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reactjs vs angular

Why are web developers switching from Angular Js to React js development ?

Web developers agree that both Angular js and React js are open-source front-end JavaScript frameworks and libraries.

Since Angular jscame much earlier than React js, it became one of the widely-used popular programming languages to build amasing web applications.

One factor that acted in its favor was the support and reliability of Google, helping the web developers to solve many issues related to application development of single-page applications.

There were other advantages too such as a cross-platform app, and synchronizing the data automatically between model and view components.

Despite that, once React was concocted to the center stage, there was a drift in the model. The developers slowly and gradually switched to React js from Angular js as it was much better than Angular js in terms of efficiency, speed, view library, simple API, and lightweight components.

Besides, Angular js had a few drawbacks causing problems and annoyance for the developers, so they began looking for other options.

A Few Drawbacks of Angular JS development

  • One of the reasons why web developers wanted an alternative to Angular  JS was its steep learning curve. Learning Angular requires understanding of many concepts, including controllers, directives, modules, scopes, templates, link functions, filters, and dependency injection. Also, Angular offered various methods to perform the same task, which usually confused the web developers in choosing the best method.
  • When using Angular, each and every operation must go through its digest cycle, or else the components won’t sync with the data models and JavaScript was mandatory for using Angular. If you were using any existing third-party library, you needed to take into account that Angular’s $ apply function if it contained data changes. Furthermore, it was also mandatory for the developers to have knowledge of the MVC (Model View Controller) architectural patterns, failing, which can be very time-consuming.
  • The two-way binding is useful but if we see this in the broader framework, then it only creates more complexity as your component grow it may lead to affecting the performance of the web app.

    This is because JavaScript ES5 does not have any execution to notify for any change to its variables or objects, so Angular uses something called “dirty checking” to track data changes and sync it with the User Interface (UI). Dirty-checking is executed after any operation within Angular’s scope ($digest cycle), leading to slower performance as the number of bindings increases.

  • Angular is highly dependent on DOM for the execution flow making it difficult to test and debug the execution order.
  • Angular has its own dependency injection and is more dependent on JavaScript. Moreover, it does not have a package manager and its own dependency resolver. But lately, implementations like AMD, UMD, and CommonJS have overcome these limitations. Sadly, AngularJS does not look beneficial for any of these. Instead, it introduces a dependency injection of its own; though there is a non-official AngularJS dependency injection implementation using requirement.

What is React js Development ?

ReactJS is a more declarative, efficient, and flexible JavaScript library developers use to create user interfaces. The names React.js, ReactJS, and React JS are used. So yes, it’s a library and if you were confused about if ReactJS is a library or a framework, now you are clear that it is a library.

React is a product of a huge amount of corporate investment, which sets it apart from its peers. Back in 2011, Facebook introduced React but didn’t open-source it until May 2013 when the corresponding GitHub repository was set up, and the library release was officially announced. By 2014, after React had been widely used for developing the UI of Facebook and Instagram and had been tested and evaluated out in the wild by other developers, the library started to become popular.

You can develop single-page applications (SPA) using Angular and even write the self-contained components.

Unlike Angular, React allows one-way data binding and encourages the practice of virtual DOM. The React framework also uses lifecycle methods to execute the codes at set points in case of component failure.

Moreover, it allows the implementation of the JSX that helps in structuring the component rendering and makes use of known syntax.

Advantages of ReactJS Development

If you asked us what front-end framework would be best suited for software development technologies in 2022, we would answer, no doubt, React! It’s similar to Angular in terms of speed, flexibility, and popularity. Vue.js is more lightweight than its peer, but it doesn’t bring substantial benefits. Sounds great, and yet, there is clearly much more in React than that!

So, if you are not sure whether to use React framework in your next project, we can give you some key reasons to overcome your hesitation!

1. Easy to learn

Most web developers love React.js because it is highly efficient, declarative, and flexible. Even more exciting is that learning React is easier than learning other JavaScript frameworks.

Is React more easy to learn than Angular? The short answer is: yes. Or rather, it’s more likely than not, and there is a quite straightforward explanation:

  • Angular is more like a constructor or a tree of components, so you need to understand how its elements behave, work, and combine together.
  • React is a library and a complete solution that is created around one main concept, which provides you more freedom in how you use the library to compose and organize your own component-based architecture.

However, React’s relative simplicity does not completely depend on its file structure and component model, making the code easier to understand and launch. React.js doesn’t burden web developers with too many things to be mentally managed. It usually has a simpler file tree and flexible component model. But also – and this is an important benefit – React tends to have an exceptionally shorter dependency list. While Angular’s dependencies form a giddy set that’s difficult to track, React makes a developer’s life easier by significantly shortening the equivalent lists.

The harder a technology is to learn, the longer it takes to start the development process. Thus, a shallow learning curve is one of the important reasons why React has achieved so much traction in such a short time. Considering React’s simplicity, businesses today are more inclined to use it, thus building their projects faster.

2. React is fast

React has everything for a great performance. It takes a totally different approach than other frameworks as a client-side JavaScript library that uses server-side rendering. Improved support for server-side rendering transforms React into a strong performance-oriented solution best for creating content-focused applications, be it a web app or native-rendered app for iOS and Android.

Fast rendering has a great impact on reducing load times and rapidly adapting the performance in real-time based on user traffic flow. It’s widely known that the faster the page loads, the the longer users will stay on the website and use your service or purchase your product. This is crucial for online businesses.

React not only lets you work with the DOM directly, but it also introduces a layer of Virtual DOM between your JavaScript logic and the actual DOM. This greatly enhances the speed. On successive renders, React performs differently on the Virtual DOM and updates only that part of the real DOM which needs to be updated.

The Virtual DOM also solves cross-browser issues, as it offers a unified cross-browser API that even works in Internet Explorer 8.

3. React helps to build amazing User Interfaces (UI)

Writing stand-alone UI components modularizes your application and separates the concerns for each of them. Each and every component can be developed and tested in isolation.

Front-end development with React framework results in high performance and also highly testable applications. React itself makes it easier to build a clean architecture that is friendly to testing, and here is why:

  • If you’re using React, you must not do any extra configuration of UI tests. Rather, you can use Jest, Facebook’s JS test runner that is configured correctly, is innovative and works seamlessly with React.js applications.
  • If you are developing a new application using the Create React App, Jest goes with it by default, so you will be able to execute tests quickly.
  • Jest is a Node-based runner. Therefore, when testing a React JS application, a web developer can run unit tests in a Node environment, not in a real browser, by mocking the components under test.
  • Normal UI test execution tends to be slow, but with React, UI tests are run quite fast.

4. ReactJS is more flexible

ReactJS is very flexible and that manifests itself in several ways. It is exceptionally visible when it comes to the use of React for web development. Web development projects tend to grow into large systems that may be difficult to fix or enhance.

React’s flexibility is due to the library’s innate modularity. Its architecture allows the developer to cluster front-end code into custom components, thus giving a strong foundation for the overall development process. React’s library neither locks nor guides you into their way of doing things. It does command how you should build reusable components but, it provides a free hand to decide how to handle routing and testing, organize dependencies, and more. This degree of freedom can raise some doubts for newcomers but, working in a React development environment is a pure delight for experienced web developers. React.js allows you to write clean, modular code, breaking the project into different components. As a result, when code is modular, it is very easy to maintain and scale.

Second, React is super flexible in that it can be integrated with other third-party libraries and MVC frameworks. You can choose to build a React project from scratch or, step by step introduce React to your existing legacy codebase. Building a new React application is not too difficult. Inserting React components one by one into your code written using other technologies is also not a problem. And vice-versa – it’s relatively easy to integrate third-party libraries into React apps.

5. React helps to enhance the productivity of developers

React.js is a library that can improve a developer’s performance and is considered highly comparable with Angular in this regard. What does React do to help developers achieve this?

In brief, a developers’ productivity increases due to these React-provided possibilities:

JavaScript, TypeScript, and JSX: Time is a highly valuable resource when it comes to software development. Using React in a project, developers can save time, deliver a product faster, and support a business to yield a profit without delay.

This benefit is rooted in React’s ability to work together with JavaScript, TypeScript, and JSX. Writing on JavaScript, TypeScript, or JSX, one will get more secure and fewer bugs and be able to build reusable components. This method, allowing for code reuse, really enhances entire developer productivity process.

DevTools: In addition to the component reusability feature, React provides a set of useful React Developer Tools to enhance the developer’s productivity. These React DevTools have the form of a browser extension that can be installed on Chrome, Edge, and Firefox browsers.

6. JavaScript oriented

Nowadays, web applications work totally differently than traditional web apps. The View layer should be updated with user interactions without knocking the server because View and Controller rely heavily on each other. Many other web app frameworks use templating engines like Handlebars and Mustache for their View layer but React considers that the two parts are so interdependent that they should exist in a single place without the use of any third-party templating engine, and without ceasing the scope of JavaScript.

7. ReactJS is more SEO friendly

The major drawback of Single-page JavaScript web applications is that it has constraints when crawled by search engines. ReactJS has a solution for this limitation. ReactJS can pre-render applications on the server before sending them to the browser, and it can revive the same state into the live app from the pre-rendered static content from the server. As Search Engine Crawlers rely on the Server Response more than JavaScript execution, pre-rendering such applications helps in Search Engine Optimization.

It will take more effort and knowledge of such technologies as Gatsby.js or Next.js to set up server-side rendering when developing React.js applications. However, once you ensure proper indexing of your application’s web pages by search engines, your product will acquire a great competitive advantage, and such an outcome is absolutely worth it.

8. ReactJS developers are getting great community support

Angular has recently gained popularity and has a large number of extensions available like AngularUI and Rectangular. ReactJS’s open-source community is new, but it has what it takes to keep attracting newcomers increasingly to its community, which will make it stronger over time. It is growing fast, with extensions like React Bootstrap. Being an open-source library, it’s just a matter of time before we have more components available, and ReactJS can even more easily be used for rapid web app development.

Conclusion

If you have used Angular before, then you may feel some discomfort with ReactJS at first, mainly because of its one-way data flow and lack of a “framework” where you get to handle many things yourself. But as soon as you get comfortable with the Flux design pattern and ReactJS’s philosophy, you will start to realize its actual beauty.

Facebook and Instagram both use ReactJS. The upcoming Yahoo Mail is being re-built in ReactJS. So front-end web development with ReactJS was a hot trend in 2021 and is just as popular in 2022. The proof for this statement is rock-solid.

ISH Technologies has a decade of experience in developing web and mobile applications. If you have an idea for a web or mobile app, and are searching for a reliable custom software development partner to help you create your ReactJS app from scratch, or need a tech-savvy IT consultant to share their technical expertise, or would like to hire a custom software development team to migrate your existing application to ReactJS, we are open to discussing your needs! Contact us today, and let’s get talking!

ISH Technologies offers web and mobile app development services throughout Australia. Please feel free to contact us.

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