as possible, keeping up with all the changes is not that easy. Sometimes, there may be a lack of documentation, but the issue is often solved by the community support on thematic forums.
🎯 CONCLUSION POINT- Popularity does not define whether one tech is better than the other or not. However, having a larger community does help in solving problems quickly. I would consider it a matter of personal preference.
To sum it up both React and Angular are great options concerning single-page applications. However, both of them are also entirely different instruments.
Whatever may be your perception of the debate about React Vs. AngularJS, you need to make choices based on your requirement of functionality and usability. That is the best solution.
Reference links :
https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/angular-vs-react-what-to-choose-for-your-app-2/
https://twitter.com/manekinekko/status/1008685588587925504/photo/1
