Six tips on front-end framework selection

React or Angular, or VueJS, or whatever? What do I choose for this next app I’m building?

Framework selection isn’t easy. Here I want to put down my thoughts on what I think matters.

1. Complex things are complex

Firstly, let’s be honest about trivial examples. They are trivial. Nothing I’ve encountered in building web apps is anywhere near as simple as a To Do app. TodoMVC is lovely for comparing framework features BUT any non-trivial app will push the boundaries of the framework and build process and comparing via a simple SPA comparison won’t be that helpful.

No matter what you choose there will be always be too much boilerplate code and too many untidy corners where it doesn’t work nicely. One or more of the framework’s metaphors will suck. That will all just happen. So, rather than look to the framework to solve your complexity, look how it can support you through it.

How does it scale to many many components and pages? How easy is it to test within and write tests for?

2. Fashion

Fashion drives a lot of our choices. One of the wonderful things about the web industry is that there is plenty of new to play with, and there is an ongoing ‘conversation’ between all the developers on how to build web pages and web applications. As a part of the conversation new tools are developed, languages are enhanced, and new ideas emerge.

There is a massive temptation to try the latest thing, and the latest thing sells itself as the best yet. However, these are all steps in an ongoing conversation we developers are having about how to do things. New frameworks and new versions of existing frameworks are really just a few more sentences in the conversation. There will be something more amazing next week.

So, keeping the choices in this sort of context really helps with decision making. It is worth calling out the fashion aspect as you are deciding. At least be honest if you just want to do the latest thing :-)

3. Nothing lasts that long

Ideas get old. Things stop working. Support evaporates. As a part of this drive to the future with tools and frameworks, this will happen to your favourite framework, language, operating system. When it happens it may require you to upgrade, mothball, re-build etc. This will probably happen sooner then you expect and will be complicated by dependencies.

Especially: don’t expect stuff to just sit in npm for ever. Stuff will evaporate. Have a plan.

4. Skills

I’ve just finished a re-building an app into Angular 2 from earlier Angular 1 app with a weird backend Java CMS. Moving to Angular 2+ pretty much mandated TypeScript instead of JavaScript. Now, guess what happened? TypeScript typing looks a lot like Java — and it became pretty easy for the Java devs to join in the front end dev using TypeScript. That was unexpected and really helped the project along.

My point here is: what skills do you have, and therefore what do you choose? Might be fun to take on the new thing, but it you are therefore niche-ing into tech that has little support from the people around you, or if it is nice or fashionable enough it is going to be hard to hire people. The easier and less exciting path (which includes leaving work earlier each night) might be to pick something better supported around you, rather than the bleeding edge.

5. Appreciate simplicity, plan for difficulty; read the source

Framework simplicity is valuable; a framework that simply solves your problem is golden. Given that your non-trivial application will get complex or have some sort of twisty corner in the URL scheme that doesn’t quite work with the router, you’ll end up beyond the documentation reading the source. So why not start now? I encourage you to code review at least some of the whole framework before you start using it. You’ll end up looking in the source anyway, so why not use this as a part of your evaluation.

6. Or just don’t

Finally, maybe you don’t need much framework, and maybe none. If your page is free of routing, relatively simple, then why not consider the no-framework approach? However, you are going to need good patterns and coding standard and testing or you may well create an organic mess. Remember, a framework is holding you to certain patterns, so you’ll need to decide on and apply your own to keep stuff maintainable.

I hope this is useful. Feel free to comment below on your framework choices, or contact me if you’d like some help or chat about framework selection.

My recent framework selections (in reverse time order) look like this: Angular 2+, Angular 1.5 + material, No framework, Angular 1.x,

[Originally published on nodestone.io]