In the spirit of the season, I thought I would offer up some positive vibes. Here are my favorite things about some popular JavaScript frameworks. No cons allowed, only pros.
Angular
- Angular was one of the first major frameworks to embrace and popularize TypeScript (since v2 in 2016!).
- The file structure is quite tidy.
- Class-based services are a nice pattern.
Vue
- Excellent performance
- The template syntax makes a lot of sense once you get used to it.
- Single-file components
- Nuxt has an excellent DX and nearly all the features you could want from a meta framework.
React
- React blazed a lot of trails for frontend development.
- JSX is probably my favorite template syntax.
- Next.js has a lot of convenient features and a healthy ecosystem.
Svelte
- Brilliant optimizations for both speed and size
- Single-file components
- Svelte stores work well for shared state.
- SvelteKit has minimal boilerplate, great DX, and it’s easily adaptable (SSG, SSR, SPA, JS-optional form actions).
Astro
- Astro is a Swiss Army knife. You can write your UI in React, Svelte, Angular, Vue, Solid, HTMX… you name it.
- Great for documentation and blogs. It’s what I use for the static site you are now visiting.
jQuery
- Maybe it’s not a “framework”, but Grandpa J. Query was toiling in the code mines when React was sipping its first soy latte.
- The almighty
$ - That
ajax()method is a workhorse.
If anyone is reading this in 2024, happy holidays, and I hope 2025 is a year that brings us more of our favorite things.