Welcome Unimedia’s technical posts series. This time around we’ve done a comparison between Angular and React for our readers.
What is Angular?
Angular is an application design framework and development platform for creating efficient and sophisticated single-page apps.
Angular is used by biggies like Google, Upwork, Nike, Sony, General Motors, Forbes & etc.
Produt site here: https://angular.io/
What is React?
A JavaScript library for building user interfaces.
React is used by biggies like, Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, Uber, Netflix, Airbnb, Netflix & etc.
Product site here: https://es.reactjs.org/
Library
| A library is a collection of codes you will be using frequently. You may call the code directly if you need it. |
| In a nutshell, If you call it, It is a “Library”. |
Framework
| A framework defines how your application will be structured, it decides when to call code and it can include libraries, which will be used if needed |
| In a nutshell, If it calls you, It is a “Framework”. |
Core Features:
Features
| UI / DOM Manipulation |
| State Management |
| Routing |
| Form Validation & Handling |
| Http Client |
Angular
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
React
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Data Binding:
Data-binding is a technique that binds data sources from the provider and consumer together and synchronizes them.
One Way
| Any change in the component’s logic (data) gets reflected inside the UI (view). |
| Any change in the UI (view) gets reflected inside the component’s logic (model). |
Two Way
| Change in the view gets reflected in the component’s logic. |
| Change in the component’s logic gets reflected in the view. |
DOM Manipulation:
DOM stands for “ Document Object Model ”.
Incremental DOM
| Incremental DOM has one virtual DOM and it walks along the tree to find changes and then mutates the virtual DOM and then apply those changes to the actual DOM. |
| This approach doesn’t create a new virtual DOM to determine the changes. |
| It doesn’t need such a big footprint as memory is only allocated for changes. |
Virtual DOM
| Virtual DOM compares (diff) a new entire virtual DOM with the previous virtual DOM for changes then applies those changes to the actual DOM. |
| This approach creates a new virtual DOM to determine the changes. |
| It has a big memory footprint because it needs headroom for changes that “might” happen to the virtual DOM. |
Tests have shown that Incremental DOM is fast enough to work even without a virtual DOM also.
Learning Curve:
Angular
| Angular has steeper learning curve comparatively. |
| Programmers who come from traditional statically typed OOP languages like C++, C# or Java might have more fun working with Angular, because TypeScript has a similar syntax to those languages. |
React
| React is bit easier to learn comparatively. |
| Despite the fact that in React, you need to learn many third party packages to build a complex application (which you may find boring) and that the documentation is much shorter, it has great quality with tons of examples. |
Popularity:
Let us look at Angular vs React with respect to statistics on their GitHub repositories to see which amongst these 2 is popular in the market.
Github Stats.
| ️ ️ Watchers |
| ⭐ Stars |
| Forks |
| Contributors |
Angular
| 3.2k |
| 66.6k |
| 17.7k |
| 1236 |
React
| 6.7k |
| 157k |
| 31k |
| 1513 |
Trends:
Comparison of package download counts over time is given below
Source : npm trends
Respondent’s experience:
Angular
React
Conclusion:
Here at Unimedia, After creating successful MVPs for customers using both the frameworks, Our opinion is that,
React is the winner on popularity, better suited for small to medium projects, Angular is more robust and well architected framework for huge projects.
