Angular vs React: Featured Comparison with Examples 2020

Javascript has become one of the most demanding languages among developers. There are a lot of developers, freshers, and veterans who love to use Javascript to create their application or project, but there is always ambiguity when they try to pick up the correct framework or library for their project.

Angular and React Js remains their top choice, but most of them are still unable to determine which one is perfect for their project. Freshers want to know which one is simple to understand and which one has more potential for work purposes in the market.

A comparison of Angular vs React is still a hot-cake topic in 2020. React Js and Angular are both highly developed, widely embraced JavaScript (JS) technologies that we use to build single-page interactive applications (SPAs). The number of JS tools for quick single-page application creation is increasingly rising, making it more difficult for us as web developers to select the technologies to focus upon.

Angular vs React:  Featured Comparison with Examples 2020

Many enterprises, such as the news and travel agencies in the USA, the UK, Canada, France, Germany, Australia, and other countries are actually using both React and AngularJS. After its introduction in 2009 AngularJS has been included in nearly every list of top 10 JavaScript frameworks. This architecture for Model –View–Controller has become extremely common among Web developers.

JavaScript programmers use React much more extensively, as it is simply a library, not a framework: the React module only has a View, which excludes modules for the Model and Controller. And how did React become so popular? And how do we fairly equate an AngularJS system with a library (React)?

Well, first of all, let's have a swift overview of both the technologies 

Comparison	React	Angular
Developer	Facebook	Google
Type	React is a JavaScript library, and it is much older compared with Angular.	Angular is a complete framework.
Use of libraries	React js can be packaged with other programming libraries.	Angular is a complete solution in itself.
Learning curve	It is easier to grasp compared Angular. However, it is difficult to learn when augmented with Redux.	Learning Angular is not easy for beginners. Thus, it requires lots of training.

Data binding	One-way data binding	Two-way data binding
Learning curve	It is easier to grasp compared Angular. However, it is difficult to learn when augmented with Redux.	Learning Angular is not easy for beginners. Thus, it requires lots of training.

Written in	JavaScript	Typescript
Community Support	Facebook developers community	A large community of developers and supporters
GitHub Stars	145K	59.8K
Contributors	1366	1097
Weekly Downloads	5M	440K

This was just a glimpse of both of the amazing technologies out there in the JavaScript Realm and we will have a thrilling face-to-face showdown to head our ways to choose the correct technology for you in 2020.

The Ultimate Showdown

Before diving deep, we would have to consider a fact that React, by Facebook is just a library based on JavaScript to develop dynamic UI's whereas Angular, by Google is a complete MVC framework that can deliver mobile and web apps using TypeScript/JavaScript.

1. Technological Introduction: Angular vs React

React

React is a library for the development of UI in JavaScript. It is still driven by Facebook and an open-source developer community. The Project was released in May 2013.  On February 26, 2020, the latest updates were released–just about a month ago (with the introduction of React Concurrent mode). React It often makes the code more accessible and simpler to deploy. To have a versatile, performance-oriented approach, the React JavaScript library utilizes server-side rendering.

Angular
Released in September 2016, Angular (also referred to as Angular 2.0) is a complete redesign of AngularJS (Angular 1.0), released in 2010. Angular is a framework through which we can create dynamic web applications. It helps developers to use HTML as a modeling language and helps the Markup syntax to quickly and explicitly describe the components of the program. This is a fully functional JavaScript framework that assists in the creation of interactive single-page web applications. It follows the programming framework (MVC).

2. Need for 3rd Party Libraries: Angular vs React

React

React is a framework for the development of UIs, so applications written with React need to use additional libraries extensively as per the requirements. For eg, Redux, React Router, or Helmet assists in automating state-management, routing, and API interaction processes. Installation of additional modules or libraries enables us to manage data binding, component-based routing, project generation, form validation, or dependency injection.

Angular

Angular is a full-fledged application development framework that doesn't normally require extra libraries. The Angular package can be used to execute all the above-mentioned features –code linking, component-based routing, project generation, form validation, and dependency injection.

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React- 0                           Angular-1

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3. Angular vs React: Component Architecture 

React

Facebook decided to make React distinct from typical MVC Architecture such as Angular. However, there is no "appropriate" structure decided to follow for React applications. React is a huge library of JavaScript that lets us render & refresh the User interface. Yet React really doesn't make us build apps under its hood. The library lacks the layers of models and control. To fill in the void, Facebook launched Flux to manage the application workflow, which nowadays has many variants.

React offers an incredibly simple and effective way to build component trees. It features a dynamic type of programming in which definitions of components are declarative. Composing the app from React components is like composing a function-based JavaScript application. Let's have a look at an example given below, taken from GitHub:

Thanks to the inclusion of components, code written in React is logically organized and readable. The React library doesn't require you to write code in any specific way. It insists you to use JSX (a special XML-like syntax) to construct classes and templates, but JavaScript and HTML can also be written in plain form. This makes it easy for JavaScript developers to adapt to React apps, as there is no complicated syntax to understand.

React gives the elegance which Angular does not. Yet the flexibility comes at the expense of extra time spent creating an application's layout. We have to worry about what tools we are going to use before we launch a new project. This preference is tedious as you need to choose a method from within 100 choices to tackle one problem.

Angular
AngularJS has a very complicated and pre-defined structure because it is based on the three layers of Model, View, and Controller— which are typical of single-page applications. An object $scope in AngularJS is accountable for the Model component which the Controller initializes and then converts into HTML to construct the user interface. AngularJS offers various essential services, factories, controls, directives, and other elements that can take some time to initially learn for a JavaScript developer.

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4. Learning Angular vs React

React

React is minimal: no dependency injection, no classic templates, no unnecessarily complicated features. The framework will be quite easy to understand if you already know JavaScript well. With the introduction of the "Create React App", it became super easy to instantly initiate a bare bone structure for your new react project.  However, it would be somewhat challenging to tackle hurdles of the Redux library, which is now already being used in over 50% of React projects for the purpose of State Management. 

Persistent framework upgrades also require extensive effort on the part of the developer. Also, there are a lot of best practices in React that you will need to learn to do the things as they are ought to be.

Angular

Talking about Angular, it is a huge library, and mastering all the principles linked with it can take a lot more time than in the case of React. Angular is more difficult to understand, there is a lot of unwanted syntaxes, and component management is challenging. Some tricky features are incorporated in the framework heart, which means that the developer can not escape learning and using them. Besides, there are several ways to solve a single issue.

While TypeScript closely resembles JavaScript, it takes some time to understand it. As the framework is continuously revised, the author has to make some extra self-learning efforts.

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React- 2                           Angular-1

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5. Angular vs React: Performance 

React

The developers of React incorporated the idea of the virtual Document Object Model (DOM), which is perceived to be one of the major advantages of React in contrast with existing frameworks, including AngularJS.

This is how virtual DOM works: Once our HTML document is loaded, React builds a lightweight DOM tree from JavaScript objects and stores it in the server. For example, when the user enters new data in the < input > field in the browser, React builds a new virtual DOM and then equates it to a previously stored DOM. The library detects the difference between two object types in such a way that it reconstructs the virtual DOM, along with new HTML updates. Much of this work is performed server-side, which reduces the burden on the browser.

As far as one-way data binding is considered, React does not use watchers to detect modifications to the real DOM. Basically, React makes it easy to manage the output of the program. But this doesn't mean that a swift web app cannot be built using AngularJS.

Angular

There are two things to keep in mind as we think about the output of Angular. As we stated earlier, Angular 1.x and higher depend on two-way data binding. This principle is based on a "dirty check," a process that can make the AngularJS framework lag.

When we link values in HTML to our model, AngularJS generates a watcher for each connection to detect changes in the DOM. If the View changes (becomes "dirty"), AngularJS compares the current value to the original (bound) value and runs the $digest loop. The $digest loop then tests not only the values that have already changed but also all the other values that are monitored by the watchers. That's why efficiency is going to decrease a lot if your application has so many watchers.

Angular is expected to perform worse, especially in the case of UI-heavy and sophisticated web applications. Nevertheless, the size of the Angular code is marginally smaller than that of the React application.

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React- 3                           Angular-1

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6. Rich UI Components: Angular vs React

React

React UI tools are created by the community. There are several free and premium UI components available on the React website. You will have to install an external package–Material-UI Library & Dependencies–to use the material design elements in React. However, there is no inbuilt method to augment rich UI components natively in React, Angular has a built-in Material toolkit for this.

Angular

Angular provides an advanced material tool kit and offers a wide range of pre-built material design modules. There are many buttons, templates, indicators, pop-ups, and form controls. This makes it easy and simpler to customize the UI in Angular than in React.

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7. Angular vs React: Community Size

React

The React Framework is one of the most prominent JS frameworks in the world, and the ecosystem promoting and improving it is massive. React is widely used by organizations such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Netflix, Airbnb, PayPal, The New York Times, Yahoo, Walmart, and Uber. 

Operating with React, you need to be an on-going learner because the code is always revamped. Although the group is trying to catch up with the new updates as soon as possible, keeping up with all the changes is not that straightforward. Often there may be a lack of documentation, but community participation on thematic platforms often addresses this problem.

Talking about stats, there are almost 3.3M dependents of this elegant library or you can say this is the number of people who use React directly or indirectly, with 145K GitHub stars, and almost 5M weekly downloads. These stats often depict the huge popularity of React.

Image Courtesy: GitHub Stars History(timqian.com)

Angular

Angular is less beloved than React and faces a lot of skepticism, possibly because of the ineffectiveness of Angular 1.0. Developers used to ignore the framework as being too complex because it took a lot of time to learn it. However, this system has been created by Google, which aims to support Angular's reputation.

However, Google is continuously delivering long-term support for the system. The changes are sometimes so swift that the documentation is often left behind. Angular is used by firms such as McDonald's, AT&T, HBO, Apple, Forbes, Adobe, and Microsoft.

Talking about stats, there are more than 900K active users of this framework which is impressive for a full-fledged MVC framework, 58K GitHub Stars, and 440K+ weekly downloads. 

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React- 4                           Angular-2

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8. Language Used: Angular vs React

React

React is based on the ES6 + JavaScript paired with the JSX script. JSX is a syntax extension that makes the JavaScript code look like the one written in HTML. This makes the language easy to read, so it's harder to detect typos. To compile the JSX file in a browser, React adds Babel–a file conversion tool.

In the beginning, JSX may give you troubles as you might get confused extensively when JavaScript gets paired up in HTML and so on. If you have a strong foundation of  JS with ES6+ concepts of Async-await, modern array iteration methods, REST and SPREAD operators, destructing method, and  JavaScript Classes, you are all set to embrace the powers of React.

Angular

Angular may use JavaScript or TypeScript, which is a superset of JS designed especially for broader projects. TypeScript is more lightweight than JavaScript, the code is easier to read, and the typos are easy to find. Code refactoring has been getting easier and faster, thanks to Angular.

It becomes a matter of choice to stick to what you know or which primary language you love and then based on it, select a framework or library. Thus, we would not give any point in this round as this comparison was made just for information sharing.

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9. Angular vs React: Use Case

Image courtesy: Simform

Now the most common dilemma that most of us could have encountered and are grappling with is the choice between Angular and Reactjs. Let's see how Angular and Reactjs have made incredible solutions in the world together.

Choosing Angular overbroad and mid-level projects where there is no need for extra feature installation and third-party support is advantageous. Adding additional components will add more complexity and a longer period of time, which is not advised across diverse specifications.

This criterion is also not meant to award a point in our knockout as there can be different needs in a project and for addressing diverse needs, developers may choose React or Angular based on several factors. Again, it is totally a matter of choice.

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React- 4                           Angular-2

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10. Angular vs React: State Management

React

In React, each component has a state of its own. A React developer may create special components to maintain the state of the entire application or portion of it. The main drawback here is that the global state needs to be stored in multiple different parts of the app, with data being passed manually across different component tree levels. 

There is a special state management library–Redux–to solve this issue. The theory is that the global state is defined as a single state-of-the-art entity that is updated in various sections of the app with the aid of reducers–unique Redux functions.

Another option is provided by the MobX State Management Library. Unlike Redux, which has a global state contained in a single permanent stateful entity, MobX proposes to store only the minimum necessary state, while the rest of it can be extracted.

Angular

Component data is preserved in Angular in the properties of the modules. Parent components pass data through to children. State changes in some sections can be detected and recomputed, but a wide app will create a multi-directional tree sequence of updates that would be difficult to monitor. The functionality can be enhanced with the aid of state management libraries, such as NgRx or RxJS, which can ensure that the data flow is one-way.

Again, we conclude that state management is a dreadful task to manage and both Angular, and React are notorious to deal with it until a third party library is implemented. Thus, we cannot decide to choose a better player that addresses this issue. This round is also a tie.

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React- 4                           Angular-2

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Angular vs React: Final Verdict

We, definitely have a well-deserving winner in front of us here, our beloved React library. It is exponentially used to augment beautiful UI's and it promises continuous support. However, for managing the Model and Controller parts or for Full-Stack, one has to deal with a couple of more technologies.

Either AngularJS and React are excellent for creating one-page applications. Yet they're completely different tools. Some programmers may claim that React is better than AngularJS or vice versa. Nonetheless, what is actually best for a particular project depends on how you use these resources.

Working with React will seem a little easier to get going, as you write old-school JavaScript and create your Markup around it. But there are a lot of additional resources you're going to have to learn, including Flux, Redux, Hooks, and many more. In addition, AngularJS uses a different HTML-based solution. That's why we can see strange syntax and approaches that appear to be controversial at first glance. But once you get used to AngularJS, you're bound to benefit from its capabilities.

There exists no best framework. Both are revised on a regular basis to keep pace with the rival. For eg, though React was assumed to win due to its virtual DOM, Angular tied the score by introducing change detection. Although Angular was perceived to be a winner as a result of being produced by such an established organization as Google, the large devoted React community completely compensated for Google's credibility and made React identical to Angular.

Finally, React vs Angular is just a matter of personal choice, ability, and practice. As a novice in programming, you'd actually benefit more from starting with React. As an accomplished producer, you're only focusing on what you know best.

Don't hesitate to push yourself and start learning a new system, React, or Angular. As a project manager or company owner outsourcing developer, you can speak to your web development team and, together, select the platform that best fits all of you, whether Angular or React.