What is Vue.js?
JavaScript-based frameworks have never been more popular in recent years and have led to the development of some prominent projects such as AngularJS or React. Recently, however, another name has increasingly attracted attention and is beginning to inspire a growing developer community: Vue.js.
Vue.js was originally developed as a hobby project by Evan You, a former Google employee. After You got to grips with Angular in the course of his work, he designed a JavaScript library that combined the elements he liked about Angular without taking on the complexity and scope of Angular. He added a few of his own ideas to this basis and published the result on GitHub in 2014, where the project quickly attracted a lot of attention. Today, You works full-time on the development of Vue.js and is sponsored by users and companies alike.
Vue.js offers features such as working with components and templates, as well as the reactivity already familiar from other frameworks, which detects component-specific changes and re-renders the corresponding elements.
Vue.js tries to set itself apart from the competition with an accessible, quick-to-learn basic set of features and a progressive implementation approach.
What can Vue.js be used for?
Vue.js can be used for a variety of use cases. One of the reasons for this is the aforementioned progressiveness. This term was coined by Vue.js itself and means that Vue.js can be used both as a small library to extend an existing technology stack, but also as a complete framework for the basis of a new project. Vue.js does not dictate the extent to which it should be used and therefore offers a high degree of flexibility.
A considerable ecosystem of official integrations and extensions also offers solutions for e.g. server-side rendering, routing, the use of TypeScript and dozens more. With its clearly structured core and an officially maintained ecosystem of extensions, Vue.js attempts a balancing act between accessibility and power, ensuring ease of use for beginners and optional functionality.
What advantages does Vue.js offer?
One of the major advantages of Vue.js is its accessibility compared to other major JavaScript frameworks. Vue.js was designed from the outset to minimize entry barriers as far as possible. Not only does Vue.js offer extensive documentation, it also has a relatively small core set of functionalities designed to flatten the learning curve.
In addition, Vue.js is open source and can rely on a large community of enthusiastic users who are not only involved in the development and documentation, but also offer support in various forums. Another positive sign for the longevity of Vue.js is that its development is no longer only sponsored by users, but also by a large number of companies. Laravel, for example, one of the largest and best-known PHP frameworks, which not only sponsors Vue.js, but has now also integrated it as part of its own framework, deserves special mention here.
The progressiveness of Vue.js mentioned in the previous section is also one of its major advantages compared to other frameworks. Even if a team is already in the middle of developing a project, this does not have to be an obstacle to using Vue.js, as it can also be used for individual components of an overall project.
What alternatives are there?
The answer to this question depends on the requirements. If you are just looking for a modern JavaScript framework without specific requirements, there are plenty of alternatives such as Ember, Angular or Meteor, each of which has its own advantages and disadvantages. However, if you are looking for an alternative that is similar to Vue.js in terms of features such as reactivity and component-based working methods, you are most likely to find a suitable competitor in React, which was originally developed by Facebook and has also been based on open source since 2013.
Nevertheless, there are of course also differences between the two projects. One of the biggest is certainly that React is more of a library and Vue.js is more of a framework. This means that Vue.js offers the possibility of fulfilling even complex requirements through its ecosystem of officially developed extensions. React also definitely offers this possibility, but a large number of the available extensions are not officially developed or maintained, which means that the React ecosystem is much more fluctuating. One clear advantage of React is that it is already well established. React has been on the market for several years and is currently far ahead of Vue.js in terms of awareness, information on the internet and opportunities on the job market.
Where can I learn Vue.js?
Due to the great popularity and open source approach of Vue.js, there are a large number of tutorials or articles that attempt to provide beginners with an initial overview. At this point, however, we would actually recommend the official documentation, which provides a structured and beginner-friendly introduction to the topic.
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