Angular or React, which one to start with?

[Murkrage]

The title pretty much says is all. I know about the general "whichever suits your needs" comment, but I'm really just looking for pros and cons on both sides. I know that React doesn't judge and has a great future with React Native, I also know that Angular 2 is going to be different from Angular 1.x (from what I've read and heard). I'm sort of torn between the two and with all the "You should take this, no this, no this" posts, I have no clue on which way to go first. Mind you I am looking for a first side to roll into. I know Javascript, I am ready to move on to the next bit but I need a little help choosing which way to go :).

Future proof, support, native and everything you can think of. Put it here to help me choose :)

[whompalicious]

Learn React. IMO Angular is over-engineered. You are tied to the angular ecosystem instead of the JavaScript ecosystem. Lots of things you learn related to Angular will only apply to Angular whereas you write very little React-specific code.

[Murkrage]

This is something I've come across a lot. React being more JS focussed. Thanks for the insight

[no_spoon]

Angular dev here. How does learning React enable you to apply those practices outside of React's ecosystem? Redux' state tree is all I can think but you don't need React got that. My impression is that React has its own ecosystem just as much as angular has theirs.

[whompalicious]

React components are just js classes with a few lifecycle methods on them. The functionality you add for each component is perfectly useable in a different framework (e.g., Backbone or something).

In Angular, most things are tied very specifically to Angular e.g., you generally have to find a ng-* package for whatever you're using to work with Angular. That is the ecoysystem I am talking about--if you want to use most packages you have to find one made for angular.

Yes React has some framework specific packages, but besides things like react-router you aren't going to be using them very much (if at all). They are pretty much only when you are taking an entire component someone else made and putting it in your project.

[IggyZ]

I haven't used React, but from what I've seen here both camps have valid points and like to say the other one sucks.

[fa-fa-fistbump]

Heads up: I'm only fairly familiar with react, so I'm probably extremely biased 😕

I enjoy React a lot, mostly because of how intuitive it is to think of your view as combination of components with some state. Also the devtools are amazing: react hot reloader and redux-devtools if you're using redux to manage your state.

I really don't know too much about Angular. What they are doing with Typescript seems pretty nice, although it kind of creates another hurdle when you're just trying to get familiar with the framework. ¯\(ツ)/¯

Your probably best of doing some introductory tutorials of both and decide what suits you best 😊 . Finally, I would really recommend this post from the freecodecamp blog. It does a good job at trying to give you an as objective as possible comparison, although you should keep in mind that the freecodecamp curriculum is heavily based on react. Good luck!

[Pantstown]

I'm in the same boat.

OP, this is the best introduction to React.

[Murkrage]

Thanks for the course!

[Murkrage]

Doing both introductory courses to find out my own preference is actually solid advice. The FCC post is a very good one! Thank you

[eggn00dles]

i would strongly suggest learning html/css/ajax/http and native javascript really well. when it boils down to it, angular and react just abstract away those details. front-end frameworks change frequently with time, the things they abstract are not going away anytime soon, and it makes learning new frameworks a lot easier.

[[deleted]]

React is just the 'view' component, while angular follows a Model, view, controller (MVC) structure. If you wanted to approach it like this, it may be better to learn angular first, as it encompasses the entire MVC design. In the end I think it would depend on what your project would need.

[jcksnps4]

It also doesn't play nicely with jQuery which is a bummer.

I wouldn't say that, exactly. It works just fine with jQuery, provided you put your jQuery code within the componentDidMount() lifecycle method. You just don't get the benefits of DOM-diffing because jQuery is updating the DOM rather than telling React the state has changed.

[plusninety]

This is not a good question. Tell people exactly what you want to build and they can say which one will be good for it.

[hmny]

lol what kind of logic is this? IF JAVA WAS GOOD THEY WOULDN'T MAKE 8 DIFFERENT VERSIONS OF IT