Vue or React?

A couple of months ago, I chose Vue to be my point of entry to the frameworks realm in web development. I also decided to go in depth-first. So, I practiced barebones Vue, then used Vuetify, then - after getting sick of all the props and emits - I learned Vuex, and now I am playing around with Nuxt. In all this, I have not even glanced at the documentation of React.

What I know about React, I know from occasional blog posts. A common claim I came upon was that Vue is simpler to learn than React. And that does not seem to come with a penalty in terms of performance or robustness. As I understand, from reading and not from experience, both frameworks are equally useful for projects of different scales.

At least from my experience, as I work on my first meaningful web project, I find myself constantly impressed by how simple the development process is. Especially, when component libraries like Vuetify are utilized.

Assuming my understanding is correct (and feel free to enlighten me if it isn't) I have two questions:

1. With Vue.js readily available, is there any reason to learn React—other than the fact that React came first and therefore has the bigger market share?
2. If no such reason exists, do you expect Vue to take over in the future? In other words, any reason for a startup project today not to be developed in Vue instead of React?

Comments

[official_dulin]

Number of questions on stackoverflow

reactjs: 299909 questions
vue: 77204 questions
vue 2: 21940 questions
vue 3: 1510 questions

299909 > (77204 + 21940 + 1510), so using React

[Ghaleb]

But if everyone used this logic, we would have never adopted new technologies. Older players in the same arena will almost always have more StackOverflow questions.

[prog-rajkamal]

TBH, that looks like a point on vue's side as vue router and vuex are official solution deeply integrated with vue, while react libraries are not official, so it fragments the ecosystem and are not as high quality as vue ones

[Oded Sharon]

React won't die soon as it's being promoted by FB (similarly to MS's .NET).
There are companies today that still develop using jQuery and there are users who still use IE. Old Technologies will always stay (that's how Cobol developers make their fortune ;-) )
Assuming you understood the concept behind it, learning your second framework should be much easier than the first, so why not learn React just for the sake of being versatile?

[Yohan D.]

I think for a beginner, React is more affordable. Without Hooks by the way...

I mean, what you do with Vuejs, like v-if and all the v-things... are also possible on React... with props no ? If not, I misunderstood something then.

I tried both and in my humble opinion, React is easier to use and learn than Vuejs.

Plus, the use of all the v-things it's like JQuery for me... Especially when you know that Vuejs is everything " Evan You " loves from AngularJS in more lighter...

Some pep say that React is the new JQuery....

Seriously ?!

I think nothing can stop JQuery to be the most gluttony framework... Here is a joking site => vanilla-js.com

React, Vue, jQuery .... they all come from => Pure Javascript.

So my question is now :

People who don't learn pure Javascript can learn VueJs or ReactJs ?

or

Learn ReactJs, VueJs, JQuery or learn pure Javascript ? 🤷

Thank you for this post !

[Andrew Baisden]

React is more popular in the west and Vue is more popular in the east. Learning both would be more beneficial for job prospects. However go with the one that has more jobs available in your location. In my case that is React and it is also the framework I have the most experience with.

[Infinity Detective]

React, simply just js code, no syntactic sugar, i don't need to remember too many non js helper thingies ( wonder why do i have to ? ) . Once i used vuejs until react brought up functional and hook and things have been much neat since then

[deexter]

If you use Vue3 you have to wait for compatibility for many packages. (for example vuetify.)
Typescript support is better in react.

I work with both and I am strongly convinced that vue is not better than react. (Just my opinion)
I would like to be convinced by someone that I am wrong.

[Mohamed Ashiq Sultan]

My Unbiased view.
I have used React even context API. And in my current job I'm maintaining a React codebase and working on a new project with Vue for 5 months.

In my opinion using things like v-model,
computed and watchers in Vue makes it easier to manage state and reactivity which takes manual coding in React. And combined with VueX it makes it more easier to manage global states.

For me, The ecosystem of Vue (Vue VueX Vue Router...) has been designed to solve the pain points in Angular and React.

[Ryan Carniato]

If no such reason exists, do you expect Vue to take over in the future? In other words, any reason for a startup project today not to be developed in Vue instead of React?

A lot of perspectives flying around on which is better etc.. But this is probably the question of the article and I'm not seeing as much answers to this. My perspective is you will see more startups use Vue, and Svelte, but I wouldn't expect React to lose much ground. If anything you will see them shift up into areas which previously were reserved for Angular, and while Angular perhaps is losing mindshare will still take over places that were Java etc..

I don't expect Vue to take over, mostly in that while different it isn't different enough to necessitate this sort of change. Why choose Vue specifically? Funny enough many of the qualities that might have pushed Vue as different than React are now better represented in Svelte. The challenge of being sort of the middle of things is standing out. Svelte sort of completes the triangle with React and Angular as libraries that exemplify the qualities that Vue balances. That might make it the perfect middleground, or that might make it a messy compromise. Still Vue has a big headstart on Svelte so again I don't expect it to lose position when it comes to the job market and actually grow fairly substantially atleast for now.

But mindshare is interesting. I currently have this visual of React and Svelte sort of circling sort of trapping Vue and bumping Angular out of the party. In the same way Angular is for some reason just getting forgotten in conversations, Vue is sort of getting boxed in comparisons, where someone will use Svelte to exemplify certain things Vue was known for. Sure this is all hype and no one can deny Vue's popularity but the trial I think will come down to how these libraries attack the non-typical customer. Forget Web Applications and tech startups. I'm talking Websites. Biggest potential place to pick up new users. So grab some popcorn and get ready for the competition to heat up.

[Ghaleb]

Yes! Thank you for addressing the main question! The more I read the responses the more I felt that the post triggered a Samsung vs iPhone kind-of debate. lol

The main reason for focusing on Vue and React in my case is inexperience. For instance, I had not heard of Svelte until I read the comments. It definitely is on my radar now, and I am grateful to all the tips and pointers I picked up reading this thread. The post picked up far more traffic than I expected and most of it was generally informative.

However, regarding your response, I think we can spot a criterion that seems to be a substantial driver behind which technology gets more market share and which gets driven out of the picture, and that is ease-of-use.

Now, I am almost definitely over simplifying things here, but ease-of-use is important, I think, because it translates into two things:

1. Lower costs for established developers (or companies), and
2. Lower barriers to entry for aspiring developers.

For example, I would argue that much of Python's appeal comes from its simple syntax and extensive and powerful libraries that take away much of the heavy-lifting from developers. I would also argue that the main reason Angular is being bumped out of the party, as you put it, is that it was often branded as the more complex framework that is mainly for big companies.

When I wanted to pick up a framework I looked up the top names and found React, Angular, and Vue. Then I dug deeper, and the first one to go out was Angular, because I kept coming across comments about its complexity. I began with Vue because I needed something I can pick up quickly to start building my portfolio. I already have the disadvantage of being late to the game, so the "simplicity" of Vue eventually made it my point-of-entry.

With this perspective, as I grab my popcorn, I predict the longer-living library will be the one that continues to have the lower learning curve while being robust. I think such library will more often be considered as "the perfect middle ground" and not "the messy compromise". But I agree, nothing is truly predictable in this race.

[Ryan Carniato]

I guess I could sort of bucket it all under ease of use. But maybe less friction is better. Up until now I'd never peg the easiest library for the developer to write their apps to necessarily win the day. At least easiest as in least initial learning curve. I do think it plays a more important part with the widening of target audience though.

I'm honestly excited/curious about this next stage(hence the popcorn statement) as even with my general ability to predict this stuff I do not know where this goes. Mostly that since React came out in 2013 (ignoring Angular for a moment) it's been a one party show. All other libraries just followed queue, copied features, communications, terminology, etc.. And it shows.

But where we are heading we are already seeing splitting of opinions, so the next sets of features will see different libraries implementing differently and I don't know what will come out on top. It isn't necessarily the easiest approaches or the most technically performant. I live in this stuff between my work (core team on eBay's Marko framework) and my personal project (Solid Framework). So I genuinely think we might see an interesting change in dynamics with the releases in the coming 12 months.

It's an interesting tension because I know I can no longer identify in an unbiased way with people making the choice for themselves sometimes for the first time. I have too much specific experience understanding all the minute tradeoffs, and honestly hardened too many biases over the years. Funny enough not from choosing one solution and sticking with it but from doing different things and building strong resentment towards certain aspects.

It is often no longer about what I find fun as much as what I dislike the least. So I gravitate towards simple but powerful, which often means more work and leveraging of my knowledge but complete control in what I get and complete confidence in what I teach others. For me that's something like React. But Svelte has aspects of that as well if you understand how it works which is a bit masked behind their compiler. Whereas easy, or configurable are not characteristics I value as much personally but constantly am conscious of when designing.

[Duc Tran]

For work - Vue
For personal - React