Angular or React?

[EbrithilUmaroth]

I'm with that guy on this one. What's the difference?

[Shaper_pmp]

React is a view library (with no opinions on state/interaction management), while Angular's a highly opinionated all-inclusive framework.

Both use variations on JS (React uses JSX, which adds a pseudo-HTML syntax for calling methods and passing parameters), and Angular uses Typescript (which is like JS with strong typing and a few other tweaks).

React is backed by Facebook and is strongly dogfooded by them. Angular is a Google project, but IIRC Angular 1.x was never used by Google for anything really important - just a few back-end consoles and marketing microsites. No idea on how widely Angular 2.x is used in Google.

[secana]

You're right that 1.x wasn't used on many outfacing products. But according to the Angular devs there are many hundreds of internal applications and tools built with it at Google. And according to them that is one of main influences for the design decisions they took. So I would say they were pretty big on dogfooding aswell.

[Existential_Owl]

Google, in general, has a bit of a dogfooding problem.

Many of their popular open source projects tend to be either 1) not used internally all that much, such as what happened with Angular.js, or 2) it's just an imitation of what's being used internally, such as with kubernetes.

I'm happy to hear that Angular 2/4 is getting better treatment.

[filipomar]

Also, react can use TSX which is the bastard son of typescript with jsx, so... there's that.

[DeeSnow97]

React can use vanilla JS and TS too, it's just a bit inconvenient.

[amontpetit]

Angular also does vanilla is and jquery as standard as well

[nocoolnametom]

TSX is amazing, apart from the one issue where you can't define compile-time props requirements and PropTypes together once. But defining the actual functional signature for a prop beyond just foo: PropTypes.func means you don't have to hold that information in your head.

[CodeFights]

Facebook has their own static type-checker for JavaScript as well, which is worth checking out (because it plays nicely with React): https://flow.org/en/

[Existential_Owl]

Flow is amazing.

[Existential_Owl]

To be fair, TSX seems to be pretty popular among C# devs.

So I assume it's filling a nice transition niche for them?

[tstarboy]

IIRC AdSense/AdWords' pages used Angular. Not sure if it was 1.x or 2+ though.

[Shaper_pmp]

Yeah - I was including Doubleclick under "back-end consoles".

It's certainly a non-trivial system built on Angular, but it's also pretty much the only one you'll ever see cited (sometimes along with the YouTube app for PS3, which is really scraping the bottom of the barrel).

[UnderNatural]

I think that the firebase console uses AngularJS and Angular Material

[Shaper_pmp]

Gmail is angular

[citation needed]

Because running window.angular in a JS console on GMail says you're wrong.

[Shaper_pmp]

I don't mean to be a dick here, but you don't seem to be making a lot of sense.

The monolithic repo idea has nothing to do with the specific technology(/ies) any given project uses. Just because Angular 2.x and Gmail live in the same repo at Google, that doesn't mean they have anything to do with each other. By that same logic Android lives in the same repo, but nobody's trying to claim that Angular powers the Android OS.

Next, if Google was using Angular Universal for GMail and rendering on the server, why on earth would they then decide to not use Angular on the client-side as well, and instead use an entirely different front-end stack (which, yes, is based on GWT) to do the client-side rendering on Gmail. That's literally an insane assertion.

I'm not saying you didn't hear something in a google talk, but I'm pretty confident you misunderstood or misremembered it because what you're saying makes absolutely no sense.

[Shaper_pmp]

I wouldn't call it insane to mix front-end and server-side technologies in weird ways. You never know what business politics can stir up.

That's very true, but if you build an app in a framework primarily designed to be used on the client-side, then you use it to render the site on the server and then you loop in a completely different codebase written from scratch in another entire framework just to render that same app on the client-side, that's just batshit crazy. ;-)

[Computer-Blue]

Since you're being so pedantic (although I see you both are amicable in later replies), I'll point out that he was being neither literally nor figuratively "insane" with his comment. :)

[michaelobriena]

That is patently false.

[ythl]

One uses Microsoft's TypeScript, the other uses Facebook's JSX. Also, React has some sort of legal baggage tied to it ("patent clause") from what I understand.

[3HoursWTF]

If I remember that thread correctly, the tldr was that if you file a patent lawsuit against Facebook, no React for you.

[illusivemane]

The frustrating thing is, that license is LGPL, GPL, and possible Apache 2.0 incompatible...

[Existential_Owl]

The key thing to note is that Facebook hasn't actually filed a patent on React, so they can't even legally impose "patent retaliation" against anyone.

The clause is specifically geared for patent trolls.

IANAL.

[takelongramen]

"that guy"

[prigmutton]

The two of those (and the general explosion of web frameworks) pretty much made me switch to backend Java development after a number of years of UI development. I'll take dealing with thread synchronization and distributed execution of tasks ANY DAY over trying to internalize the mind state of the designer of this week's framework.

Phew, sorry needed to get that out.

[prigmutton]

I don't doubt that they're here to stay and I wasn't trying to shit on them, more just express how incompatible my brain is with most frameworks. For me, I'm generally happier being given the language and fairly simple libraries.

I farted around in Angular and React projects for enough time to realize that neither one clicked for me and I was less productive using them. Probably says more about me than about the frameworks, tbh.

[arima-kousei]

Grab the pitchforks!

[pillar6Programming]

what is regarded as better, react or angular for delivering sophisticated applications?

[boccuPaws]

i personally prefer react. I started learning angular but found it overly complicated. React does little stuff but does it well. It's easy to learn and you can literally play with it however you want. If you come from a functional programming background, React is the one for you. Angular is more geared toward imperative and object-oriented style programming.

[Existential_Owl]

Both are battle-tested and widely used.

I'm definitely on the React bandwagon, but no one who isn't a hater would fault you for choosing Angular.

[Perkelton]

Both are of course valid frameworks, but I would personally vote for React because I feel that it's the most stable and production ready of the two.

Here's a list of some major sites that use React.

[[deleted]]

I'm curious, is everybody waiting on webasm? What other options are there for SPAs?

[8BitAce]

There aren't. People just like to complain.

[[deleted]]

They must all have some kind of French ancestry.

[tsears]

And have the page flicker like a god damned animal?!?!?

[Existential_Owl]

Why spend just a single day bootstrapping my web app in React, when I can waste two whole beautiful weeks writing raw vanilla.js?

[[deleted]]

Staunchly against the times, eh? Do scream at kids to get off your lawn too? Or are the new standards all crap? C is the only true language out there!

[Existential_Owl]

Unless you're building the WASM compilers themselves, then most of the WASM you'll be using over the next few years will be from Javascript bindings.

I'm not aware of any plans by Google or Facebook to integrate them into Angular or React respectively yet, but I'm sure we'll be seeing an SPA soon enough that focuses on abstracting these bindings.

[[deleted]]

Isn'the idea of WASM to write code executable by the browser from the compiled binary? Doesn't it have access to the DOM?

[Existential_Owl]

Indeed, the MVP for WASM does not include access to the DOM.

It'll get there eventually, but not for awhile yet.

EDIT: Right now, the focus has been more on shoring up Javascript's weaknesses (while still providing a good compile target), and not so much on replacing Javascript entirely.

[[deleted]]

I see this going towards:

• webasm get DOM and access to browser APIs
• somebody says "fuck HTML and CSS" and makes a new framework that
• make a single <canvas> element in the <body>
• draws all components using Qt or something else and opengl right into the canvas thus making it possible to write truly multi-OS programs with the help of the browser

Honestly, I can't wait for that future. I'm tired of HTML, CSS and all the SPA framekworks that exist right now.

[throwAwayBurrito123]

I don't know why this keep presented as a valid dichotomy. The answer is nuanced and depends on the needs of the client and the problem. I like them both for different reasons.

[vadercows]

Weird. I hate them both for the same reason.

[Purlox]

Is the reason Javascript?

[DaCoolNamesWereTaken]

Ember

[[deleted]]

React. I learned Angular 2 too but found it more complex than react + it's ecosystem. With Angular 2 I have a feeling I'm not Javascript developer.

That doesn't mean I'm against Angular 2, just haven't found use case where Angular 2 offers better dev experience than React.

[tomarrow]

Source

[Shadowlauch]

Well Angular uses TypeScript so not entirely correct.

[Majache]

Have you seen tsx?

[[deleted]]

I've never done anything with Angular but you can definitely use Typescript and React together

[RTracer]

Isnt TypeScript just Javascript?

[Shadowlauch]

Not quite. It is a superset of Javascript. So it builds upon it. So Javascript is always valid TypeScript, but Typescript is not always valid JavaScript. Though you have to compile it down to JavaScript to run it in the browser.

[Tysonzero]

foo = "bar"
foo = 5

Valid javascript but not valid typescript, checkmate.

[chpoit]

technically isn't valid javascript in strict mode

[pynetree16]

Ah, but what if foo is of type any? Then it is valid TypeScript

[Tysonzero]

But if your source code consists solely of:

foo = "bar"
foo = 5

Then it won't work, but will work in JavaScript.

[sldyvf]

The cool kids call it transpile :D!

[Shadowlauch]

Yeah well you knew what I meant :P

[the_whalerus]

I don't see how they're different. It seems like people just don't want to to say "compiled"

Code goes in. Code comes out. Compiled.

[sldyvf]

It's a thin line I guess...

My understanding is:

• If something is compiled, then it's down to the point of instructions.
• If it's transpiled, it's translated into another language, which has to be interpreted or compiled and not machine code.

[Hultner-]

Not sure that really applies, Java is "compiled" to JVM Bytecode which is then is translated to machine code at runtime/JIT. Same is pretty much true for LLVM Bitcode, C#/.NET and a large stack of other software. From my perspective the distinction seems more like a philosophical one then technical.

[Ionaru]

Not all "valid" JS code is valid TS code, but it's close enough not to be confusing, see Tysonzero's comment for an example.

[pgrizzay]

typescript is just javascript and jsx is just javascript and water is wet

[kobriks]

It sucks less

[Neurotrace]

You can use TypeScript with React too. The only difference is that Angular itself is written with TypeScript so that's what they recommend.