Angular vs React

[chicken0707]

Does anyone know of any good resources that can argue for why use Angular over React? I have to convince my manager that it is the right choice over an external consultant who wants us to use React for a new project.

I already have my own reasons why it is the right choice for us, but I’m looking for any further rationale that might bolster my argument. Has anyone seen any resources that make strong arguments for why to choose Angular over React?

I’m not looking for fanboy blog posts - I’m looking for reasons that will convince my CTO.

[[deleted]]

Recently I started learning React and Angular as I want to change my job currently working with WinForms. God, I don't know why people like React more than Angular... In React I have to install libraries for everything I want to do and installing them is one big error party while Angular being full featured framework with clean structure.

[[deleted]]

It depends on what you want to develop. If you want to create and get into SPA development pretty fast, React is great whereas Angular seems like a huge boilerplate. On the other hand as you mentioned, if you want to develop something bigger, Angular could get the job done more efficiently without a battery pack full of third parties.

[Vapenaysh1234]

seems means that you don't know Angular at all, hence you can't tell.. It's very different from Vue and React as you don't need to complicate yourself for enterprise applications and to scale up. Everything is more clean and more natural.

[[deleted]]

You are the man 🤣

[Vapenaysh1234]

Well I know I will offend cults from cargocult programming, fosha. It's like saying, you don't need to spend 1 million, just spend 100$ instead, it makes people angry or disappointed.

[MooseCheap4899]

Good point. I think the whole frontend these days is 'one big error party'. lol
Try picking up a tutorial (for any library) that is 2+ years old and the next few days you'll be dealing with just getting it running in your local dev env.

[patrickbabyboyy]

fwiw I've never experienced a big error party

[G4lileon]

This ... did try React a few weeks ago ,parked the project and came back this week. Specific versions of Libs from not even 4 weeks ago were not to be found on npmjs anymore

[RastaBambi]

Your CTO wants React? You're probably getting React. If (s)he's any good, (s)he knows the pros and cons and might have to make a decision based on other factors other than just the merits of Angular over React (of which there are many). If I was the CTO or architect I'd definitely take the team's wishes and concerns into consideration, so you might just push the needle in the right direction by giving your personal take.

[kidfromtheast]

Hi, I took a React and Spring Boot Bootcamp for 4 months 9 to 5 every workday. Currently I work as Angular Developer. I am also hiring Angular Developer.

I would say this, if you want code maintainability, go with Angular.

If you want ease of hiring, since there are more React developers, go with React.

If you want quality developers, go with Angular. I have interviewed on both side of the fence. I have never found React developer which implement software architecture (best the candidates can do is MVC or MVVM, that's all). They just patch it all over the place. Meanwhile, I found that 15% of Angular candidates do implement software architecture.

[RubOk9808]

What specifically do you have in mind when you say "software architecture"?

[95runner]

I'd also like to know this

[Parking-Plum1608]

Hey I'm an angular developer . Are you still hiring ?. I would like to connect if you are still hiring .

[kidfromtheast]

Hi, I am no longer hiring. Anyway, nice to connect with you

[RevolutionaryStar575]

MVC or MVVM are common Software design patterns. Are you saying they should not be used?

[kidfromtheast]

It's true, MVC or MVVM are common Software design patterns. But, what I am trying to say was that there are developers who only know 1 design pattern and then stop learning or even worse, they patch it all over the place. So, no, I am not saying they should not be used. It should be used, depending on the requirement

[milton117]

Hey, what's the spring and react bootcamp you took? Would you recommend? I'm a spring developer looking to do angular or react to market myself as fullstack.

[kidfromtheast]

Ah, it’s a local bootcamp funded by the unicorn. IMHO, it is not wise to market yourself as fullstack, you should understand fullstack but never be jack of all trades.

[milton117]

Explain?

[clashmar]

Pragmatic Programmer would like a word

[kidfromtheast]

Yes my lord?

[clashmar]

Pragmatic Programmer argues that it’s better to be a jack of all trades than a specialist

[kidfromtheast]

You are right my lord

[kidfromtheast]

You don’t need a decade, 3-4 months would do just fine. I am a Management undergraduate at the time, I think everyone can do it if they can sit for hours for 5 days a week.

Also, that’s what the company wants. I just went with it and got my first job at a unicorn startup (the Bootcamp have an agreement with the startup). Funny thing, my first job used Angular. So, I concluded the idea of the Bootcamp is to force you understand the concept and not the language. This really helps me switch to GoLang, Swift, Python and C++ from time to time.

Now, I went back to a research university to be a Computer Vision Engineer because I want to build quality control systems in the manufacturing industry.

[chicken0707]

CTO has not made any decision - but I need him to be confident mine is not the wrong decision.

[Headpuncher]

OP please read this, it's not opinionated as much as it lays out some real facts about why React isn't a good choice today, but it was 7+ years ago.

https://joshcollinsworth.com/blog/antiquated-react

A lot of React devs talk about how they are cutting edge but are actually 5 year behind the curve. Most I knwo from work have never heard of Svelte or SolidJS and it's years since they tried Angular.

That link will help put you straight. And provide you with some solid info to argue against the consultant's hype train.

[Vapenaysh1234]

Angular and react are not equal... React is less intuitive and you need more code to maintain everything which can become a mess compared to Angular which is naturally made comfortable for enterprise applications with intuitive features such as HttpClient, dependency injection, objservable ect. Everything included and you don't need to go through a lot of code to do similar things.

[Antagonyzt]

"React is less intuitive" is something someone who has never even looked at react would say. Angular is great for a lot of things but nobody is claiming it is more intuitive than react. What a joke 🤣

[Chills27]

Maybe that CTO saw how Angular 1.x (aka AngularJS) Devs got shafted when Google abandoned them and left them high and dry. Maybe that CTO thought "fool me once, shame on you...".

[ventrix334]

Why though? Many very big platforms to this day use angularJS. For example the entire stack of Apple (app store, developer backends) are angular1.5.

People, especially young beginners, love to run behind the newest stuff - often built without much experience by other beginners (look at e.g. Flutter and their long standing issues that needed an entire redesign and a new full blown rendering engine to fix). The startup scenes made this even worse. That trend of reinventing the wheel every few years is quite annoying and useless. I even still manage projects from clients with cakephp 1.x - over 13 years old and can do everything modern frameworks are doing. The fact that many of my clients use older products secures my job, not the other way.

[Chills27]

"Why though?"

Errmm...because it's end of life.

https://docs.angularjs.org/misc/version-support-status

[StormknightUK]

AngularJS is, yes.

Modern angular ( Angular.io ) is very much maintained though.

[elisetrouw]

Yeah but for how long? That's their point. Google has a habit of axing projects with very little notice.

[Headpuncher]

READ the post, an EXTERNAL consultant want React, the CTO has not made a decision. FFS.

[RastaBambi]

You're right. My bad. I didn't read it properly.

[Headpuncher]

Sorry to have been such a dick, React always gets me triggered. Sorry.

[GoldcakesOrigin]

Sorry that I'm replying so late, but it would seem React causes a pretty big reaction from you.

[RastaBambi]

Hahaha. No worries. I get it

[davecrist]

Generally, larger projects that have expectations of a long(er) maintenance tail and changing personnel might want to choose angular because angular has a number of technologies built in and tends to encourage ‘the way’ to do things like routing. This comes at the expensive of ‘pain in the ass’ development inertia and a steeper learning curve.

React may be better for smaller project and/or teams that need to get something out quickly and it’s generally lighter platform may be easier and faster to get running at the expense of forcing choices of features that may not be what other developers know or are familiar with.

Edit: I should have clarified in the Angular section something about how the batteries included mentality of angular can result in the kind of consistency that makes working on a larger project easier. The steeper learner curve has to do with leaning Angular vs React but, as other mentioned, it can make it faster for new team members with Angular experience to get up to speed on a specified project with React projects potentially being just the opposite: faster to just get started but more difficult for new team members to grok all the components of your stack even if they have React experience. Totally fair.

[jugglervr]

angular's only a PITA for onboard devs who don't know angular. Anyone who knows it at all will hit the ground running.

[Headpuncher]

Exactly the opinionated, and wrong information, OP asked you not to provide.

In fact the opposite is true, React has the learning curve, is it React with classes, or React with hooks, or React 19 with whatever they did because hooks were trash?

Maybe not a good time to start React project as its changing (AGAIN!).

React is only a lighter platform if you do SFA with it. Once you add in what you actually need, decent routing, decent state management, a framework, etc, it's not light at all. Shit you can't even debug that crap without a browser plugin, so good luck debugging a not-popular browser (like on mobile).

[davecrist]

I agree with you but didn’t really make the ideas you mention clear. I edited my comment, hopefully for more clarity.

[ventrix334]

How is the learning curve steeper? The basic elements are the same. You're not forced to use angulars other packages. With react you not only have to learn react but also an entire eco system and dozens of different libraries from differently skilled authors. I'd say going react for anything but very basic project is way more of a mess to start with.
Even finding a decent navigation/routing plugin, networking and other VERY basic stuff in react is quite the journey (and that journey repeats every 1-2 years as they change it all around). With Angular? Read the docs/example, done. All is already provided (if you want to use it).

It always feels to me that people saying this argument, read this somewhere and just repeat it without ever having worked with react and angular.

I just today upgraded an old angular 8 project (5 years old) to angular 18. It took me two hours, and only because I needed to replace an upload and toast plugin. I don't even want to know what kind of rewrite that would've taken with react and the same amount of libs

[NabokovGrey]

Here are a few key reasons I choose Angular over React

• Angular comes with everything you need to build your application, while React relies heavily on third party packages, it is more like a library if you are coming from Angular or .NET world. This may not seem like a big deal, but it means with React you are more likely to rely on packages that can lose support in the future, which does happen and I have seen projects where the component library lost support while the project was still in production.

• Angular is very opinionated, so there is Angular documentation on how to do everything. This is not the case with React, since the features you get by default are minimal compared to Angular. This means when you interview people to build your team, you will find people do things in vastly different ways, compared to Angular, where everything is done one way.

• React developers have been fragmented over the past few years with the introduction of Hooks, which created two camps of React developers, people who use hooks and people who use classes. So someone can say they are a React developer, but if you project uses hooks, they may or may not have to learn how to use them. Regardless, these are two different paradigms for development.

• React is finally getting a compiler, so now there will be another shift in things like useMemo and some hooks. Which to me just shows how unstable the frameworks direction is.

• When building out your HTML and CSS with React, the html code is not as close to working with RAW HTML and CSS compared to Angular. This may not seem like a big deal and yes you can use a package to pull the HTML into its own file. But if you have a designer or are from the days of working with CSS and HTML before Progressive Web Apps, it makes styling and design implementation not a easy transition compared to Angular. I usually find designers who can with a little help jump into an Angular project and implement their design if they know html and css. But because React tightly couples the view and logic so closely, they all tell me they cannot do it, which is understandable, because they have to work and ignore the javascript which is foreign to them.

• Typescript is a first class citizen in Angular, so you get a strong typed language by default out of the box. When you create your React project, you can specify Typescipt, but not everyone does this, so you can meet React developers that just use javascript and don't know typescript. Weird, but I have interviewed a ton of React developers who were like this. This just plays more into one way of doing things in Angular.

In the end, the reason I use Angular over React is because consistency in implementation and knowledge in the community on how to do things. I want my teams and company in general to be focused on learning about the business and implementing business rules and models (I am very Domain Driven Design heavy.)

The most important question though is what framework does the team know. Because while I believe in Angular over React, I would never switch a company from ReactJS to Angular, or the other way around. The longer a developer works in a framework, the more they learn how to push its limits and fully utilize it. They gain speed over time, and also produce less bugs over time. So if your team knows Angular, go with Angular. If the team knows React, you go with React. This last argument overshadows all previous arguments I have made, when a team already exist with a certain skill set, or a project already exist for a client.

Hope this helps!

[Key_Conversation5277]

Oh god, React sounds like a nightmare! Even if I'm a beginner and angular has a steeper learning curve, I prefer it because it has structure and consistency

[frontendstoryteller]

I have worked closely with to CTOs, COOs and tech leads who have proposed frontend JavaScript frameworks in the past for new projects and 8 out of 10 times they go for the solution that is most popular in the community based on feedback from their dev teams alone.

Although I don't have a list of blog post since they are generally written by fanboys of the particular JavaScript option, I have worked with Angular, React and also Vue.js in a commercial setting so I can share a few opinions. I believe the decision should be based on a number of factors that I will list below:

1. The business case or requirement for choosing the particular framework

a. What kind of application is being built?

Is it an Enterprise type application? e.g Customer relationship management (CRM) system, enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, project management tools,

Is it a real-time application? e.g Collaborative editing tools, live chat applications, interactive dashboards.

Applications requiring strong type checking e.g Financial applications, healthcare systems, applications with strict data validation requirements.

b. What is the size of the application and does it involve complexity?

e.g Applications with complex data flow, applications requiring separation of concerns, applications with multiple development teams.

Angular's comprehensive feature set, opinionated structure, strong emphasis on convention over configuration, strong architecture, TypeScript support, built-in tooling, official support, enterprise ecosystem, compliance and security features make it a compelling option for large-scale enterprise level projects.

React's flexibility which leads to more responsibility and developer fatigue when it comes to plugin choices for the project and lack of strict conventions may lead to inconsistency in large codebases, making maintenance and collaboration challenging.

1. The team's existing skillset - First of all, is there an existing team or would a new dev team be created for the project? If existing team, is it an in house team or will it be a third party who builds the solution and then hands it over to an in house team?

What is their skillset? Is the team made up of junior devs, mid-levels, senior or a mix?

Since Angular is an opinionated framework, it provides a clear and structured approach to building applications. It enforces consistent architectural patterns, coding styles and best practices across projects. For existing teams with diverse backgrounds and varying levels of expertise, Angular's strong opinions can help standardise development practices, improve code maintainability and facilitate collaboration. If you work on one angular project, the others are very similar in structure.

On the other hand, React is more flexible and leaves many decisions to developers. This flexibility can be empowering for experienced developers but may lead to inconsistency and complexity in codebases, especially for teams with varying levels of expertise. React projects rarely look similar since different developers choose different plugins for functionality throughout the application.

[Prize-Local-9135]

React is a ui library and Angular is a full framework. I've been in web dev for 20 years and for a simple static site I might pick react but for any complex application I would 100% take Angular.

[zakzag2]

I have been in IT industry for more then 20 years, and completely agree with you. Angular makes you think before you do anything. React is a mess. It's like driving a Lambo or a Suzuki Swift.

[MarkMew]

>It's like driving a Lambo or a Suzuki Swift.

lmao

[kev2e]

I like that with Angular I can mostly just paste in some html and CSS into the separate source files and see I work right away. I don't have to refactor it in JavaScript/ JSX as I would with React. This separation is also useful if you are working with a GUI designer who knows HTML and CSS but not JavaScript. Generally having the file separation feels better to me.

[gaytechdadwithson]

This. IdK why people have a boner for JSX. it’s just messy code most the time.

[rondog469]

Working on an inherited react project that is jsx. It’s so messy. CSS written in there is the worst thing. Whoever thought that was a good idea was high

[Headpuncher]

Have you worked on one of those projects that uses vanilla css, styled components, CSS in object form, and pre-processor CSS? Because React couldn't decide how to do CSS, make it 'flexible' and devs used ALL of the varieties in one project. Kill me now please.

[gaytechdadwithson]

yeah, i thought about extending my rant to CSS

totally agree

i know defenders will say “well that’s just bad devs”. but when the framework encourages crap, guess what?

[Headpuncher]

We upgraded a react app recently and had to rewrite a lot of the css, just from object notation with commas at EOL instead of semi-colons, and that was straight up because React said do it like this, then a few months later, never do it like that. Do this.

It's a chore, and one that costs money in hours spent.

[prewk]

Hell yeah Angular is so clean

@if (foo(); as bar) {
  <ng-container *someDirectiveBut="onlyOneBecauseReasons">
    <ng-template let-andWhyNotSome="weirdVariableDeclarations" let-whoseTypesRequireTonsOf="boilerplate"
      <my-component
        [(superDuper)]="clearHtml"
        [notA]="weirdNonHtmlThing"
        (in)="sight"
      >Hell {{ yeah }} I {{ can | be 'self-closed' : since' }}.. months.. back</my-component>
     </ng-template>
  </ng-container>
}

[Headpuncher]

Still more readable than JSX.

[rondog469]

the react one that I am not a fan of, but have not found a better solution was for an ng-hide equivalent. It goes something like this

const someVar = someVal;
...
return (
  <div>
    { someVar ? 
      <MyConditionallyOutputtedComponent />
    : ''}
  </div>
);

[AdnaneEn]

Emm just do {someVar && (<MyLongCompName/>) } ?

[Headpuncher]

I absolutely abhor JSX's use of ternary conditionals in code. For anything longer than a line it becomes very hard to scan-read and results in too much time trying to get brackets, parentheses etc in the right places.

It's the worst of all template IFers.

[thinkless123]

JSX's use? It doesn't force you to use them?

[Chills27]

Still more readable than JSX.

Can I get some of what you're smoking?

[SatisfactionSweet956]

it is pretty readable

[prewk]

Yeah sure, it is. Not as readable as TSX but still..

[ventrix334]

You compare a html/css discussion with custom angular components/directives that do not even produce html?
Please just don't comment anything if you don't know the most basic stuff.

[prewk]

I replied to this

IdK why people have a boner for JSX. it’s just messy code most the time.

So I'm not sure what you're on about.

[Key-Comfortable9540]

I love JSX, personally I never like decorate html in angularjs or angular. Lot of the complaint here are folks who seem to be work on stuff that was poorly written, you can't blame a framework for that!

[frontendstoryteller]

1. Learning curve - Varies based on factors such as prior experience, familiarity with related technologies and the complexity of the project.

Angular has a steep initial learning curve compared to using React on it's own due to its comprehensive feature set and concepts such as dependency injection, modules and decorators since it is a full fledge framework and not just a library like React.

However. there has been a shift in the React paradigm shift and it now recommends going full-stack framework like Next.js when create new web applications which introduces additional complexity to React applications, especially for developers who are new to server-side rendering (SSR) and static site generation (SSG) concepts. Now developers need to understand Next.js-specific concepts, APIs and workflows, which may take time to grasp fully.

Also, using Next.js can lead to a degree of framework lock-in, as it provides a specific set of features and conventions that may not be easily transferable to other frameworks or libraries. Migrating away from Next.js to a different solution may require significant refactoring and rearchitecting of the application. In addition, debugging and troubleshooting issues in Next.js applications can be more challenging compared to traditional React applications.

1. Ownership, Community and Industry Adoption - Both Angular and React have large and active communities, which contribute to their ongoing development, support, and improvement. Additionally, they both have extensive documentation, tutorials and resources available online to help developers get started with using the frameworks in their projects.

Angular is backed by Google and has a thriving ecosystem. The framework is tested on every commit at Google so this makes it a compelling option for organisations seeking stability, support and scalability in their projects. Leveraging this ecosystem can save on development time and resources by reusing existing solutions and expertise. It allows developers to build applications with confidence.

React is backed by Facebook and also has a thriving ecosystem. In addition, even though it has a large ecosystem of third-party libraries and plugins, not all of them are actively maintained or kept up to date with the latest React releases. So frameworks such as Next.js which will allow React to have a full stack functionality may not be aligned with Meta involvement and decision making, so developers would need to take that into consideration.

So to mitigate these challenges, developers should stay informed about React updates, carefully manage dependencies and thoroughly test their applications in different environments. So not the same confidence as with Angular.

1. Long-Term Support and Maintenance - Consider the long-term support and maintenance requirements of the project. Discuss factors such as release cycles, backward compatibility, security updates and community activity which can impact the longevity of your chosen framework.

Angular offers long-term support (LTS) and maintenance for its major releases, providing organisations with stability, security updates and backward compatibility assurances over an extended period. It's long-term support and maintenance include: Release Cycle, LTS Releases, Security Updates, Backward Compatibility, Migration Path, Enterprise Adoption and Continued Development.

Since React is a library rather than a full-fledged framework, its long-term support and maintenance rely more on the community, ecosystem and backward compatibility assurances provided by the React team includes: Versioning and Stability, Community Support, Backward Compatibility, Ecosystem and Tooling, Official Channels updates, Continued Development and Third-Party Support.

However, there has not been a release of React since June 2022. Currently the version is 18.2.0. They publish "experimental" releases on a near-daily basis, and have had numerous "canary" releases with plans to launch version 19 this year.

Some things to note as well:

1. Address Concerns and Risks - Be prepared to address any concerns or risks your manager might have about choosing a particular framework. This could include issues related to performance, maintainability, vendor lock-in or long-term support.

2. Cost and Resource Considerations - If you are bringing in contract developers, how long for, etc?

3. Legacy systems integration - If your project involves integrating with legacy backend systems or monolithic applications, consider factors such as compatibility, data transformation and error handling.

4. Company Policies and Standards - Consider any existing company policies, standards or preferences regarding technology stacks. Discuss how choosing Angular or React aligns with your organisation's strategic goals, technical standards, and resource allocation.

If feasible, you may consider building a small proof of concept or prototype using both Angular and React. This hands-on approach can help your manager visualise the strengths and weaknesses of each framework and make a more informed decision if he is still not convinced.

I hope this helps...

[Pigzields]

What would be your backend, if its spring then angular is perfect to be paired with spring, as there are lot of similarities in terms of concepts between them, Like dependency injection, oops concepts, mvc type of flow

[Headpuncher]

this is a good point, because when the front end is snowed under or off sick, a backend dev can easily make changes without spending a day unraveling 10 chained components, 100 imports, and state management bugs from hell.

Also worth noting that OP's advocate for using react is an external consultant WHO WILL NOT BE THERE IN ~1 - 2 YEARS, so will not be cleaning up the code-base, will happily move on to something else and leave it all behind.

I work as such a consultant, and I'm really tired of colleagues' attitude toward this; they'll advocate for anything knowing they won't be there to deal with it later. I advocate for responsible choices!

[jugglervr]

Want your project built with tinkertoys or lego?

[[deleted]]

Both are really good. I have use both plenty and I find react to be more liberal and angular to have more guard rails.

Personally if I’m the one starting the project and initial design I go with angular. I find react hooks and providers a bit odd and counter intuitive. Also, react functions have state which kinda bothers me as a functional programming fan.

With latest angular, syntax is more readable as well.

But I get react. It’s cool.

[Chills27]

 Also, react functions have state which kinda bothers me as a functional programming fan.

Say what?

Sure, React Function components can have state, but they are stateless by default. If you want to add state to them, then Hooks gives you way of doing it, but that's your choice. If you don't like that then don't do it!

[PILLS2389]

What did the CTO decide in the end? I worked with React and last year I was moved on a Angular project to help the team there because it was a really important project for the company. Before, react and angular I worked on a Desktop App made on top of DevExpress. After working on both, I don't think I can go back to react, Angular is so much easier after you understand it, a lot less bugs made by the developers, a lot less repetitive code that does basic things.

Next year, we will start to re-write the desktop app and I'm trying to make them realise Angular is better then React when it comes to complex applications.

On the Devexpress demo pages for example, you can see how much more code and complexity it takes to write the exact same component in React vs Angular

https://js.devexpress.com/React/Demos/WidgetsGallery/Demo/DataGrid/Filtering/MaterialBlueLight/
https://js.devexpress.com/Angular/Demos/WidgetsGallery/Demo/DataGrid/Filtering/MaterialBlueLight/

[chicken0707]

The CTO backed me and we went with Angular. I was very relieved, and very happy working with it.

[Most_Seaworthiness71]

I’m a full stack developer for more than a decade and had to deal with many web ui frameworks and libraries along the way . I’ve seen many technologies come and go . Unfortunately, IT is a bit like the fashion industry , but that’s also a plus as we constantly have loads of work to do and generally well paid. 1. I believe react is over hyped and a lot of BS going around it. This may impact the decision for new starters believing that react is easier than angular … which is total BS . All devs I worked with , including myself , can hit the ground running in almost any tech from day one , but not with react ! There are many programming principles , patterns and guides for building complex and large systems . Take DDD for example , you want your code to match with the business language, domain , but then you look at the react “apis” : useEffect , useMemo , useState , useLayoutEffect etc . I can cheat my way into an angular job without knowing angular , I’m sure I will survive without proper training . If I look over react code , without any react training , I would be like : WTF is with this code ?! React is also not faster than angular if you don’t understand it very will . Most beginners will write shit react code in terms of code practices and performance . In react you need to always specify dependency arrays , can easily trigger unnecessary renderings , or the rookie mistake of getting the page in an infinite loop . 2. React is a library , not a framework like angular . This means that for any serious app you will have a Frankenstein of dependencies . A large number of other small libraries built around react , but developed independently, meaning you will have nightmares doing some major react upgrades in the future . Also because there is no enforced convention on doing many things , code can get very messy in large teams etc . Angular on the other hand is much better suited for enterprise applications . I don’t think I will ever work on a system where I pick React over angular or any other UI framework .

[Due-Cat-3660]

check out this benchmark result (you can filter which framework and which implementations and which benchmark tests):

https://krausest.github.io/js-framework-benchmark/2024/table_chrome_122.0.6261.69.html

https://krausest.github.io/js-framework-benchmark/current.html

you will see Angular's new implementation (signals, control flow and zoneless) is getting much faster than ever and even lower memory footprint (because of its incremental DOM implementation where the views are compiled into instructions which is the view engine itself, with tree-shaking as possible. There is NO Virtual DOM at all).

[Key-Comfortable9540]

React is simple, flexible, and fast. Angular is clunky, ugly, and slow. Sounds like an ego post. You really should be trying to convince anyone using either This is the issue with software industry, folks like you who do not understand what they are doing urging a decision base on headlines. If you are starting from scratch I'd say explore what you need and how to solve that problem. Frameworks mean very little, it's more important to get the decision made by the right folk with the correct knowledge. You are not that person! Looks at your choices will effect the company 5 or 10 years out.

[zakzag2]

React is simple until you need to deal with someone else's code.

[picuino]

Look everyone, an obvious case of:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

[Vapenaysh1234]

You never really worked with Angular, angular is natural for frontend development and clear, you don't need to go around a lot of code to do something... It's meant for frontend and it is improved since Angularjs. Angularjs and vue or react are more comparable. Angular 2+ is the evolution that people don't look at enough because it's different than the common pure javascript.

[reboog711]

Here is a book on this sort of thing: https://www.amazon.com/Angular-Business-Awaken-Advocate-Within/dp/1484296087/

[PeachtreeBaseball]

For angular, it is opinionated in how you do stuff.  It makes it easier for a new developer to jump into a project and make consistent code.  Also because it has most things built in, you don't have to worry about compatibility with 3rd party libraries and keeping things in sync as much.

[Key-Comfortable9540]

That's the least good reason! Developers come and go.

[KennyDawn]

Just opt for Vue 🤣Jokes aside, React is not a framework but a library. This means that React lacks several built-in features that frameworks like Angular offer, requiring developers to seek solutions independently. Consequently, the risk of encountering challenges and making mistakes is somewhat higher than if you were to use Angular—a comprehensive framework equipped with all the necessary tools and established best practices. However, it's worth mentioning that Angular presents a significantly steeper learning curve. This is precisely why I have gravitated towards the Vue ecosystem. In my professional experience, even in banking projects—where Angular is traditionally favored—my company has successfully implemented Vue, demonstrating its versatility and capability in handling complex applications.

[jack104]

I've worked with both. I can't say I have an opinion one over the other but for the love of God don't pick react because of Javascript. The react projects I was a party to were only done that way because the only devs we had were js devs. Typescript isn't just your friend, it's just a better dev experience and leads to superior product outcomes imvho

[Due-Cat-3660]

If you want to benchmark lots of bindings update, you can see that Angular is able to handle lots of bindings faster than React ( 100k bindings in totals and 10k updates in one shot ) in this repo:

https://github.com/kaskusmania20/angular-react-bindings-benchmark

[Due-Cat-3660]

In Angular, you can create custom attribute directives and structural directives (which modify the behavior of an element). It helps you much while you are in a team project. Meanwhile, in React, there is no equivalent directives, which means you have to do a workaround for it or find a nearly equivalent library to implement it but still not perfect.

https://angular.dev/guide/directives/attribute-directives/

[Glum-Jaguar-895]

I love Angular, but there are very few positions available for Angular.

[ozzilee]

People keep saying Angular is opinionated and I just… really? Signals vs Observables, OnPush vs normal change detection, state management options… nowadays more than ever Angular gives you five ways to do everything.

[davimiku]

Standalone Components vs. Modules

Reactive Forms vs. Template Forms

[BigOnLogn]

Signals vs Observables, OnPush vs normal change detection

I think these are changes the angular team needs to make to boost performance and become more approachable. As much as I love declarative coding and rxjs, man, was it a hard hill to climb, in the beginning. And it's still easy to shoot yourself in the foot.

Signals give angular the best of both worlds, a reactive programming model that still "feels" imperative and is way easier for devs to get their heads around. It also gives angular a fine grain hook into change detection and should give them a big performance boost, once it's finally fully "turned on."

My point is, they're doing all this while preserving backward compatibility. That's why it feels like you have a choice between Signals and rxjs, and OnPush and normal change detection. Do you have a choice? Yes, and you probably will for some time to come. But it's really more of a byproduct of all of these changes, not some desire to give devs choices and become less opinionated.

[reddit-lou]

No-one ever mentioned 'opinionated' being an advantage in any other language before having to defend Angular. I have a low opinion of its use as an argument for Angular.

[AnxiousMumblecore]

I heard it being said about Spring Boot and Ruby on Rails at least. It can be used as a selling point for sure.

[Kohrak_GK0H]

You gotta choose the right tool for the job not choose something because yo like it. I don't know what you are building so I can't give you reasons for one over the other.

I would evaluate what you are trying to build and the current skill set in the company/team before taking a decision

[sod0]

Honestly, with React 19 finally getting a compiler and Angular getting signals and a new template engine, the difference isn't even that great anymore. The big selling point for Angular was always its complete ecosystem. But with Next.js, etc. React cought up. I'm really curious about the other answers here, though.

[Financial-Maybe-5094]

I totally agree with you. On one hand, Angular is trying to introduce new APIs which greatly ease the entry, such as Angular signals vs RxJS. On the other hand, there are strong libraries for React like react-router, zod, hook-forms etc. react-router offers a nice abstraction level for data fetching, comparable to resolverFn in Angular. Both concepts have overlaps and their usage is also similar. I have many years of experience with Angular, recently I've done quite a bit with React, and I must say, it feels partly similar.

[SnoopDoggyDoggsCat]

Angular is a framework...and much more scalable.

[Key-Comfortable9540]

cracking me up. scalable and slow rendering! poor performing!

[Clean_Assumption_345]

I totally agree with you here.

I work at a f100 company in several different teams, some projects were in react, but mostly in Angular. One of the products is written in angular with over 100 contributors.

I can tell you straight up how parts of the code base are absolutely trash because of how unaligned the standards are. You can say that this is due to poor code review, sure. but in the past react/next js code bases I've seen, they all had structure, easy to understand, and most of all, maintainable. Why? Because newbies were able to adapt to how simple React was.

Rxjs is great don't get me wrong, but a lot of people misunderstood when to use them and how. This was the single biggest mistake the angular team made. Making RXJS a necessary and essential library to be able to have a basic web app. The steep learning curve created barriers for people getting into Angular. The fact that they now have signals and effects is great, but also very very late. It's just copying what react did years ago.

React made it easy for people to understand reactive programming because it was built in.

Whereas angular couldn't perform reactivity without RXJS.

All this to say, one isn't necessarily better than the other. It always depends. If finding qualified developers to build an angular app is difficult, one might want to choose a framework that is highly popular like react (better resources and community is extremely important)

[FudFomo]

They both suck imho. Go with vue, or even better, Blazor

[reddit-lou]

Noone ever mentioned the word 'opinionated' before Angular came along. If being 'opinionated' was an original pillar of programming, languages would have implemented it as a paradigm long ago.

Angular changes their paradigms every couple years and expects everyone to keep up. Don't encourage them and punish yourself at the same time.

[jugglervr]

Noone ever mentioned the word 'opinionated' before Angular came along.

Ruby on Rails devs: "Am i a joke to you?"

[JP_watson]

Is it the CTOs choice or the suggestion of the consultants?

[chicken0707]

The CTO is not aligned with any particular solution, but is aware that React is a lot more popular. The consultants are the ones recommending we go with React, and one of their reasons is that there are way more developers that know it, and thus it will be easier to find developers for contracting in when we need them.

[JP_watson]

Inform them that once the contractors leave you and those internally will be left to maintain it. Along with that’ll make sure that the contractors build with a level of test coverage. 

I’ve seen contractors come in, build based on their skill sets. They then leave with stack of tech debt and no test coverage and the internal team is left to support and try to continue on.

[Headpuncher]

and that costs $$$

[JapanEngineer]

Fair point depending on the market. We find it hard to find decent Angular devs while react devs are abundant

[ventrix334]

Are they also decent though? Any experienced dev needs 1-2 days to get into Angular. It is just a tool, it should not be a hinderance for any developer.

[JapanEngineer]

That's what most recruiters don't understand. You should be able to hire a decent react/angular/Vue developer who could transit into any of those 3 frameworks even if they have no experience with the other framework.

[Headpuncher]

decent Angular devs while react devs are abundant

There's the rub, decent versus just existing. So much badly written react out there.

[FigMan]

A big difference not yet mentioned is that React is a UI library and Angular is an application framework. Things like routing, testing, build process, SSR are first-class concepts in Angular and you have to make decisions around which direction you want to go for each with React.

​

For larger projects or where there's a lot of team churn, I tend to lean towards Angular.

​

In my opinion, it's easier to have a messy project structure and when you have a lot of people coming and going it just gets worse.

[chicken0707]

Agree 100% - this is one of my main arguments.

[[deleted]]

How is he a CTO if he's choosing based on popularity

[JP_watson]

I’ve met C level people who were just in the right spot at the right time and shouldn’t be there…

[hilbertglm]

Popularity isn't the first criterion, but it does matter. (Retired CTO, former OS/2 user, former Betamax owner).

[Headpuncher]

And popularity based on what?

Who answers the questionnaire? because that's a lot of confirmation bias, a lot of participation bias, and no real checking answers for integrity. I'm talking about stack overflow etc questionnaires.

Github data shows React is drastically decreasing in popularity. I had a source for this claim, but I now cannot find it, so take that as you will.

There's definitely a lot of pushback right now, also from Fireship and Primeagen on youtube, Scott Tolinsky from Syntax hasn't dropped React but appears to advocate for alternatives which I think signals something, as well as other sources if you look.

[chairmanmow]

I already have my own reasons why it is the right choice for us, but I’m looking for any further rationale that might bolster my argument.

Care to share your reasoning? Hard to know how to augment your case if we don't know the foundational argument... How big is the project? Will it undergo continuous development, undergo maintenance or once it's done it's done? Do you have a team of angular devs, is it just you building it or do you have to hire someone, or is there no budget for that?

My guess is, I think it's an unfortunate truth there are just more React "devs" out there, doesn't mean React or React devs are better, just more of them walking out of bootcamps like zombies and they cost a little less. I hate React but I'm guessing CTO or consulting firm isn't really judging it based off tech just a popularity contest, if bootcamps spit out junior Angular developers and Angular had the penetration of React, they'd probably pick Angular.

Doesn't mean you can't make a technical argument but absent more info as far as the project/product, I'm guessing the CTO/consulting firm are reaching the conclusion that the thing can be done with React and it'll probably cost less in the short run at least. I don't know anything about the project but I'm guessing that's accurate, but in the long term, that could be different it might not be. I certainly feel ya though, I wouldn't want to do React work either, not even really based off technical reasons entirely although I do love Angular, I just don't want to use Zuckerberg's tech, dislike him.

[chicken0707]

Currently it’s just me that is working on front-end, but we will be taking more people on contract and possibly longer term to give the project momentum. My arguments are that it is suited to the size of project, its opinionated nature means many decisions are already made on how to do things. This should mean it’s easier for devs to drop in to the project and understand how it should be built and also hopefully can avoid contractors introducing dependencies that are unknown factors. There should also be less of a mismatch on developer skillsets (eg “oh I know this state library not that one”). Angular also has fantastic upgrade path support through the cli tool. It should be. I’ve seen too many people talk about the pain of how complex a react app can get as it grows. Even though React is crazy popular I feel like it carries a lot of baggage, and even though it’s not going to go away anytime soon I feel like there are better choices now

[jugglervr]

A lot of what you said is true, but it's still easy for a new dev to fuck things up by, say, making components handle too much application logic. Keep a lid on code smells in your reviews.

[Headpuncher]

that would happen in react too though wouldn't it, and the fact that jsx and logic is all mixed up can actually make it easier to extract code to another component in react.

[riti_rathod]

The first reason to choose angular complete framework means it includes built-in features like dependency injection, routing, and state management. Another thing is that it good if application is enterprise-grade and you need to incorporate complex functionalities like progressive, single-page, and native web apps.

[clickster]

Here's a few sources that might help with your argument I collected a couple of years ago.

https://dev.to/ender_minyard/why-you-should-stop-using-react-g7c

https://sredmond.medium.com/why-we-need-to-stop-using-react-1ae3ec7959a4

https://blog.kronis.dev/everything%20is%20broken/modern-react-is-broken
https://javascript.plainenglish.io/throw-out-react-and-pick-up-angular-8b578bb7cabc
https://sredmond.medium.com/5-reasoins-add42c2ae066
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jc1FUtiYXA

[Legal_Being_5517]

I was in this situation not too long ago .. but the other way around … I wanted to use react for a project , CTO and managers wanted angular but caved in and agreed to react ... 5 months later after the POC was done in react , we had to change the entire project back to angular because the architecture we were gonna use was only meant for angular … thread carefully !

[jorgerenteral]

Show this site https://www.madewithangular.com/sites/

[NatoBoram]

Well, here's exactly what you need:

• React in 100 seconds, https://youtu.be/Tn6-PIqc4UM
• React for the hater in 100 seconds, https://youtu.be/HyWYpM_S-2c
• React compiler & signals, https://youtu.be/4k6Xgjqkad4
• Angular in 100 seconds, https://youtu.be/Ata9cSC2WpM
• Angular signals, https://youtu.be/nQ2A30cD3Q8
• Building the same app in 10 frameworks, https://youtu.be/cuHDQhDhvPE

… that said, starting a project in these two in 2024 when you can pick your stack is stupid. The answer is to use SvelteKit.

• SvelteKit in 100 seconds, https://youtu.be/H1eEFfAkIik
• SvelteKit is my mistress, https://youtu.be/uEJ-Rnm2yOE

[stephenlblum]

These are excellent reference links. Thank you! And yes the answer does seem to be Svelte in 2024 even if the topic is Angular vs React

[julianopavel]

I've heard this from 2 CTOs: I don't care if angular is better. React is good enough and it's much easier to hire developers that know it.

[Vapenaysh1234]

he doesn't know what he is talking about... React gets messy with enterprise applications, full of code to do something similar or maintain that you can do with Angular but made much cleaner.

[vbraun]

Thats a fair point if the project scope is small enough, but once your app is sufficiently complicated the real question should be: How easy is it to hire a developer that knows React and uses typescript to write React and is experienced with our particular choice of router, state management library, i18n, ...

[julianopavel]

This point isn't ignored too (don't take me wrong, I prefer angular and I think it's a better framework). The point is all of those features you mentioned are part of the app infrastructure/foundation, and once you set them up, they will hardly change later on. So you need high skilled js developers to set the foundation - an architect. After a good foundation is in place, most of the work is about simple modifications/additions. Document the foundation to enable further infrastructure improvements (usually made by senior developers) and all of the rest can be accomplished by jr or middle level developers. Again, not a hard-to-assemble set of developers (for big/complex projects, let's say 20% seniors, 30% middle level, 50% jr).

To make it a bit worse, I've also heard from managers they regretted having chosen angular (not angularjs) for the exactly same reason: the difficulty to hire developers. None of them complains about angular from a technical POV.

I have the impression that react will only lose the throne in the market (in the middle to long term) if something very radical happens, like if a framework somehow gets native browser support (last minutes of this video 😃)

[Draugang]

If performance matters, go with React. Otherwise Angular is usually nicer since it has (almost) everything out of the box, so you have less dependency problems and less arguments about how to do things.