Why choose to develop with React in 2023?

Front-end frameworks in 2023

The developer productivity seems to be inexhaustible, and they even surpass it, resulting in the creation of numerous frameworks and libraries in recent years. Since each framework has different capabilities, selecting the best option can pose a significant challenge for developers. Every business has unique requirements and goals, so the construction of their website and application should be handled according to these requirements and goals.

It has always been difficult to decide which framework is the best on the market. According to research, React, Vue, Angular, Svelte, and Preact are currently the most widely used frameworks, and we phrase it this way because if you also looked at our previous article, it touched upon this topic in certain sections. However, nothing is set in stone here either, as there are variations among developer surveys and assessments. In this article, we will try to demonstrate why we still believe that the React framework is the best choice in 2023.

React

Unquestionably, one of the most well-known front-end ecosystems available today is React, which was first created by Facebook (now Meta) back in 2011. React, in a nutshell, is a component-based JavaScript library that features JSX syntax. React's development process set it apart from the traditional definition of front-end frameworks when it was turned into an open-source library in 2013.

React is used by more than 3 million active users. The React ecosystem has a sizable community supporting it. Nearly 80% of skilled developers have used React successfully and without difficulty at least once in their development projects. The fact that React has been used to create over 1.5 million web applications is also astounding and speaks for itself. Facebook, Netflix, Vivaldi Browser, Khan Academy, BBC, Airbnb, Pinterest, Asana, Reddit, and UberEats are a few of the most well-known applications created with React.

Unlike other front-end frameworks, the React framework is a library and does not maintain some essential features. React developers describe it as “a javascript library for building user interfaces”. However, most people refer to it as a framework and include it alongside Angular and Vue in the revered holy trinity of front-end javascript frameworks. You might think that this is a con when choosing a front-end framework but React has been created to collaborate with other libraries to perform tasks like state management, routing, and API interaction to give you the freedom of choosing the perfect libraries for your use case. React is thought to be the best option if you want to speed up the creation of an interactive interface because its components are reusable. One of React’s key benefits is the vibrant community. The Graph below shows that React has been a leader in front-end framework usage for years.

source: https://2022.stateofjs.com/en-US/libraries/front-end-frameworks/

To offer the best rendering performance possible is ReactJS’ main goal. ReactJS enables a developer to divide the intricate user interface into simpler components rather than working on the complete web application. React is incredibly adaptable. Do you want to develop a fully-fledged front-end application or just want to embed a small React app into an already existing application? Sure, you can do both with React, that is one of the benefits of it being a library not a complete framework. Since React is a JavaScript library, developers who are already familiar with JavaScript will find it easier to get started with ReactJS. With the use of this library, programmers can define interfaces using JSX, an HTML-like syntax. Code for HTML and CSS is created as a result. ReactJS speeds up the webpages by utilizing its Virtual DOM to optimize this. As the name implies, Virtual DOM is not the actual DOM but rather its virtual version. A Virtual DOM is updated each time a webpage element is changed. A reconciliation mechanism from React is then used to compare the modified Virtual DOM to a real DOM. This procedure is used to determine the smallest possible set of modifications to make to the actual DOM. The framework’s component-based structure allows for the progression from tiny to large components. For instance, you can begin your coding with simple elements like a dropdown menu, checkbox, or button and then use these to create larger wrapper components. In React JS, each component has a distinct internal logic that indicates how the component is rendered.

In summary, React is a quick, effective, developer-friendly, and unbiased front-end framework. It may be used to create a variety of applications, including those that are client- or server-side rendered, native mobile apps. Furthermore, it is always actively being developed, and a major company supports it. Therefore, it is here to stay for a very long time.

source:

Vue.js

Another framework which is popular is Vue.js. In Asia it has more users than any other framework. Vue.js is not backed by major market participants, in contrast to several other prominent front-end frameworks, but over 700,000 web applications have been designed with the help of this front-end framework, including popular brands such as Alibaba, Reuters, 9gag, Xiaomi, and Ride Receipts. The framework was first created in 2014 by Evan You, who also participated in the development of Angular, a framework created by Google which is one of the most popular front-end frameworks alongside React.

Vue.js offers a high-speed performance thanks to its Virtual DOM, component-based architecture, and two-way binding. Vue is known as one of the friendliest frameworks for beginners since it is straightforward to use, much simpler to get used to than many other front-end frameworks. It also has well-explained documentation and a helpful community.

While Vue is fast, offers a small size, has a comprehensive documentation, it lacks plugins. It is being developed by private individuals not a huge company like in the case of React which makes the framework a lot less of a future proof choice. The recent release of its new version, version 3 caused a big uproar in the Vue.js developer community because it had significant breaking changes leading a lot of developers and companies to be unhappy with the new version. Rewriting a full application or parts of it to the new version is costly, which makes switching to Vue.js 3 straight impossible for smaller companies, meaning that applications developed by these companies will be stuck on an older version of the framework. This opens the applications for security vulnerabilities, and also means that these apps will not benefit from new features released in later versions.

Angular

Angular 2+, is one of the most popular software development tools. It is a modern, open-source front-end framework that uses TypeScript. Angular 2+ have been used to construct more than 600,000 websites to date. Most Google's services have been developed using it. Many brands have been designed with Angular or AngularJS, including famous names such as Forbes, LEGO, UPS, BMW, and Autodesk.

Google first introduced Angular as AngularJS in 2009 as a part of the JavaScript ecosystem. Since then, this front-end framework has become increasingly popular among developers. The current version of this front-end framework, Angular 2+, was then developed in 2016. Angular is an enhanced version of AngularJS with a more powerful performance and a multitude of useful features. The main difference between Angular (or Angular 2+) and React is that the Angular front-end framework offers two-way data binding.

Angular 2+ offers two-way data binding, component-based architecture, directives, dependency injection and many more features. It is supported by Google and has a strong community. While it offers a lot there are some downsides to using it. The SEO capabilities are limited, the code considered by many developers to be bloated and large and the framework itself is hard to learn for beginners. It is certainly a lot heavier than React, because it includes a lot of features without having to use external packages, but this also means you always have to have those features even if you do not need or want them. Another issue developers have with Angular is that they do not trust Google. Just like the creators of Vue.js, Google released a new version (Angular 2+) of their framework with breaking changes and as one could expect the developer community was not happy about it. There are a lot of applications using AngularJS to this day because rewriting them would be too costly. Also, Google has a track record of abandoning projects which also does not help developers in trusting them. Regardless, Angular offers all the features an ideal framework should offer for creating large applications on an enterprise scale.

Svelte

Svelte was first introduced in 2016, and since then, its popularity has grown steadily. It is neither a framework nor a library, Svelte is a compiler. Today, it is regarded as one of the top front-end frameworks.

Over 3,000 websites and applications have been designed with this framework already despite being relatively young, including The New York Times, 1Password, Philips BlueHive, Chess, Absolute Web, Godday, Cashfree, Rakuten, HealthTree, Razorpay, and many more.

Svelte is an open-source, component-based front-end framework that is using TypeScript. It is considered one of the fastest front-end frameworks on the market. It enables developers to finalize their web development projects with much less coding compared to other front-end frameworks.

Svelte does not use a Virtual DOM, instead you create components in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, then, at the build step, the compiler processes your code into a lightweight, standalone module in vanilla JavaScript and meticulously integrates it into the DOM once the state changes. Thanks to this feature, Svelte does not need high processing power in your browser compared to React and Vue front-end frameworks, eliminating the need to spend resources on building a Virtual DOM. Svelte also requires a lot less boilerplate code to be written and produces a much more straightforward code that is easy to understand and read which lowers development time and developer cognitive load.

Another good thing about Svelte is that it has the support of Vercel, an American cloud platform as a service company who also maintains the Next.js React web development framework which is currently the most used React framework.

Svelte offers speed, shorter development time, component-based architecture, it is lightweight, SEO-optimized, able to run current JS libraries and has strong Support. If this is all true, why would anyone choose anything else you might ask? While Svelte is amazing, it is relatively new on the front-end market, the ecosystem is limited, the community is small, documentation to learn the framework and its usage is scarce and frankly there isn't enough experience out there using it on large enterprise applications just yet, which also means hiring Svelte developers is hard if not impossible in certain regions. Svelte is growing steadily but companies seem to be waiting for the framework, tooling, and community to grow further before giving it a go.

Honorable mentions, Preact and SolidJS

Both Preact and SolidJS aims to be a familiar option for React developers.

Preact is a lighter version of React while being compatible with React by providing the same modern API React does. It uses Virtual DOM just like React does but it is lighter in size which means less code to download, parse and execute. It is also faster than React, in fact it is the fastest library using a Virtual DOM.

SolidJS was inspired by React and Knockout. If you developed with React SolidJS will feel very natural, because it follows the same philosophy as React. However, it does not use a Virtual DOM and because of this there is no need for extensive diffing, which means more performance, a lot more, just like with Svelte.

Both of these frameworks are excellent choices, but they do not have the backing of a large company, and their communities are relatively small compared to React, Vue.js or Angular. This also means that the available tools and documentation are lacking. SolidJS is probably the youngest of all of the before mentioned frameworks, the only available framework for it still did not reach version 1.0 and it would be very risky to use it in production for any company.

With all this considered why do we suggest using React in 2023?

React is a stable, strong choice, for years it proved itself to be capable and moving forward by introducing innovative new features.
It has an enormous community and a very big economy. You will find freely available tools, frameworks, components and libraries for mostly anything you want, usually more than one option, which is amazing.
It has a lot of developer experience in the community and there are a lot of documentation available which makes a huge difference when developing large and complex applications.
Hiring a React developer is a lot easier than hiring to any other framework because so many developers use it and know it.
It is fast enough. While it might not be the fastest framework out there, it is certainly fast enough for most use cases and further speed increases can be done if needed with some tweaking.
It has the support of Meta (formerly known as Facebook) and they do have a good track record of supporting and advancing their developer tools.
It gets a lot of frequent updates and they do care about not breaking your app which makes it a safe choice and easy to migrate between different versions.

Sources:

https://www.elluminatiinc.com/why-use-react/ https://2022.stateofjs.com