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React vs Vue.js vs jQuery: What are the differences?

Introduction

In this article, we will discuss the key differences between React, Vue.js, and jQuery. React, Vue.js, and jQuery are all popular JavaScript libraries/frameworks used for building web applications. While they all serve the purpose of enhancing the user interface and interactivity of a website, they have some fundamental differences in terms of their approach, architecture, and features.

  1. Declarative vs Imperative: One of the key differences between React and Vue.js with jQuery is their programming paradigm. React and Vue.js are both declarative, which means they focus on describing what the UI should look like and handle the underlying updates automatically. On the other hand, jQuery follows an imperative approach, where developers have to manually manipulate the DOM and trigger events to achieve desired UI changes.

  2. Virtual DOM vs Manipulating the DOM: React and Vue.js use a virtual DOM (Document Object Model) to efficiently update only the necessary parts of the UI. They compare the virtual DOM with the real DOM and make optimized updates, resulting in better performance. jQuery, on the other hand, directly manipulates the real DOM, which can be less efficient for large-scale applications and frequent UI updates.

  3. Component-Based vs Non-component-Based: React and Vue.js both follow a component-based architecture, where the UI is divided into reusable components. This promotes reusability, maintainability, and modularity in the codebase. jQuery, however, does not have a built-in component-based approach and relies on manipulating individual elements directly.

  4. Learning Curve: React and Vue.js have a steeper learning curve compared to jQuery. Both React and Vue.js introduce additional concepts and syntax, such as JSX (React) and Vue components, which may require some time for developers to grasp. On the other hand, jQuery has a simpler and more straightforward syntax, making it easier for beginners to understand and start using.

  5. Size and Performance: React and Vue.js have a larger footprint in terms of file size compared to jQuery. This is mainly due to the additional functionalities, virtual DOM, and component-based architecture they offer. jQuery, being a smaller library, can be more suitable for smaller projects or situations where performance is a critical factor.

  6. Community and Ecosystem: React and Vue.js have vibrant and active communities, with a vast ecosystem of open-source libraries, tools, and resources available. They are backed by large companies (React by Facebook, Vue.js by the Vue.js core team) and have extensive documentation and community support. jQuery, although still widely used, has a relatively smaller community and ecosystem compared to React and Vue.js.

In summary, React and Vue.js are both modern JavaScript frameworks that follow declarative and component-based approaches, while jQuery is a popular library that follows an imperative and non-component-based approach. React and Vue.js offer better performance, scalability, and modularity but come with a steeper learning curve. jQuery, on the other hand, is simpler to learn and has a smaller file size, making it suitable for smaller projects or situations where performance is critical and advanced functionality is not required.

Advice on jQuery, React, and Vue.js
Needs advice
on
AngularJSAngularJSReactReact
and
Vue.jsVue.js

What is the best MVC stack to build mobile-friendly, light-weight, and fast single-page application with Spring Boot as back-end (Java)? Is Bootstrap still required to front-end layer these days?

The idea is to host on-premise initially with the potential to move to the cloud. Which combo would have minimal developer ramp-up time and low long-term maintenance costs (BAU support)?

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Replies (3)
Carolyne Stopa
Full Stack Developer at Contabilizei · | 10 upvotes · 594.5K views
Recommends
on
Vue.jsVue.js

React might be a good option if you're considering a mobile app for the future, because of react native. Although, Vue.js has the easiest learning curve and offers a better developer ramp-up time. Vue.js is great to build SPAs, very clean and organized and you won't have a lot of long-term maintenance problems (like AngularJS, for example). Bootstrap can still be used, but with flexbox there's no need anymore.

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Chaitanya Chunduri
Recommends
on
ReactReact

I recommend React because of less memory occupant compare to Angular, but this will depend on your organisation flexibility. When you use React you need to import different libraries as per your need. On the other side angular is a complete framework.

Performance-wise I vote for react js as it loads up quickly and lighter on the mobile. You can make good PWA with SSR as well.

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Recommends
on
ReactReact

If you are new to all three react will be a good choice considering, react-native will be useful if you want to build cross platform mobile application today or tomorrow. If you are talking about bootstrap styling framework than it's a choice you can style ur components by ur self or use bootstrap 4.0 framework. The complete stack mentioned above is platform agnostic u can run it anywhere you want be it cloud or on-premise.

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Needs advice
on
Vue.jsVue.jsMoment.jsMoment.js
and
ReactReact

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...

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Replies (1)
Recommends
on
ReactReact

In my view, the upside of React is you're likely to find more existing, robust design systems (e.g. sets of components containing anything from buttons to datepickers) in the React ecosystem than Vue. UI frameworks aside, momentjs comes in when you want operate on the date(times) you get back from whatever datepicker you choose (e.g. date formatting, date match).

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Needs advice
on
ReactReact
and
Vue.jsVue.js

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?

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Replies (16)
Johnny Bell
Recommends
on
ReactReact

I've used both Vue.js and React and I would stick with React. I know that Vue.js seems easier to write and its much faster to pick up however as you mentioned above React has way more ready made components you can just plugin, and the community for React is very big.

It might be a bit more of a steep learning curve for your friend to learn React over Vue.js but I think in the long run its the better option.

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Thomas LEVEIL
Recommends
on
Vue.jsVue.js

I chose to use Vue.js a few years ago mainly for the easy learning curve. I have no experience with React, so I won't make any comparison here. Regarding available components, I never felt locked in because of Vue when looking for components. It happens that a component I wish to use is not available as a Vue component (and nobody published any Vue wrapper for it), but in such cases I was able to quickly hack a Vue wrapper component. In the end I don't think a decision to choose one framework over another should be made solely because of the number of components available. (And not all components in either framework is maintained, bug free, documented or easy to use)

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Recommends
on
ReactReact

I would also go with React. The learning curve can be a little more difficult but as soon as you got the concepts it's really easy to create things. As everybody has mentioned the React community is huge and it keeps growing, anything you may need for your project there are super high probabilities that you will find it.

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Oguzhan Cetin
Senior Developer at Melantis · | 5 upvotes · 365.7K views
Recommends
on
ReactReact

React is great, Vue.js is also great. But I'm personally using React, because React is changing the way I look at how JavaScript should be. This is a really big plus for me. Vue is good, but it's just another alternative. Also, too many big companies are using React, that means you can trust it for big projects.

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Ben Shichman
Recommends
on
ReactReact

I'd have to concur that I'd advise React. In addition to the reasons mentioned, the developer pool is significantly larger (and also slightly more expensive) for React. In time, engineering costs will even out as more and more teams adopt it. The community support is fantastic, and the available components significant.

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Recommends
on
Vue.jsVue.js

Would start with Vue especially if you want to progress more quickly and don't want/need to spend time learning React just for the sake of it. You can always pick up React later if necessary. I would caution about using "more readily available React components" just because they exist.

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Recommends
on
Vue.jsVue.js
at

Both have their pro's and con's; however to agree what has been mentioned here before; Using Vue.js will be easier as it's learning curve isn't steep; plus learning Vue.js will teach you fundamentals which (in a sense) can be applied to React as well. Community support for React is indeed very big, but Vue.js is also still growing. Component wise, I wouldn't worry to much about that, writing your own components is also a good tool for learning a language.

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Mark Scott
Personal Development at Mark Scott · | 3 upvotes · 366.1K views
Recommends
on
Vue.jsVue.js

Having developed in both Vue.js and React, I agree with your assessment of Vue. It does feel light and easier to understand and therefore learn. Seeing that Vue has some genetic roots with React, I would say start your friend out on Vue. If they need to learn React later, that should give them a good foundation. If you have a Pluralsight subscription, look for my course on Vue.js and feel free to use the demo project as a starting point.

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Michael R.
Full-Stack Web Developer at STHCoders · | 3 upvotes · 364.7K views
Recommends
on
ReactReact

Anything that interacts with the Internet, websites, applications, etc., while it may be more complex to build, will be easier to maintain in the long run. React offers more flexibility, a much larger support base for knowledge and opinion, and is just as stable asVue.

To make the best comparison in my opinion, think of React as the Android OS and Vue more like iOS. While Vue may be advantageous in some cases, it is limited by constricting parameters. On the other hand, while React may be more complex and incorporate more open-source/third-party constructs, it is supported by over 50,000 npm packages and allows for the use of JSX. Which I might add, once learned, becomes second nature to employ and offers more flexibility.

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Recommends
on
ReactReact

Virtual dom and JSX. Vue is just a baby to the race. React has it's mobile platform version as react native . so it would be easy for you and you wont reinvent the wheel again for mobile apps.

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Recommends
on
ReactReactVue.jsVue.js

I would recommend both of them since Vue is a UI library and helps you to design beautiful website while react allows you to handle backend problems like comment management and onspot reloading more efficiently also react includes useState and react is a framework while vue is a library

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S Milliken
Recommends
on
Vue.jsVue.js

As others have stated there are more canned components available for React, but your observation about it's complexity is an important one. There are architectural aspects of Vue.js that lead to cleaner more concise solutions. As React apps get bigger they become a little unwieldy. Depending on your requirements you need to weigh those competing concerns. Our team is using React, but I am beginning to question that choice as time goes on. Another consideration is that Vue.js is becoming more mature as we speak. Also as others join the project, react developers should be productive in Vue.js within days. Just my 2 cents...

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Recommends
on
ReactReact

It all depends. Vue.js is smaller, and from what I saw (benchmarks) faster. It's also slightly more intuitive and easier to grasp. React is more popular, and the adoption rate is much higher.

Again, it all depends.

If I may, my personal choice would perhaps be either React or Svelte.

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Rajeev Borborah
Vice President Technology at WebMD · | 1 upvotes · 364.5K views
Recommends
on
Vue.jsVue.js

We did a comparison between React, Vue and Angular and while found each capable of supporting our needs, we ended up using VueJS because of its ease of use, the ability to use templates, large and growing community and good documentation. After developing on it for a around 4 months we re-evaluated and agreed that we had made the right choice and continue to migrate our products/platform to it.

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Recommends
on
Vue.jsVue.js

VueJS hands down. Which components do you need? Have a look at Vuetify, mature project, plenty of components ready to plug and play. If on the other side you need more customization, have a look at tailwindcss. VueJS is much cleaner and IMO will overtake React soon. It's simply a better React.

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Recommends
on
ReactReact

It is hard to say which is good. I've used both. Vue is easier. But I feel more comfortable with React. That is why I chose React.

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Decisions about jQuery, React, and Vue.js

We choose React for our client-side implementation because of React's virtual DOM implementation and component rendering optimization. It can help our app to be more stable and easier to debug. Also, react has strong support from the dev community. There is an enormous amount of reacting libraries we could use, which will speed up our development process.

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Kirill Mikhailov

As a backend dev, it was quite easy to go with vue over react. Important note that Im now talking about Vue2 maybe the are crucial changes in third version, but the second one is super easy to get into without spending too much time learning concepts. And vue-cli is just a breeze to start a project with.

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Michael Roberts

What a debate to wade into - React vs. Vue.js. Prototyping of applications is much, much faster in Vue.js. React, I believe, has a much heavier developer learning experience - so hiring pure Javascript developers allows us to work in a much more framework agnostic way. However, React still has a place within our application stack - it's much more performant out of the box.

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Hampton Catlin
VP of Engineering at Rent The Runway · | 7 upvotes · 444.8K views

Starting a new company in 2020, with a whole new stack, is a really interesting opportunity for me to look back over the last 20 years of my career with web software and make the right decision for my company.

And, I went with the most radical decision– which is to ignore "sexy" / "hype" technologies almost entirely, and go back to a stack that I first used over 15 years ago.

For my purposes, we are building a video streaming platform, where I wanted rapid customer-facing feature development, high testability, simple scaling, and ease of hiring great, experienced talent. To be clear, our web platform is NOT responsible for handling the actual bits and bytes of the video itself, that's an entirely different stack. It simply needs to manage the business rules and the customers experience of the video content.

I reviewed a lot of different technologies, but none of them seemed to fit the bill as well as Rails did! The hype train had long left the station with Rails, and the community is a little more sparse than it was previously. And, to be honest, Ruby was the language that was easiest for developers, but I find that most languages out there have adopted many of it's innovations for ease of use – or at least corrected their own.

Even with all of that, Rails still seems like the best framework for developing web applications that are no more complex than they need to be. And that's key to me, because it's very easy to go use React and Redux and GraphQL and a whole host of AWS Lamba's to power my blog... but you simply don't actually NEED that.

There are two choices I made in our stack that were new for me personally, and very different than what I would have chosen even 5 years ago.

1) Postgres - I decided to switch from MySql to Postgres for this project. I wanted to use UUID's instead of numeric primary keys, and knew I'd have a couple places where better JSON/object support would be key. Mysql remains far more popular, but almost every developer I respect has switched and preferred Postgres with a strong passion. It's not "sexy" but it's considered "better".

2) Stimulus.js - This was definitely the biggest and wildest choice to make. Stimulus is a Javascript framework by my old friend Sam Stephenson (Prototype.js, rbenv, turbolinks) and DHH, and it is a sort of radical declaration that your Javascript in the browser can be both powerful and modern AND simple. It leans heavily on the belief that HTML-is-good and that data-* attributes are good. It focuses on the actions and interactions and not on the rendering aspects. It took me a while to wrap my head around, and I still have to remind myself, that server-side-HTML is how you solve many problems with this stack, and avoid trying to re-render things just in the browser. So far, I'm happy with this choice, but it is definitely a radical departure from the current trends.

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neha menahil

Have you ever stuck with the question that which one is the best front-end framework for you?

With continuous web development progress, the trends of the latest front-end technologies are also continuously changing with more and more sophisticated web features. These top front-end frameworks and libraries have made your complex web tasks more flexible and efficient.

Check out top front end frameworks and their features at https://www.nmtechedge.com/2020/09/24/top-4-trending-front-end-frameworks-2020/

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Peter Schmalfeldt
Senior Software Engineer · | 5 upvotes · 163.1K views

I honestly think the best choice for which framework you use should come down to your team's skills. If you have one Senior Dev that is great at React, but like 3-4 mid-level devs, and a handful of junior devs that know Vue.js ... maybe look at using Vue.js a little more seriously.

Yes, there are pros and cons to framework decisions, but I honestly see a LOT of teams not even consider whether a specific framework is a good fit.

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Peter Schmalfeldt
Senior Software Engineer · | 4 upvotes · 154.6K views

I honestly think the best choice for which framework you use should come down to your team's skills. If you have one Senior Dev that is great at React, but like 3-4 mid-level devs, and a handful of junior devs that know Angular ... maybe look at using Angular a little more seriously.

Yes, there are pros and cons to framework decisions, but I honestly see a LOT of teams not even consider whether a specific framework is a good fit.

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Peter Schmalfeldt
Senior Software Engineer · | 9 upvotes · 66.1K views

I have made an extended effort to drop frameworks completely if they are not actually needed. While I still use JS Frameworks like Vue, Angular and React ( if I have too ), I see far too often devs / teams deciding to build a single page site entirely in a framework, rather than just using HTML, CSS and a little JS.

I personally feel it's important to know when a framework is a good solution, and maybe when it's overkill.

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Kamaleshwar BN
Senior Software Engineer at Pulley · | 10 upvotes · 647.8K views

It was easier to find people who've worked on React than Vue. Angular did not have this problem, but seemed way too bloated compared to React. Angular also brings in restrictions working within their MVC framework. React on the other hand only handles the view/rendering part and rest of the control is left to the developers. React has a very active community, support and has lots of ready-to-use plugins/libraries available.

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José Oberto
Head of Engineering & Development at Chiper · | 14 upvotes · 562.8K views

It is a very versatile library that provides great development speed. Although, with a bad organization, maintaining projects can be a disaster. With a good architecture, this does not happen.

Angular is obviously powerful and robust. I do not rule it out for any future application, in fact with the arrival of micro frontends and cross-functional teams I think it could be useful. However, if I have to build a stack from scratch again, I'm left with react.

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Pros of jQuery
Pros of React
Pros of Vue.js
  • 1.3K
    Cross-browser
  • 957
    Dom manipulation
  • 809
    Power
  • 660
    Open source
  • 610
    Plugins
  • 459
    Easy
  • 395
    Popular
  • 350
    Feature-rich
  • 281
    Html5
  • 227
    Light weight
  • 93
    Simple
  • 84
    Great community
  • 79
    CSS3 Compliant
  • 69
    Mobile friendly
  • 67
    Fast
  • 43
    Intuitive
  • 42
    Swiss Army knife for webdev
  • 35
    Huge Community
  • 11
    Easy to learn
  • 4
    Clean code
  • 3
    Because of Ajax request :)
  • 2
    Powerful
  • 2
    Nice
  • 2
    Just awesome
  • 2
    Used everywhere
  • 1
    Improves productivity
  • 1
    Javascript
  • 1
    Easy Setup
  • 1
    Open Source, Simple, Easy Setup
  • 1
    It Just Works
  • 1
    Industry acceptance
  • 1
    Allows great manipulation of HTML and CSS
  • 1
    Widely Used
  • 1
    I love jQuery
  • 831
    Components
  • 672
    Virtual dom
  • 578
    Performance
  • 508
    Simplicity
  • 442
    Composable
  • 186
    Data flow
  • 166
    Declarative
  • 128
    Isn't an mvc framework
  • 120
    Reactive updates
  • 115
    Explicit app state
  • 50
    JSX
  • 29
    Learn once, write everywhere
  • 22
    Easy to Use
  • 21
    Uni-directional data flow
  • 17
    Works great with Flux Architecture
  • 11
    Great perfomance
  • 10
    Javascript
  • 9
    Built by Facebook
  • 8
    TypeScript support
  • 6
    Server Side Rendering
  • 6
    Speed
  • 5
    Feels like the 90s
  • 5
    Excellent Documentation
  • 5
    Props
  • 5
    Functional
  • 5
    Easy as Lego
  • 5
    Closer to standard JavaScript and HTML than others
  • 5
    Cross-platform
  • 5
    Easy to start
  • 5
    Hooks
  • 5
    Awesome
  • 5
    Scalable
  • 4
    Super easy
  • 4
    Allows creating single page applications
  • 4
    Server side views
  • 4
    Sdfsdfsdf
  • 4
    Start simple
  • 4
    Strong Community
  • 4
    Fancy third party tools
  • 4
    Scales super well
  • 3
    Has arrow functions
  • 3
    Beautiful and Neat Component Management
  • 3
    Just the View of MVC
  • 3
    Simple, easy to reason about and makes you productive
  • 3
    Fast evolving
  • 3
    SSR
  • 3
    Great migration pathway for older systems
  • 3
    Rich ecosystem
  • 3
    Simple
  • 3
    Has functional components
  • 3
    Every decision architecture wise makes sense
  • 3
    Very gentle learning curve
  • 2
    Split your UI into components with one true state
  • 2
    Image upload
  • 2
    Permissively-licensed
  • 2
    Fragments
  • 2
    Sharable
  • 2
    Recharts
  • 2
    HTML-like
  • 1
    React hooks
  • 1
    Datatables
  • 294
    Simple and easy to start with
  • 230
    Good documentation
  • 196
    Components
  • 131
    Simple the best
  • 100
    Simplified AngularJS
  • 95
    Reactive
  • 78
    Intuitive APIs
  • 56
    Javascript
  • 52
    Changed my front end coding life
  • 48
    Configuration is smooth
  • 38
    Easy to learn
  • 36
    So much fun to use
  • 26
    Progressive
  • 22
    Virtual dom
  • 16
    Faster than bulldogs on hot tarmac
  • 12
    It's magic
  • 12
    Component is template, javascript and style in one
  • 10
    Light Weight
  • 10
    Perfomance
  • 9
    Best of Both Worlds
  • 8
    Application structure
  • 8
    Elegant design
  • 8
    Intuitive and easy to use
  • 8
    Without misleading licenses
  • 6
    Small learning curve
  • 6
    Good command line interface
  • 5
    Logicless templates
  • 5
    Single file components
  • 5
    Easy to integrate to HTML by inline-templates
  • 5
    Like Angular only quicker to get started with
  • 4
    High performance
  • 3
    Component based
  • 3
    Vuex
  • 3
    Bridge from Web Development to JS Development
  • 3
    Customer Render ending eg to HTML
  • 2
    Lots of documentation
  • 2
    Concise error messages
  • 2
    Supports several template languages
  • 2
    One-way data flow
  • 2
    Intuitive
  • 1
    GUI

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Cons of jQuery
Cons of React
Cons of Vue.js
  • 6
    Large size
  • 5
    Sometimes inconsistent API
  • 5
    Encourages DOM as primary data source
  • 2
    Live events is overly complex feature
  • 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
  • 6
    One-way binding only
  • 3
    State consistency with backend neglected
  • 3
    Bad Documentation
  • 2
    Error boundary is needed
  • 2
    Paradigms change too fast
  • 9
    Less Common Place
  • 5
    YXMLvsHTML Markup
  • 3
    Don't support fragments
  • 3
    Only support programatically multiple root nodes

Sign up to add or upvote consMake informed product decisions

What is jQuery?

jQuery is a cross-platform JavaScript library designed to simplify the client-side scripting of HTML.

What is React?

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.

What is Vue.js?

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

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What are some alternatives to jQuery, React, and Vue.js?
Bootstrap
Bootstrap is the most popular HTML, CSS, and JS framework for developing responsive, mobile first projects on the web.
JavaScript
JavaScript is most known as the scripting language for Web pages, but used in many non-browser environments as well such as node.js or Apache CouchDB. It is a prototype-based, multi-paradigm scripting language that is dynamic,and supports object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles.
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.
jQuery Mobile
jQuery Mobile is a HTML5-based user interface system designed to make responsive web sites and apps that are accessible on all smartphone, tablet and desktop devices.
D3.js
It is a JavaScript library for manipulating documents based on data. Emphasises on web standards gives you the full capabilities of modern browsers without tying yourself to a proprietary framework.
See all alternatives