React vs jQuery

Overview

React

Stacks182.6K

Followers147.0K

Votes4.1K

GitHub Stars240.3K

Forks49.7K

jQuery

Stacks195.3K

Followers70.6K

Votes6.6K

GitHub Stars59.6K

Forks20.5K

jQuery vs React: What are the differences?

React is a JavaScript library for building user interfaces using a component-based approach. jQuery, on the other hand, is a fast and concise JavaScript library that simplifies DOM manipulation and provides cross-browser compatibility. Here are the key differences between React and jQuery:

Approach to DOM Manipulation: jQuery focuses on direct manipulation using functions and methods, while React takes a declarative approach with a virtual DOM and component-based architecture. React efficiently updates the DOM based on state changes, while jQuery provides a broader set of functions for various DOM manipulation tasks.
Component-based Development: React is a component-based library, while jQuery is not inherently component-oriented. React encourages reusable and self-contained components, facilitating the management of complex UI structures with reusability, modularity, and separation of concerns. On the other hand, jQuery focuses on providing utility functions for working with the DOM but does not enforce a specific component-based architecture.
Virtual DOM and Performance: When state changes occur in a React application, React creates a virtual representation of the updated UI in memory. It then efficiently updates only the necessary parts of the actual DOM to reflect the changes. This results in better performance compared to directly manipulating the entire DOM, as done in jQuery.
Learning Curve and Complexity: jQuery has a lower learning curve compared to React. Its API is straightforward and intuitive. jQuery's focus on direct DOM manipulation allows developers to quickly start working with HTML elements and perform common tasks. React, on the other hand, has a steeper learning curve due to its component-based architecture, JSX syntax, and the concepts of virtual DOM and state management.
Ecosystem and Community: React has a large and vibrant community, which has resulted in a rich ecosystem of libraries, tools, and community-driven resources. jQuery also has a significant community and ecosystem, but it may not be as extensive or focused on modern application development as React.

In summary, React is a component-based library that uses a virtual DOM for efficient UI updates, while jQuery focuses on direct DOM manipulation. React is well-suited for building complex and dynamic UIs, while jQuery's simplicity and utility functions make it useful for smaller projects or specific DOM manipulation needs.

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Advice on React, jQuery

Cyrus

Aug 15, 2019

Needs adviceon

Vue.js

React

I find using Vue.js to be easier (more concise / less boilerplate) and more intuitive than writing React. However, there are a lot more readily available React components that I can just plug into my projects. I'm debating whether to use Vue.js or React for an upcoming project that I'm going to use to help teach a friend how to build an interactive frontend. Which would you recommend I use?

884k views884k

Comments

Simon

Senior Fullstack Developer at QUANTUSflow Software GmbH

Apr 22, 2020

Decidedon

Vuetify

Vue.js

Nuxt.js

Our whole Vue.js frontend stack (incl. SSR) consists of the following tools:

@{Nuxt.js}|tool:7304| consisting of @{Vue CLI}|tool:9559|, @{Vue Router}|tool:6932|, @{vuex}|tool:6705|, @{Webpack}|tool:1682| and @{Sass}|tool:1171| (Bundler for @{HTML5}|tool:2538|, @{CSS 3}|tool:6727|), @{Babel}|tool:2739| (Transpiler for @{JavaScript}|tool:1209|),
Vue Styleguidist as our style guide and pool of developed @{Vue.js}|tool:3837| components
@{Vuetify}|tool:6163| as Material Component Framework (for fast app development)
@{TypeScript}|tool:1612| as programming language
@{Apollo}|tool:5508| / @{GraphQL}|tool:3820| (incl. @{GraphiQL}|tool:7879|) for data access layer (https://apollo.vuejs.org/)
@{ESLint}|tool:3337|, @{TSLint}|tool:5561| and @{Prettier}|tool:7035| for coding style and code analyzes
@{Jest}|tool:830| as testing framework
@{Google Fonts}|tool:2652| and @{Font Awesome}|tool:3244| for typography and icon toolkit
@{NativeScript-Vue}|tool:9623| for mobile development

The main reason we have chosen Vue.js over React and AngularJS is related to the following artifacts:

Empowered HTML. Vue.js has many similar approaches with Angular. This helps to optimize HTML blocks handling with the use of different components.
Detailed documentation. Vue.js has very good documentation which can fasten learning curve for developers.
Adaptability. It provides a rapid switching period from other frameworks. It has similarities with Angular and React in terms of design and architecture.
Awesome integration. Vue.js can be used for both building single-page applications and more difficult web interfaces of apps. Smaller interactive parts can be easily integrated into the existing infrastructure with no negative effect on the entire system.
Large scaling. Vue.js can help to develop pretty large reusable templates.
Tiny size. Vue.js weights around 20KB keeping its speed and flexibility. It allows reaching much better performance in comparison to other frameworks.

5.13M views5.13M

Comments

Cyrus

Aug 15, 2019

Needs advice

Simple datepickers are cumbersome. For such a simple data input, I feel like it takes far too much effort. Ideally, the native input[type="date"] would just work like it does on FF and Chrome, but Safari and Edge don't handle it properly. So I'm left either having a diverging experience based on the browser or I need to choose a library to implement a datepicker since users aren't good at inputing formatted strings.

For React alone there are tons of examples to use https://reactjsexample.com/tag/date/. And then of course there's the bootstrap datepicker (https://bootstrap-datepicker.readthedocs.io/en/latest/), jQueryUI calendar picker, https://github.com/flatpickr/flatpickr, and many more.

How do you recommend going about handling date and time inputs? And then there's always moment.js, but I've observed some users getting stuck when presented with a blank text field. I'm curious to hear what's worked well for people...

401k views401k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

React	jQuery
Lots of people use React as the V in MVC. Since React makes no assumptions about the rest of your technology stack, it's easy to try it out on a small feature in an existing project.	jQuery is a cross-platform JavaScript library designed to simplify the client-side scripting of HTML.
Declarative; Component-based; Learn once, write anywhere	-
Statistics
GitHub Stars 240.3K	GitHub Stars 59.6K
GitHub Forks 49.7K	GitHub Forks 20.5K
Stacks 182.6K	Stacks 195.3K
Followers 147.0K	Followers 70.6K
Votes 4.1K	Votes 6.6K
Pros & Cons
Pros 837 Components 674 Virtual dom 579 Performance 509 Simplicity 442 Composable Cons 41 Requires discipline to keep architecture organized 30 No predefined way to structure your app 29 Need to be familiar with lots of third party packages 13 JSX 10 Not enterprise friendly	Pros 1263 Cross-browser 957 Dom manipulation 809 Power 660 Open source 610 Plugins Cons 6 Large size 5 Encourages DOM as primary data source 5 Sometimes inconsistent API 2 Live events is overly complex feature

What are some alternatives to React, jQuery?

AngularJS

AngularJS lets you write client-side web applications as if you had a smarter browser. It lets you use good old HTML (or HAML, Jade and friends!) as your template language and lets you extend HTML’s syntax to express your application’s components clearly and succinctly. It automatically synchronizes data from your UI (view) with your JavaScript objects (model) through 2-way data binding.

Vue.js

It is a library for building interactive web interfaces. It provides data-reactive components with a simple and flexible API.

jQuery UI

Whether you're building highly interactive web applications or you just need to add a date picker to a form control, jQuery UI is the perfect choice.

Svelte

If you've ever built a JavaScript application, the chances are you've encountered – or at least heard of – frameworks like React, Angular, Vue and Ractive. Like Svelte, these tools all share a goal of making it easy to build slick interactive user interfaces. Rather than interpreting your application code at run time, your app is converted into ideal JavaScript at build time. That means you don't pay the performance cost of the framework's abstractions, or incur a penalty when your app first loads.

Flux

Flux is the application architecture that Facebook uses for building client-side web applications. It complements React's composable view components by utilizing a unidirectional data flow. It's more of a pattern rather than a formal framework, and you can start using Flux immediately without a lot of new code.

Famo.us

Famo.us is a free and open source JavaScript platform for building mobile apps and desktop experiences. What makes Famo.us unique is its JavaScript rendering engine and 3D physics engine that gives developers the power and tools to build native quality apps and animations using pure JavaScript.

Riot

Riot brings custom tags to all browsers. Think React + Polymer but with enjoyable syntax and a small learning curve.

Marko

Marko is a really fast and lightweight HTML-based templating engine that compiles templates to readable Node.js-compatible JavaScript modules, and it works on the server and in the browser. It supports streaming, async rendering and custom tags.

Kendo UI

Fast, light, complete: 70+ jQuery-based UI widgets in one powerful toolset. AngularJS integration, Bootstrap support, mobile controls, offline data solution.

Preact

Preact is an attempt to recreate the core value proposition of React (or similar libraries like Mithril) using as little code as possible, with first-class support for ES2015. Currently the library is around 3kb (minified & gzipped).