Many junior front-end developers and JavaScript enthusiasts find settling on a preferred JS framework challenging at the start of their careers.

Why?

The reasons vary, but the top among them is each framework's unique features. The second reason, arguably the most straightforward, is how long it will take to build your web app using a particular framework.

In this guide, I've compiled the top three JavaScript frameworks experts highly recommend to help lay the foundation for your web application development.

Here's what we'll cover:

• What's a JavaScript Framework?

• What's a JavaScript Library?

• Comparison of JavaScript Frameworks

• Angular

• React

• Vue

• FAQs

• Takeaway: What's the Best JavaScript Framework?

What's a JavaScript Framework?

The best way to think about a JavaScript framework is to picture a camping tent. Once you've set up a tent, you can add whatever you need on the outside and the inside.

Similarly, a JavaScript framework is a collection of pre-written code you can use to build web applications in a way that plain JavaScript cannot.

A framework has an in-built structure and multiple functions that allow you to build web applications. Even better, you can customize the functions as you want and tweak them to suit your convenience.

Remember that frameworks are best suited for web design, which is why many website developers use them.

Next, let's discuss an even more confusing term; JavaScript Library.

What's a JavaScript Library?

You've probably come across a website with a slideshow like this one or this.

Admittedly, the developers likely wrote their JavaScript code for each slider. However, it's highly likely that they also reused code to create the slideshows.

This raises a core lesson in programming: code reusability. As a developer, strive to reuse code rather than write everything from scratch (depending on a case-to-case scenario).

How we achieve this in JavaScript through a library: A JavaScript library is a file that contains various functions. These functions accomplish a specific task for your webpage. Other functions that JavaScript libraries support include the following:

• Creating custom dialog boxes

• Logging and debugging

• Data visualization in charts and maps

• Database and forms

• Site navigation and routing

For instance, jQuery is the most popular JavaScript library for HTML document manipulation, event handling, and animation.

Comparison of JavaScript Frameworks

Angular

Angular was released in 2010 and is a development framework built on Typescript. With over 83,000 stars on GitHub, Angular features an assortment of well-integrated libraries covering a range of features, including routing and forms management.

As a framework, Angular supports SPAs and MVC architecture. It also supports two-way data binding, allowing application components to share data. With data-binding, you can automatically sync data between the database and the client. This saves you time as a developer as you avoid defining requests and responses when a user interacts with the user interface (UI).

Features

• Templates: Use Angular's template syntax to create amazing UI views

• Progressive web applications: Angular features advanced web platform functionality which provides an app-like experience to users

• Desktop: Build desktop-like apps across Windows, Mac, and Linux through the same Angular methods.

• Universal: Serve your application on .NET or PHP for near-instant rendering in HTML and CSS.

• Code splitting: Thanks to the component router, apps load faster, thus delivering better autonomy in code-splitting.

• Animations: Angular's micro-interactions and animation features make your web page more interactive and fun.

Pros & Cons

Pro Tip: Angular allows you to scale from a single-developer application to an enterprise-level application. Updating your application is easy as the framework constantly evolves to have better and more advanced features.

React

Introduced in 2013, React has gained more than 195,000 stars on GitHub. The framework is developed and maintained by Facebook (now Meta) developers. Major companies like Uber, PayPal, Twitter, and Meta use React in different parts of their ecosystems.

Many developers use React to build and operate dynamic User Interfaces of high-traffic web pages. React is fast and highly reusable for developing interactive User Interfaces.

A major perk of using React is its incremental useability: it uses the virtual DOM model for accelerated web page content updates. In other words, it supports the view piece of the Model View Controller (MVC) paradigm.

React is component-based, allowing you to develop enveloped components that operate in their state and then mold them to create complex UIs. A significant benefit is passing rich data to an application and keeping a state outside the DOM.

Features

• Event handling: React is fully developed with a compatible W3C object model event system. In addition, it provides cross-browser integration thanks to its browser-independent DOM system.

• JSX: JSX is a syntax extension to JavaScript and closely resembles HTML. React renders its UI logic inherent (how event handling happens, state management, and data display), allowing it to separate concerns with components that contain both.

• Performance: Unlike Angular, React utilizes one-way data binding using the Flux control architecture. This way, ReactJS can update the user's view while Flux controls the application workflow.

• Virtual DOM: React issues a "virtual DOM Object" for every corresponding DOM object. Through a process called reconciliation, each UI representation is kept in memory and synced with the authentic "DOM."

• React Native: React Native acts as a custom renderer for React. This way, it uses native components instead of web components like React for building blocks.

• Declarative: You can easily create interactive and dynamic UI for mobile applications and websites.

Pros & Cons

Vue

Released in 2014, Vue has garnered over 200,000 stars on GitHub, making it the most popular framework on this list. It's also perhaps one of the frameworks that a large corporation doesn't develop and maintain. Even more impressive is that it's the most recent framework.

Thanks to its simplicity and easy learning curve, many experts agree that Vue is the perfect starting JavaScript framework for entry-level JavaScript developers. Its syntax is HTML-based, thus allowing developers to use their HTML knowledge to write pages.

Being built on top of JavaScript allows Vue to provide a declarative and component-based programming model. It's also designed to be approachable and versatile, focusing on single-page applications (SPAs). In addition, its library focuses on the View layer of the MVC architecture. View also uses the virtual DOM model for quick updates without reloading the page.

Vue stands thanks to one feature: it blends the template concept of Angular with the componentization of React.

How is this a win for Vue?

It's easy.

Developers can code page templates in standard HTML and bundle these templates and other code sections for quick reuse and periodic updates.

Features

• Performance: Vue is reactive and compiler-optimized, thus rendering a system that hardly requires manual optimization.

• Simple: For beginners, Vue's API and design architecture are easy to learn. You can build a simple single-page application in a matter of hours.

• Animations and transitions: You can make your page interactive and intuitive by applying transitions to HTML elements.

• Virtual DOM: Like React, Vue uses Virtual DOM to keep a representation of the UI in memory while syncing it with an actual "DOM object."

Pros & Cons

FAQs

1. What framework should I start learning first? I recommend starting with Vue, React, and then Angular. However, this is subject to a case by case and varies from person to person.

2. Can I build apps with React? To build apps, consider learning React Native, a cross-platform development language that supports the development of iOS or Android apps.

3. Is Angular more complex than other frameworks? Yes. Angular is built as a complete web framework solution compared to React and Vue, as it offers more built-in functionality and control.

4. Do I always have to use a JavaScript library or framework when building an application? The answer is yes and no. You can use plain old vanilla JavaScript. However, a major perk of libraries and frameworks is that they speed up your development process, and the code is highly tested and reusable.

Takeaway: What's the Best JavaScript Framework?

With web development, JavaScript continues to be the dominant programming language valued by many.

As you have seen, every framework has its benefits, advantages, and disadvantages. You'll need to keep this in mind when choosing a particular framework.

Every website has its own unique needs. With this in mind, evaluate your project requirements and choose a framework that suits your development process. Also, consider the technical competence required to work with a particular framework.