History of Vue JS
Vue.js has taken the front-end development world by storm over the last three years. The project, however, has been around much longer than that. It started in 2013 as a one-man project by Evan You. Since then, it slowly ascended to pole position in the JavaScript ecosystem. Nowadays, finding a Vuejs developer and developing a major app is quite easy, thanks to a rapidly expanding ecosystem of tools provided by the framework.
Vue JS Philosophy
Where incumbents React and Angular focused on large design, the library brought a design minimalism reminiscent of earlier JavaScript libraries such as Backbone and jQuery. Unlike jQuery, however, the framework looks forward to exciting modern standards. It cuts down on the amount of boilerplate involved in a front-end project and introduces radical new ways of coding that improve the software.
If you’ve been looking for definitive proof that you should jump on the Vue.js bandwagon, the following will give you some empirical highlights.
Vue JS Developer Growth Rate & Learning Curve
Vue.js has a high growth rate based on its low learning curve and dominant set of features that combine the best of other frameworks. A junior Vuejs Developer can become quickly productive because the framework is insanely fast yet straightforward. The API is simple enough to allow very rapid development.
Features of Vue JS
The framework, like its predecessors Angular, React and Ember, is a complete solution for creating web front-ends. It uses Javascript to craft the front-end code that makes apps interactive. The framework also processes the data that users work with in many data-rich applications. It has ambitious design goals and uses new techniques such as the composition of user interfaces using components.
The framework borrows concepts from earlier libraries to ease the development process and get things done. For example, it uses custom directives borrowed from Angular. At the same time, it uses JSX, when so required, and a shadow DOM, features it borrowed from React. Like Backbone, it aims to be fairly small and allow a great deal of flexibility.
The framework presents itself as a complete solution for the front-end, with mechanisms for state management, reactive data bindings, event handling, and tooling support.
Vue JS Developer Salary Follows Vue Growth Rate
While opinions may vary, the numbers don’t lie. Vuejs developer salary figures are now trending up to reflect the popularity of the framework. Some companies on Indeed are paying upwards of $78,000 for developers with knowledge of the framework.
The project saw sustained growth in 2016 and 2017. It is now one of the most-watched projects on GitHub, with over 87,000 stars on Github. When it comes to front-end Javascript frameworks, it is now one of the most popular among developers on GitHub. These are remarkable accomplishments for a project that is not backed by a large corporation such as Google, which backs Angular, or Facebook, which is behind React. Evan You’s project is, however, the recipient of support among rank-and-file front-end developers who have powered it to the top.
Below, we use data from GitHub to compare the popularity of the leading JavaScript front-end frameworks. The library now trades places with React for the top spot. The two are so close that now the lead swaps back and forth depending on monthly changes.
Apps & Companies using Vue JS
The framework has received high-profile adoption, with many open source projects and big corporations adopting it for developing the front-end. Laravel, the leading PHP web framework, now comes with Vuejs integrated as the default front-end. Developers who prefer something else can swap it out for, say, Ember or Backbone. A slew of libraries also use the framework as a dependency or have bindings to it.
With a stellar cast of apps being developed on the technology, it’s likely the framework will serve your needs too. Here are some apps and companies using it:
- Laravel - leading backend framework in the PHP world. Uses the technology as a default front-end
- GitLab - git source code hosting and continuous integration platform, uses Vue.js for their front-end
- Behance - media site that publishes creative design work
- Momentum - a personal dashboard for maximum productivity
- Alibaba - Chinese e-commerce platform
Switching to this framework from other frameworks can improve a team’s productivity and software quality. GitLab wrote a blog post elaborating on why the simplicity of Vue.js helped them settle on it. There are many other companies that have switched from React to Vue.js or from Angular to Vue.js. Their combined reflections give an accurate portrayal of the advantages of the technology.
Advantages of Vue JS over React JS
The framework borrows some important concepts from React such as the shadow DOM, which makes UI updates incredibly fast. However, it adds new approaches that give it the edge, head-to-head, over React.
Custom Directives & Optional JSX
The usage of JSX is almost a requirement with React. Using the Javascript-only syntax to define HTML elements is verbose and error-prone. On the other hand, JSX is an unusual syntax for designers and even for developers. Vuejs deals with this problem by making JSX entirely optional. It allows custom directives in a style borrowed from Angular while having a shadow DOM to avoid Angular v1 speed problems.
Easy State Management
State management is easy when using Vuejs. While Vuex allows developers to manage state at scale, the built-in component system makes it possible to manage state, even for larger apps, without it.
Advantages of Vue JS over Angular JS
Angular.js was a big inspiration for newer frameworks like Vuejs that allow data-driven UI with event binding. Unlike Angular v1 and the modern Angular, however, Vue.js is a lot simpler to work with.
TypeScript not needed
Angular makes TypeScript the default programming language. While it’s not very hard to learn, but it’s considered as an extra burden for developers trying to learn Angular. Vuejs, instead, uses simple Javascript that the front-end world knows well.
Vue JS Avoids Angular's cognitive overload
A new Angular developer has to master concepts like dependency injection and inversion of control. This is because Angular is still stuck in big-systems thinking and dumps the whole load on the developer at once. Vuejs hides much of this abstraction and gives the developer an easy, clean system to work with.
Accelerating your Front-End Development with Vue JS
Adopting Vue.js will bring you many advantages that will accelerate your front-end development. In the past, the main obstacle was finding qualified developers. Fortunately, finding Vuejs developers is becoming easier as more talent migrates to the framework. When evaluating a Vuejs developer resume, however, you should be flexible enough to allow for less experience using the framework. Vuejs developers typically come from other frameworks such as React, Angular or Backbone.
To accelerate your development, you can make use of the following Vue js developer tools, and more:
- Tooling support - The framework includes support for build tools, CI, linting tools and others like Webpack, Browserify, Gulp and Brunch
- ES6/7 support - The technology comes with ES6 support and enables you to work with modern Javascript futures, including upcoming changes in newer versions of Javascript
- Integrate with Node.js - The framework makes a great front-end for integrating with projects that use Node.js on the backend. It plays nicely with Express, Sails, Socket.io and other Node.js frameworks
- Precompiling support - If you prefer to work with languages that compile to Javascript, the library supports this. With a flexible set up, you can use it with ClojureScript, CoffeeScript, ElixirScript and others, if that’s your thing
In addition, the framework comes with a plethora of tools for testing, for state management and other large-scale considerations. With so much on the table, you should jump boldly in and choose Vuejs for your next web development project. Many others already have.
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