As the world has been facing the pandemic for almost two years, the importance of digitalization and online operations has increased. Front-end technologies such as Front-end Frameworks and others have pushed the realization of all software applications, and have gained momentum.
In addition, back-end technologies are equally important, but the Front-end is the basic result that users will encounter and appreciate first.
Front-end frameworks are necessary to make the work of web developers easier: They typically provide pre-written/reusable code modules, standardized front-end technologies, and ready-to-use interface blocks, making it faster and easier for developers to design sustainable web applications and user interfaces without having to code every function or object from scratch.
What is a Frontend Framework?
A framework is a set of tools and components that facilitate the development and maintenance of large projects. Frameworks are collections of fundamental software modules that include prepared code that programmers can use to solve common programming tasks such as handling AJAX requests or defining a file structure.
Frameworks also specify the rules for developing the app’s architecture: Most of the time, when we create apps, we want to format our code in a certain way to gain efficiency and help other developers understand our code.Frameworks help us structure our apps and provide us with additional functionality that we can add without too much work.
Frameworks give us a starting point that allows us to focus on functionality rather than configuration details.
Whay do we need these frameworks?
The front end is growing and expanding in a predictable way. Although each popular Framework offers its own design philosophy, they all try to solve the same general problems:
- Your code must be maintainable: easy to read, test, and edit,
- Complex interfaces are usually made up of the same components. You must be able to create and reuse these components to easily create new pages,
- As long as DOM* manipulations are slow, you can make as few element updates as possible,
- You won't have to reinvent the wheel and write tons of boilerplate text to solve common front-end problems,
- You need a common language to communicate your ideas and models to other developers.
*DOM: Document Object Model, this represents a document as a logic tree.
Most Popular front-end frameworks
Between React, Angular and Vue which one to choose?
This comparative analysis is based on the following aspects:
- Pros and Cons of React:
Pros:
- Virtual DOM
- Easily testable
- Most used with a very high level of satisfaction
Cons:
- Permanent updates and insufficient documentation
- Lack of certain features, which forces developers to look for third party libraries
- Strengths and Weaknesses of Angular:
Strengths:
- Very popular among professionals
- Complete documentation and many integrated features
Weaknesses:
- Produces heavier apps
- Its performance is very slow
- Difficult to learn
- Advantages and disadvantages of Vue:
Advantages:
- Virtual DOM
- Reactive and composable view components
- High performance
- Much clearer structure
- Support for SSR (Server Side Rendering)
Disadvantages:
- Less adopted by professionals
- Sub-optimal Typescript support
- Very adaptive which can sometimes lead to irregularities
It’s hard to decide which of these Frameworks is the best, as each has strengths and limitations, not to mention the regular updates that bring new features.
Of course, we can’t go through all the possible solutions, there are other great Frameworks left out in the article. If you are not sure which front-end development technology will be the best for your project, you can contact us for qualified assistance.
Contact us, and we’ll get back to you as quickly as possible!