Selecting the Best Javascript Web Framework

HELLO! I am Rajitha Pathiraja I’m a Certiﬁed Cloud Developer with 3 Years of enterprise development experience. Mostly with Javascript Frameworks You can ﬁnd me at rajithapathiraja.xyz 1

Developers often use the terms “library” and “framework” interchangeably. But there is a difference.

Difference Between a Framework and a Library › Framework › A framework inverts the control of the program. It tells the developer what they need › The Technical Difference › The technical difference between a framework and library lies in a term called inversion of control. › Library › The programmer calls the library where and when they need it.

Aspects to Consideration When Selecting a Framework Factors that can help you make an intelligent choice › Available for Learning Resources › Popularity › Core Features › Usability › Ease of Integration › Speed › Productivity and Performance › Development Cost › Track Records

Available for Learning Resources Creating an awesome framework is one thing and communicating the core ideas behind it is different Even if you read a great book or course, there is a chance you’ll learn something new by exposing yourself to different resources this strategy won’t work if you are limited with your options Aspects to Consideration When Selecting a Framework

Popularity If a framework is not so popular, it means there are a few developers who specialize in it. What happens if you ﬁnd yourself stuck with some problem and there are isn’t really a community that you can ask for help? You can determine the popularity of a framework by quickly looking at how well the project is doing on GitHub and other places Aspects to Consideration When Selecting a Framework

Core Features Scan through the documentation. You need to get a sense of what this framework is about in general. Is it a view layer only, fully ﬂedged, or something in between Here is a summary of the core features of the four frameworks Aspects to Consideration When Selecting a Framework

Usability The best way to get a feel for a framework is to use it in some mini project. This gives you an opportunity to solve everyday problems mentioned above with a given framework. Aspects to Consideration When Selecting a Framework

Ease of Integration If you try to integrate libraries and spend hours on it every time, maybe that’s not the optimal choice. Aspects to Consideration When Selecting a Framework

Speed It’s important to plan ahead on timing, and when it comes to planning, do check the ‘quantity of code’ that the particular framework will make you write. Apart from quantity, also check the ‘complexity of the code’ that the team of developers will have to write as complexity is also directly proportional to the time to market. Aspects to Consideration When Selecting a Framework There are many frameworks that will work perfectly well when it comes to “quick time to market”, but always answer the question: will it satisfy the most important user criterion—performance?

Productivity and Performance Most of the top JavaScript frameworks perform reasonably well and if you glance over a few statistics from case studies, you will ﬁnd that even above average performance gains can result in a big boost to vital business metrics—time on site, conversion rate, etc. Aspects to Consideration When Selecting a Framework Development Cost The team of developers and their cost The maintenance cost of the web app More case studies on Productivity and Performance in Web Frameworks - https://wpostats.com/

Track Records A new framework always takes birth to solve an existing problem in the web app development world This new JS framework turns out to be a magic wand for you, helping you solve your problem in a couple of days, which earlier took months to crack. However, within a few months of the release of this new framework, you ﬁnd yourself shackled into other problems Aspects to Consideration When Selecting a Framework

16 JavaScript Frameworks for Front-End Development

React › JSX › JSX (JavaScript XML) is a React extension that makes it easy for web developers to modify their DOM by using simple, HTML-style code › Virtual DOM › The Virtual DOM is a copy of the website’s DOM, and ReactJS uses this copy to see what parts of the actual DOM need to change when an event happens (like a user clicking a button). › This kind of selective updating takes less computing power and less loading time

Angular › Some of the core features of AngularJS are as follows › Data-binding − You don’t need to write special code to bind data to the HTML controls. This can be done by Angular by just adding a few snippets of code. › MVC — The framework is built on the famous concept of MVC (Model-View-Controller). This is a design pattern used in most of the modern-day web applications. This pattern is based on splitting the business logic layer, the data layer, and presentation layer into separate sections. › Writing less code — When carrying out DOM manipulation a lot of JavaScript was required to be written to design any application. But with Angular, you will be amazed by the lesser amount of code you need to write for DOM manipulation. › Unit Testing ready — The designers at Google not only developed Angular but also developed a testing framework called “Karma” which helps in designing unit tests for AngularJS applications.

Vue JS › The concept of VueJS has been taken from Angular and React, but VueJS is better in many ways. It’s a lightweight framework with features such as two way data binding and virtual DOM › VueJS has rapidly gained popularity in the programming community due to some key features. › Clear separation of templates, › CSS code and JavaScript code has offered a great convenience for the developers › VueJS is said to have one of the simplest and detailed documentation when compared to other JavaScript frameworks › The main disadvantage of using VueJS is that it has no reputed company backing it up and hence, it’s not popular as ReactJS and Angular which are backed up two giants.

Preact › These are some of the goals Preact plans on delivering › Performance: Render quickly & efficiently. › Size: Small size, lightweight (approximately 3.5kb). › Efficiency: Effective memory usage (avoiding GC thrash). › Understandability: Understanding the codebase should take no more than a few hours. › Compatibility: Preact aims to be largely compatible with the React API. › Preact is a comparatively new JavaScript framework which describes itself as a “Fast 3kB alternative to React with the same modern API”

A look at JavaScript Frameworks Comparison

22 JavaScript Frameworks for Backend-End Development

Express JS › Pros of using Express.js › Express is one of the oldest frameworks and hence it has a massive community backing up. Express is said to have more than 1.5k contributors on Github › Express has well-written documentation with plenty of tutorials and resources › Express provides fast-paced development using Node.js › Express offers seamless connectivity with all major popular databases like MongoDB, MySQL, and Redis › All popular template engines like Pug, HAML, EJS, are compatible with Express › Express is undoubtedly one of the easiest backend frameworks for newbie developers to learn thanks to simple syntax and structure › Cons of using Express.js › Express doesn’t offer any security solutions and therefore ensuring the security of the program is entirely up to the developer himself › The structure of Express has somewhat rigid. There isn’t a deﬁned structured way of doing things to guide beginners. This is a disadvantage for beginners, but a fortune for experienced developers

Next JS › Pros of using Next › Popular tools such as React, Material-UI, Builder, Sanity, and DatoCMS are compatible to be integrated with Next.js › Automatic server-side rendering and code splitting › Next.js allows us to create dynamic meta tags in the head section to optimise SEO and hence delivers an excellent SEO performance › Hot-reloading is available with Next.js — automatically reloads the page when a change is detected › Cons of using Next › Performance benchmarks of Next.js are in most cases inferior to its competitors › Next.js is built speciﬁcally to work with React only

Nuxt JS › Pros of using Nuxt › Setting up a new project in Nuxt is pretty fast and convenient thanks to the starter template and command line › One of the biggest advantages that Nuxt.js offers is the ability to create Universal Apps — JavaScript code that runs on both client and server-side › Nuxt automatically organizes your code in a logical manner. The main directories set up by default are — assets, components, layouts, pages, plugins and store › “Nuxt community” is a GitHub collection of several APIs, libraries, starter kits and modules that can be very beneﬁcial for developers › Cons of using Nuxt › Integrating custom libraries with Nuxt is complicated › Documentation and resources are kind of scarce when compared to other frameworks › Debugging can be quite frustrating when using Nuxt

Gatsby JS › Pros of using Gatsby › Websites built with Gatsby.js are usually faster than normal websites built with other frameworks › Static content generated by Gatsby.js is easily readable by Search engine crawlers and offers no hindrance like other JavaScript frameworks › Gatsby offers implicit security as it does not require any server, database or dependencies › Gatsby’s rich and extensive plugin architecture will offer you a plugin for every task that you can hope to accomplish › Cons of using Gatsby › Gatsby.js is not an ideal solution for content-heavy enterprise-scale websites like e-commerce stores or media extensive websites. Build time will drastically increase as the size of content grows › Although learning how to use Gatsby is fairly easy, a prerequisite knowledge of React and a little GraphQl is necessary

As history has shown, Javascript will continue to remain dominant in the programming community. Because of this, new JS frameworks are constantly introduced into the community with the effect of making it challenging for developers to choose the best JavaScript framework for your requirement out of dozens of options available. Every framework is unique and has its own strengths and weaknesses. Therefore as a developer, you should carefully analyze and understand the project requirements so that you can cross off the majority of your available choices

Bonus - Micro Frontends 28 The term Micro Frontends extends the concepts of microservices to the frontend world. With Micro Frontends we can think about a website or web app as a composition of features which are owned and developed by independent teams. Each team develop its features independently. Thats means also using different technology stacks if the teams prefer. Team A - works on featured movies (Using Angular) Team B - works on the movies list (using React) Team C - works on the proﬁle page (using Vue.js) Team D - works on the movies search feature (using Javascript/jQuery)

THANKS! Any questions? You can ﬁnd me at: rajithayasasroid@gmail.com 29

Selecting the Best Javascript Web Framework

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