Ask HN: Do you think VueJS will surpass React?

[TaizWeb]

Considering boarding the Vue hype train but I'm left wondering: will it be worth it, or am I just wasting my time? React already has a firm hold in the industry it seems, and I'm just not sure if Vue would be able to top it. I'm curious if anyone really involved in the industry would be able to tell me their thoughts on the rise of Vue and if it'll be able to persist like React has.

[BjoernKW]

You'll definitely not be wasting time. Vue.js has some serious traction already. It really doesn't matter if it'll surpass React. There's plenty of space for both and it's not a winner-takes-all situation.

Besides, it's hard to predict if either will be still widely used for new projects say 5 years from now. So, becoming a one-trick (or rather one-framework) pony probably isn't the wisest path in the long run. Rather try to take in general best practices, design patterns and approaches and become someone that can work comfortably with both React and Vue.js or in fact any other new JavaScript framework that might come along.

[Can_Not]

> There's plenty of space for both and it's not a winner-takes-all situation.

That's a misconception a lot of outsiders make about the JavaScript community. There's not even close to one winner. It's not "WWW World Champion React vs upcoming Challenger: VueJS". There's probably about 10-20 (possibly even more!) production ready frameworks you could be using that have strong community backing and ecosystems. VueJS and React are merely approaching the pinnacle of what a full stack isomorphic framework can be. The others will follow.

[cocktailpeanuts]

Let me share a "contrarian" view. People think react can't be beat because they have Facebook behind them and tons of people are working on it with tons of funding. But I think that may be the reason why it may go down one day.

Facebook is not doing this for complete charity. At the moment their interest is aligned with react being open source but you never know when that will change. And when that happens, the artificial illusion of support will go away.

I'm not just pulling this out of nowhere, I actually use both react and vue, and think react ecosystem is too convoluted. It's a matter of opinion but I don't think it's just me who feels that way.

[lalwanivikas]

It's not just Facebook anymore as many big companies are using it everywhere - web, pwa, native apps etc. So I don't think it's going to go away anytime soon.

For example, watch this 5 min React Conf talk on how Flipkart has made React a big part of their tech stack.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsvyg0T40NU

[TaizWeb]

That's one of the main reasons I decided to go with Vue, I don't trust Facebook. I also didn't like the fact FB could take away your right to use their framework if they didn't like what you were making with it (e.x. anything facebook sees as a threat).

[jayajay]

I agree, this is the sole reason why I am no longer using React for anything serious. Facebook is bad news, no pun intended. Thankfully, there are other solutions that don't have any strings attached.

[swah]

May I ask what alternatives you feel are usable right now?

[owebmaster]

Nope because although VueJS is simpler than angular2, it but makes a lot more assumptions (and thus lockins) to the user than React. The way best practices evolves in React doesn't happen so easily in vuejs ecossystem, even less in the angular2.

[yanilkr]

Vuejs just wants to be a web frontend framework. Reactjs wants to be a common way of building apps across Web, Android and iphone. Both have different goals targeting different usecases.

Vuejs might do well for webapps due to its simplicity alone.

[Hanks10100]

Vue.js is not alone. Weex has already support Vue.js. Developers now can use Vue.js to write mobile apps.

[1] http://weex.apache.org [2] https://github.com/alibaba/weex/releases/tag/v0.10.0

[feistypharit]

Vue has some annoying issues as you grow. For example, if you start simple from the script tag and later want to move to npm and webpack, all sorts of things break. It's not just the difference in build types that they note. (With or without runtime compiler).

Ultimately, I think the winning framework will be one that compiles. Something like svelte[1]. It's how most other software is made for good reasons.

https://svelte.technology/

[Pishky]

VueJS does not have the backing of Facebook and cannot compete on that issue alone.

[cocktailpeanuts]

How does that matter? There are countless historical examples where larger organizations with plenty of funding lost to smaller opponent.

[TaizWeb]

Ah, like how babel was able to compete with typescript despite typescript being funded by Microsoft and babel by community efforts

[onurozkan]

I choose Babel over Typescript, because Babel implements default Ecmascript (afaik). Typescript is mostly type-safe and welcoming for non-js (c#, maybe java) coders.

[onurozkan]

I've seen many enterprise chooses angular just because of Google. React is the similar in this subject.

Popularity and some-big-company's supports is most important thing for them.

[bbcbasic]

E.g. Jenkins vs. Hudson

[jMyles]

That's a very, very different example. Jenkins was an exodus by community members of an existing project. And Oracle didn't have the political will to keep up with Hudson anyway.

It's like comparing Vue with LibreOffice.

[baybal2]

A counterexample here - Angular. I think, it is slowly becoming a piece of abandondware exactly because of Google's influence and backing.

Angular 1 was a framework, Angular 2 was a piece of a religious writing that people developed to pad their resumes.

[ewrcoffee]

To my understanding, react allows writing more type safe code. So no.

[antons_ghost]

I am no expert, but I chose React. It has a massive following, and will probably live much longer than the code that I write today.