React vs Angular

Managing a complex web application with Vanilla JavaScript (default JavaScript) is not a healthy practice. Though you may even use simple HTML, CSS, JS to build a website, it is next to impossible as it offers minimal results. Thus, it is recommended to use a library or any framework that can support your programming. Picking up one from a bunch of powerful frameworks is indeed a hectic task. And that’s pretty much why you have landed here on this article.

If you are a developer who develops complex web applications, that means you might know how important it is to choose a framework, to reduce the struggle. There are various web frameworks like React, Angular, Vue, Ember, and the list will not end. However, the two most famous libraries the developers use are React and Angular. But why so?

Why are only React and Angular the most popular ones? Which one should you choose? What are their benefits and harms? And many such other questions. Also, there’re plenty of articles over the web discussing React vs. Angular. So, why do we need yet another one?

Let’s discuss all of them in detail.

What is React?

React was developed by Facebook in 2013 and is maintained by its community. Thus, React is prominently used in the frontend of daily apps, including WhatsApp, Messenger, or Instagram. The developers have been using React for about eight years. Although React is not very new, its popularity gained stability in 2015. Many big companies, including Airbnb, Netflix, Uber, etc., use React in their codes.

React is raw. It is a library built on JavaScript, which makes powerful front-end web and mobile applications. To be an expert in React, you should have smooth hands with JavaScript as a prerequisite.

What is Angular?

Google developed Angular in the year 2016. However, it gained popularity in 2018. Google uses Angular in a variety of applications, including Google Cloud, Firebase, Express, etc. The main reason Angular is not very much popular among new developers is due to its complexity and being less beginner-friendly. Other companies like VMware and Upwork often use Angular.

Angular is a web framework built on TypeScript. For learning Angular, you should know TypeScript beforehand along with Angular-specific concepts. Though TypeScript helps to check bugs before the time, it isn’t easier to understand. Also, Angular provides an opinionated structure.

Similarities Between React and Angular

Let’s understand React and Angular in a more detailed version by knowing their similarities and differences.

Similarities

• Both React and Angular intend to solve front-end problems yet in far apart philosophies.
• They effectively deliver all kinds of front-end applications ranging from mobile devices to big hulky screens.
• Moreover, they extend themselves to build killer mobile applications with React Native or Angular for mobile apps.
• The best part is both of these use NPM i.e. Node Package Manager, which helps to share repetitive code snippets.
• Above all, both these applications use JavaScript. React is a library built on JavaScript while Angular is a framework built on TypeScript, which is, in turn, a superset of JavaScript. Thus, you can use JavaScript in its purest form in React, while partially in Angular.

Bonus: Did you know that React and Angular are open sources?

Many are confused with the term Open-source, this is purely because they haven’t contributed to it yet. Open-source is code that is designed to be publicly accessible and used by anyone anywhere on the Internet. For example, back in 2011 Bootstrap had been released as an open-source by the Twitter developer, Mark Otto.

The whole code is exclusively available to be used by developers to avoid building from scratch and save one of the precious resources i.e. time. That’s the power of open-source. But why are we talking about open source at this particular moment? This is because both React and Angular are open-source.

• Both Angular and React possess a huge fan base and thus owns an incredibly large community of developers.
• The documentation available for both of them is quite professional and easy to grasp. In case you face any problem or get stuck while developing the code in React or Angular, don’t worry Stack Overflow has your back and will save you in times of crisis.
• Talking about their architectures, both use component-based architecture for implementation. The advantage of components is they can be used and reused within other components. The same components can even be used in different projects. They both manage states, though in different ways. The approach is similar.
• React uses Redux to handle states, while Angular uses Redux in cases of much larger applications.
• React and Angular both shake hands in using third-party libraries. These third-party libraries can be used in a variety of functionalities, which may include sending post requests to the backend, bringing the UI elements, including some pre-built API routes, etc.
• You may wonder if React and Angular share so many points so how they’re different from one another.

Differences

Almost every developer hungrily searches for the differences among frameworks, libraries, and new tech stacks emerging in the market. Here are some of the differences between React and Angular. Let us look into it now.

1. Framework or Library

React is a JavaScript Library while Angular is a full framework built on TypeScript. So, what is the difference between library and framework by the way? To answer it subtly, the library is a subset of the framework.

Try to understand this with an analogy. Think it in a way, you’re reading a book, named as the solutions to your every problem, which consists of various chapters. Each chapter contains a solution to one particular problem in general. Hence, React is the chapter and Angular is the whole book.

React is easy to learn and does a lot of work easily, but the truth is it uses third-party libraries for all its work, while Angular has its code built in to support all such tasks. The tasks may include, API connections, posts requests, routing, state management, etc.

2. Model View Controller Architecture

As a developer, you’re pretty well known for the MVC architecture, which stands for Model, View, and Controller. React surpasses only the View part while Angular comprises the whole MVC architecture.

3. Reusability in terms of Document Object Model (DOM)

React wins Angular in terms of DOM manipulation. While rendering components and other stuff on the frontend, React creates a Virtual DOM and compares it with the original DOM. Whenever and wherever it finds changes, it alters that part of the DOM. This, in turn, increases performance and minimizes time issues.

In the case of Angular, every time a web application is re-rendered, it creates a new document object model and uses it from scratch. This leads to compromise with performance as expected.

4. Scalability

It is a general measure to analyze a web app’s ability. When there is a huge amount of load, how is your application going to respond? Will it crash or lag, or can it handle the responses by delivering the best performance on-increment or decrementing the traffic?

Angular is a framework and has complex architecture compared to react. However, it wins the race in terms of scalability. Angular in the first place is easy to scale while React is terrific in terms of scalability. When you’re building a complex application, React doesn’t prove to be a good choice as it re-uses its components which may cause issues. Thus, Angular demonstrates best practices.

5. Dev in Mobile Applications

In React for developing mobile applications, you can use React Native, while with Angular you need to go with NativeScript.

Although, they both offer comparatively a variety of features to be implemented and carried out, yet React is more powerful in terms of mobile app development. Even the other frameworks like Flutter are compared with React Native. React is powerful because you can alter the same code you wrote in the frontend part of your web application when you use React Native. With React Native, a team can even maintain two platforms by sharing a common technology.

On the other hand, developing mobile applications using Angular can be considered to be a tedious task. As there are prerequisites like TypeScript, and NativeScript which you need to be aware of. Angular should be your choice when you need a full-fledged framework with all developing components.

Aren’t these similarities and differences enough to reach a conclusion where you can choose one among them? If not, it is the right time for the next section to pop up.

Comparison: React vs. Angular

Which is Better?

The answer to this question varies from person to person. If you’re more serious about frameworks, you do not want to use third-party libraries and are concerned with in-built codes, probably Angular is better. But if your main concern is to quickly learn new tech stacks and start building beautiful frontend web applications, then React surpasses Angular.

The answer ultimately depends not only on one particular factor instead on a wide range of criteria, thus both are brilliant in their respective domain.

Conclusion

To be straightforward, if you’re a beginner, then we would recommend not to waste much time on comparing the two instead start exploring them as soon as possible. Though both can be considered to be a cakewalk for a learner to start with, we would recommend React as it provides syntax, components, props, hooks, etc. which are easy to understand for a freshman.

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