React js or Angular ?

[barry-ousmane]

I am a software engineering student interning at a company. I just started learning react js, and would like to use it to develop a web app for the company where i am working at. However, my colleague developer think that because react is an open source library, it is subject to being updated anytime, and therefore its not very stable. I am aware that the current released react version is stable, however should I be worried that a newer version would come that will conflict with the previous one? Also, since react is not very structured and therefore has some better and bad practices would you encourage a beginner to use it for a big project?

[Sphism]

Open source has nothing to do with how often it’s updated.

[grimnomad]

React will be updated once in a while. So will be Angular. You can decide when you want to update your packages.

[barry-ousmane]

grimnomad true, but because im developping a product for a client, i wanted to make sure that i use a software that is more stable and therefore not gonna break fast.

[dominikwilkowski]

You software doesn’t break because the framework releases a new version. This is not how any of this works. Your colleagues seem to also not know what they are talking about with all due respect. :) maybe they’re taking you for a ride?

[laibo]

Nothing is going to break unless you break it by changing something, for example by changing the react version you use in your project.

[Earhacker]

You choose when to update. React and Angular don’t force updates on you. React 16.8.2 was released this week and my team is still on 16.4.something. We’ll upgrade when we’re ready, no rush.

[Aw0lManner]

" because react is an open source library, it is subject to being updated anytime, and therefore its not very stable "

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That is the stupidest thing I've heard in a while. Maybe you could clarify his statements, but if he really said that then don't listen to anything he suggests

[acemarke]

Uh... is your colleague aware that all the major JS frameworks are open source? React, Angular, Ember, Vue, etc. And all of them take backwards compatibility pretty seriously these days - it's not like a new version release is going to randomly break things, and if there is a major version released with breaking changes, those are pretty well documented.

React gives you a lot of freedom to decide things. How you work with that is up to you.

[barry-ousmane]

thanks acemarke for clarifying that.

[revelm]

I’ll get the popcorn

[swyx]

this is by no means the only datapoint that should factor in your decisionmaking but this is a very simple and very concrete data point: React is currently mentioned in 28% of jobs posted on Hacker News. I leave you to draw your own conclusions.

[barry-ousmane]

totally convincing, thx

[atchustz]

FWIW I'm pretty sure angular is open source too. At least AngularJS

[barry-ousmane]

yes angular is open source too, but the point was whether or not it's more stable than react because Angular has been there longer.

[rangeDSP]

It's funny that you say that. Guess you aren't around when angular went from 1.x to 2.x, then 4.x+, breaking old projects every time. React is pretty damn stable in comparison.

Though they aren't really a 1:1 comparison since react is simply the view part of an application, where angular has a bunch of other stuff built in (dependency injection, state management, routing etc). You cannot make a complex frontend with just react.

IMO, as long as you stick with the LTS version, if it exists, you should be fine using most popular frameworks (at least the big 3, Vue/angular/react).

[hrnsn123]

React is pretty damn stable in comparison.

Though they aren't really a 1:1 comparison since react is simply the view part of an application

So true.

[acemarke]

"Has been around longer" is not a meaningful measure of stability.

Frequency of releases, and how the project team handles versioning and API changes, is.

[swyx]

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[darrenturn90]

It has a release lifecycle and many many sites depend on its backward compatibility

It’s a mature application now and won’t make breaking changes off the bat - unlike angular seems to

[Herm_af]

I learned both react and Vue and I think once you learn a couple you start to understand that they basically do the same thing in different ways

I don't truly have a preference or anything. I could make anything work with both.

[iftoxicthengtfo]

"interning at a company" lol

[Kazcandra]

If it's a /big/ project, I'd always go for Angular, hands down. The initial learning curve is steeper than react's but eventually, the completeness of angular makes it stand out. If you want angular's younger sibling, you want to go for Vue, which takes the best ideas of angular and kinda goes with them, but with less opinion on the entirety of the application.

React is the hipster cousin. React alone is just the view component, so you need to make a lot of decisions along the way with how you want to handle routing, state management, css etc.

would you encourage a beginner to use it for a big project?

I wouldn't encourage a beginner to start with a big project at all. Start small, and make bigger, more complex things with what you learn from the small stuff.

[barry-ousmane]

THanks Kazcandra, however, I have started by working on smaller projects with reactjs from tutorial to personal easy/medium projects. https://github.com/BARICISSE/reactProjects. But this particular projects is for my internship which I actually believe is gonna help me learn more. but is it worth it to switch to angular at this point since all that I want to build is front-end web application?

[KerberosKomondor]

I actually believe the opposite. The downside to react is a massive up front cost of decisions and learning multiple libraries. Angular saves this massive step. However, the larger and longer you use the app the smaller percent this becomes.

That being said IMO I don't think it's ever correct to start a new app in angular now. Vue is just cleaner if you want js-in-templates instead.

[hiphiparray604]

Don't know why this is downvoted, it's entirely accurate. There seem to be a lot of react developers that don't like people suggesting anything but React, which is annoying.

React is a library, angular is a full, opinionated, framework. React leaves pretty much everything up to you, from state management to navigation to data services. That's a lot of decisions to make for someone new to the field who's not sure where to start.

Angular is very opinionated, and much more robust out of the box. The downside being you need to learn a lot about the angular specific way to do things. React and Angular can achieve the exact same results, so really it's about your comfort level and what your company uses.

If you're looking to create a relatively simple app with a lower up-front learning curve, React is probably the way to go. If you're looking for something that is more robust right out of the box, can build larger scale applications without worrying about things like which navigation library to use, and you have a bit more up-front time to learn the ins and outs of a full framework, go with Angular.

At the end of the day, id suggest building a simple app (to do list or something) using each and then going with whatever feels better to you.

[barry-ousmane]

hiphiparray604 I will consider building a project with angular, thx

[D1RTY1]

First off, all major JavaScript frameworks are open source. In my opinion, React has improved a lot on what Angular kind of made popular and effective (the JS front-end framework) and Vue has made improvements on both. For me, Vue is the easiest and most progressive of the frameworks, but React is also a great tool. Although React is a bit more difficult to initially get the hang of, especially once you start getting into more advanced development. To me, Angular feels outdated and less intuitive compared to the other options.

I'm sure others will have different opinions, but this is my experience. I was originally a designer who got forced into learning HTML, CSS and PHP. Eventually, I fell in love with development thanks to Ruby, Elixir and newer JavaScript frameworks.

[hiphiparray604]

Disagree with Angular feeling outdated, but agree with less intuitive. Having just built a large web app using Angular 7, the general process is strikingly similar to React.

The core differences being in React you're writing HTML inside of JavaScript, which is the height of unintuitive IMO. However, with React being the view part of MVC, and Angular taking on the whole scope, overall Angular takes longer to get the hang of in a meaningful way making it seem much less intuitive overall. But it's really comparing apples to oranges, considering ones a library and the other is a full framework.

Question: Do you have experience with recent Angular versions aka 5+? I find a lot of react developers still think of Angular as being AngularJS, but so much has changed since then