Angular.JS vs. React.JS – Australian Employers Weigh In

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A common dilemma among programmers is whether they should use Angular.JS or React.JS technologies for front end development. In this recent test project survey of 957 stakeholders, 80% of front-end web development was found to be dominated by these two technologies. Clearly, it’s important to choose the right one!

So what’s the difference between the two and which one should you use? Let’s take a closer look and consider some insights from experienced technology executives.

What is the Primary Difference Between Angular.JS and React.JS?

Let’s start with Angular.JS as it was the first on the scene. Angular.JS launched in 2009 and is a comprehensive JavaScript-based open-source framework backed by Google. It aims to make the development and testing of applications easier by providing a framework for client-side model-view-controller (MVC) architecture. MVC is a popular programming pattern in which the model maintains data, the view displays data to the user, and the controller directs interactions between the two. The second version of Angular launched in May of 2016. Popular websites that use this technology include Youtube, Freelancer, Istockphoto, and Skystore.

React.JS, on the other hand, is an open-source Javascript library which is capable of rendering views; solely the view portion of the MVC architecture. It was developed and launched in 2013 by Facebook and uses one-way data binding and virtual document-object-model (DOM) technology. What this means is that instead of manipulating the DOM, React digitally stores two versions of it (the original and the version after changes have been made). A React function processes the two versions and identifies the differences. It then outputs a stream of DOM operations that alter the parts of the view that have changed, thus saving time. Popular websites that use this tech are Facebook, Instagram, Airbnb, and the New York Times.

To give a fair comparison. let’s look at the view component of Angular.JS. In the 1.0 version, it manipulates the DOM by extending HTML using directives. With two-way binding the view reflects changes to the data and vice versa. In Angular.JS 2.0, a new change detection algorithm has been implemented which walks the DOM tree.

Additionally, there are a wide range of advantages each offer, here’s a quick run down of the most notable.