By 2024, almost all modern web development companies will soon be using the JavaScript framework to create robust, fast and large-scale applications.
To enter the tech field as a web developer, you need to choose and master a frontend framework.
The good news: Mastering JavaScript establishes a solid foundation, making it easier to adapt programs with minor changes. However, the extensive JavaScript ecosystem provides many good programs to choose from.
In this guide, I'll show you the most popular JavaScript frameworks, highlight their pros and cons, and help you choose the best one to see your business and enter the tech world as a web developer.
1. What is JavaScript Programming?
JavaScript alone is enough to build any web application from scratch. But as the application grows, the amount of complex code you write will increase. Frameworks come to our aid by providing a set of tools, libraries, and infrastructure that we can use quickly to develop our web applications.
For example, a framework like Vue will give you utilities to handle user events (clicks, hovers), routing, data binding, and animation. All the stuff you can do with just JavaScript, and still spend a lot of time pulling it all together yourself.
2. The 4 Best JavaScript Programs for Beginners.
Now let’s dive deeper into each JavaScript framework and find out its pros and cons.
According to the 2023 Stack Overflow Developer survey, React still asserts itself as one of the most popular JavaScript technologies for creating web interfaces.
React
This tool is ubiquitous, and with its huge community, huge support, and amazing possibilities for large projects, React has become the industry choice for web applications
In short, React is still the way to find a job as a frontend developer, and it will probably continue to be for many years to come.
Benefits of React
- Supporting large communities: Because of its popularity, React has many supporters. This also makes the development experience much better, as there will be a ton of resources, tutorials and workshops to explore to learn and improve your React skills
- Large Packages & Accessories: Another aspect of the tool’s popularity is the many built-in features and controls that people have built around it, allowing you to accomplish almost any task imaginable
- Top Choice for Entering the Professional Industry: React is the absolute best JavaScript framework to choose to increase your chances of getting a job as a professional developer, and future-proof yourself with the required technology.
- Recycling of Materials: React approaches web interfaces by adding reusable features to your app to save time and effort.
- SEO friendly: React is one of the best frameworks for search engines to index your websites.
Disadvantages of React
- Harder to learn: Due to concepts like state management, lifecycle events and JSX, you may find React harder to learn compared to other frameworks like Vue.
- Documentation: While this pain point has been greatly improved lately with the framework new docs, React’s documentation has been known to be of poor quality and being not always updated.
- No strict conventions: React doesn’t force you to write code using a specific pattern. Hence, developers will write React code in different ways, leading to potential problems in large scale environments.
- Components can get messy: Since React implements the component logic in the same place where they’re rendered, things can get messy pretty quickly, making components harder to understand.
Angular
Angular is a JavaScript framework designed to build single-page applications using the MVC pattern (Model-View-Controller), which means having a logical separation between the presentation part and the logic part. Although this framework is still used by 19% of professional developers, it has been overshadowed by the release of React and Vue, where new developers prefer to learn React, or Vue, because of its simplicity because due to its widespread use and practicality
We’ve created a full Angular vs React comparison for you to learn more about the differences between the two.
Advantages of Angular
- Working with MVC: The MVC model provides a classic separation between view and logic, as you see in HTML and JavaScript, and makes Angular familiar to new devs.
- Many of the features: Angular offers a ton of features straight out of the box from the point of view of state management.
Disadvantages of Angular
- It’s hard to use: Because of its complexity, Angular is harder to learn than its peers React and Vue.
- It’s not that detailed anymore: With the release of React and Vue, Angular is no longer widespread, React is the best way to get a job as a developer.
- You need to learn TypeScript: To use Angular you are forced to use TypeScript, which adds extra learning for new developers.
Vue.js
Developed in 2014 by Googler Evan You, Vue.js is an open-source lightweight framework which allows you to create web applications with ease and great performance. Despite Vue.js being significantly smaller than React and Angular, it gained progressive popularity in the last few years. This is thanks to its ease of use and great documentation, which make it an amazing choice for beginner developers to jump into the world of JavaScript frameworks.
Advantages of Vue
- Easy to learn: Thanks to its simplicity and its use of HTML templates, Vue has a much more progressive learning curve than Angular and React without requiring you to learn JSX or TypeScript to use.
- Great documentation : Vue has an amazing, extensive documentation, whose authors keep updating and curing to give developers the best experience possible while using the framework.
- Lightweight: With a size of just 18kb , Vue is an extremely light framework that will help you create highly performant web applications.
- Can be integrated into existing apps : Apart from being used as a framework to create an app from scratch, Vue can be progressively integrated into an existing web application without any troubles in creating new components.
- Great for beginner JavaScript developers: To build their first complex apps using a framework.
Disadvantages of Vue
- Low-level plugin and libraries: Compared to its more sophisticated peers Angular and React, Vue offers a much smaller number of plugins and other libraries, which can be limiting for some developers
- It’s very simple: Vue offers great flexibility for developers to adopt their own custom paradigm for writing code. This approach can cause major problems because there is “no right way” to write Vue code, so that parts of the code are written in completely different ways.
- node.js: Unlike most of the other JavaScript frameworks on this list, Node.js is not technically a framework, but rather an external environment in which you write JavaScript.
Node.js
The tool has been widely adopted by millions of developers around the world, and also stands as the leading web technology in the 2023 Stack Overflow Developer survey. Today, Node.js is beloved by thousands of companies, for its power, speed and ease of use, as well as a huge community of professionals backing it, making this framework the best choice for you if you want it if you jump to the back end of web development.
Advantages of Node.js
- Based on JavaScript: They allowed developers to easily switch between frontend and backend code.
- A great bunch of developers: With a large and vibrant dev community online, learning how to use Node as well as troubleshooting is easy.
- Sought After: Thousands of companies are always looking for backend developers who can effectively use Node.
- Fast and efficient: Thanks to its optimized JavaScript V8 engine, it makes it an excellent choice for large applications.
Disadvantages of Node.js
- Prone to callback hell: The so-called “callback hell” situation can exist in Node, when the way code is written to do things makes it confusing and hard to understand, like a puzzle
- It’s hard to master: While this is incredibly useful and essential for any JavaScript developer who wants to build full stack, it can take time to get a good handle on Node.js. A good mentor JavaScript bootcamp or course can really help with this.
- Fast and efficient: The node is single-threaded in nature, this feature can make handling CPU-intensive tasks difficult and may require alternative methods for handling concurrent processes more efficiently.
To get started with JavaScript frameworks
- Many people who want to learn JavaScript programming make the mistake of jumping straight into one, without first checking for a rock-solid JavaScript foundation. If you want to be proficient with a framework, you really need to develop JavaScript skills first. Ultimately, these programs are just variations of the language itself. New technology comes and goes all the time, and you can easily handle any new tool only on a larger foundation.
- If you need courses to hone in on JavaScript and its many frameworks, you can enroll in our Full-Stack Web Development Programme, where you can build prototype knowledge from start to finish and develop amazing web applications, and finally To become a professional web-developer.
What are popular JavaScript frameworks and libraries?
According to the 2023 Stack Overflow Developer Survey, the most popular JavaScript frameworks are React, Node, and jQuery.
Do people still use jQuery?
Yes, because of the popularity of jQuery it is still used in millions of websites that were then released in 2006, making it the most popular JavaScript library in use in the world
Where should you go from here?
In this article you learned about the various JavaScript frameworks and their role in today’s web development environment. Now, you are ready to choose the best option for you and start your first project through the program.
If you’re not sure how to master JavaScript and need more guidance on choosing a framework, we can do that for you. With their Full-Stack Web Development Program, Edu Eyrie India teaches you to jump down JavaScript, as well as its many programs