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Zoe Yahmi Darlington
Zoe Yahmi Darlington

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React JS vs Angular, What’s The Difference?

In the world of front-end web development, React JS and Angular are two of the most popular frameworks. Both offer powerful tools for building modern, dynamic web applications, but they differ significantly in their approaches, philosophies, and capabilities.

In this article, I will discuss the differences between these technologies and their use cases.
React, developed by Facebook in 2013, is primarily a JavaScript library focused on building user interfaces. It is centered around components, which are reusable pieces of UI. One of React’s core features is the virtual DOM, which allows for efficient updates and rendering by diffing changes and updating only the necessary parts of the DOM. This results in fast rendering and efficient updates, making React suitable for high-performance applications.

While, Angular, developed by Google and initially released in 2010 (AngularJS) and later in 2016 (Angular), is a comprehensive front-end framework designed for building complex, scalable web applications. It follows an MVC (Model-View-Controller) architecture and uses two-way data binding to synchronize the model and view automatically. Angular provides a wide range of built-in features, including dependency injection, routing, and form validation, making it a full-fledged framework for front-end development.

Core Differences between the technologies

  • React JS is a JavaScript library focused on building user interfaces, while Angular is a comprehensive front-end framework for building complex web applications.

  • React JS is centered around a component-based architecture, while Angular uses an MVC (Model-View-Controller) and component-based architecture.

  • React JS has a more gentle curve as it based on Javascript and ES6 while Angular has a steeper learning curve due to its comprehensive nature and use of typescript.

  • React JS is highly flexible and unopinionated, giving developers freedom to choose their tools and libraries, while Angular is more opinionated, providing a complete set of tools and best practices out of the box.

  • React JS is generally faster due to its virtual DOM, while Angular’s performance has improved with Ivy, its new rendering engine, but can be slower in very large applications compared to React.

  • React JS requires external libraries like React Router for routing, while Angular includes a built-in routing module.

However, both React JS and Angular are powerful tools for front-end development, each with its own strengths and use cases. React’s flexibility, component-based architecture, and efficient virtual DOM make it an excellent choice for building dynamic user interfaces. Angular’s comprehensive framework, built-in features, and structured approach make it ideal for developing complex, scalable web applications. The choice between React and Angular ultimately depends on your project requirements, team expertise, and development preferences. Understanding their differences will help you choose the best tool for your next project.

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