Angular vs React: Comparing Two Leading Frameworks for Developing Industry-specific Apps

When building apps, every industry has some specific choices and considerations. While building dynamic apps and single page web apps is popular across too many industries, not all frameworks and technologies are equally suitable for them.  

Both Angular Vs. React as the two leading JavaScript frameworks are popular for developing dynamic web apps. While both are powerful and loaded with features and many standalone advantages, their value propositions need a detailed comparison. 

Here we are going to compare these two technologies for developing industry-specific apps. 

Angular

Angular stands as one of the most popular and widely used frameworks. Angular is an open-source framework with Model-View-Controller architecture that uses both JavaScript and Typescript for coding. 

Angular was developed by Google to enhance the HTML syntax to build more powerful single-page apps. Since then, the framework continued to evolve with frequent updates and is now an acclaimed framework for demanding enterprise apps.  

It is a robust framework with a whole array of inbuilt tools for multiple actions, including state management, routing, form validation, and various others.

Key Benefits of Angular

• With a robust front-end specific model–view–controller (MVC) and model–view–View Model (MVVM), the architecture makes development, testing, and apps deployment easier.
• The modular approach of development is ensured by Dependency Injection.  
• It is a highly scalable framework to help enterprise apps scale-up capability as per the demand.

React

React is developed and maintained by Facebook, and it comes as a robust open-source JavaScript library loaded with a multitude of ready to use components for different projects. 

Reusable components, UI elements, and great modularity are the three things that make React a better framework for industry-specific and tailored apps.

Key Benefits of React 

• React comes loaded with JSX that helps make the XML syntax in JavaScript, ensuring clean coding.
• The reusability of the code and access to native UI elements helps cross-platform development without compromising native usability. 
• React offers a highly component-based architecture to make things easier for large app projects. 
• React by ensuring unidirectional data flow and Flux, makes development easier. 

The Similarities Between Angular and React

Despite the above differences and their specific approaches to app projects, both Angular and React share several common characteristics. Here below, we explain these similarities one by one.

• JavaScript is the common language in both frameworks ensuring optimum agility, scalability, flexibility, and performance. 
• CSS3 support is common to both frameworks to ensure clean and better coding. 
• Both ensure a component-based architecture and reusability of code to help cross-platform development. 
• Both are supported and maintained by big development companies, respectively, Google and Facebook. 
• Both boast of a huge global community of developers. 

Key Differences Between Angular and React 

Now that the specific features, value propositions, and similarities of the two frameworks are explained, it is time to point out the mutual differences that make them ideal for different projects.

Learning Curve

Angular comes as a fully-featured framework taking care of everything from scratch. This is why anyone starting with the framework needs to learn many things from the ground up, which makes the learning curve bigger and more complex to handle. Angular also comes with many unique and out of the box concepts to ensure clear app structure. 

In complete contrast, React is a JavaScript library with very few concepts for the developers to learn. Many of these concepts are easier to handle, as well. For example, the JSX or JavaScript XML used by React is just an away of writing HTML code into JavaScript. React can be learned much quicker in contrast to Angular. 

The Volume of Components and APK Size

Since Angular depends on Real DOM and works with MVC pattern and bidirectional data flow, it comes with a larger APK size. Angular is bigger in size because of accommodating a number of components representing various concepts. 

In contrast, React is simpler with fewer concepts, and so in spite of offering a robust library, it is leaner in size. It supports unidirectional data flow and comes with half the size of APK compared to Angular.

Updates and Community 

Angular comes with more frequent update releases and comes with more transformations for the developer and end-user experience. But it enjoys the support of a huge worldwide community of developers. Moreover, it enjoys the active support of Google and Google developers. 

There are lesser updates with React, and most updates are easier and less complicated compared to that of Angular. On the other hand, thanks to the ease of development and superb end-user experience, React is already popular. React also boasts of a strong developer community all over the globe. 

Popular Uses 

Angular is popularly used by large enterprise apps and performance-demanding apps such as video streaming or music apps. It is also popular for single robust page web apps. Angular has been the key technology for big industry apps such as Google, YouTube, Forbes, telegram, etc. 

In contrast, React as a library with excellent code reusability is more suitable for SPA (Single page application) and cross-platform apps. React is used by a lot of major brands such as Facebook, Airbnb, Uber, Instagram, Twitter,, Netflix, and many others. 

Conclusion 

Both the frameworks are equally reputed and industry-acclaimed, and so, there is no straightforward answer to choose between the two. Choosing the right platform depends on your specific development needs and industry-specific feature requirements.

Author Bio

Juned Ghanchi is a Co-founder and CMO of award-winning IndianAppDevelopers top mobile app development company in India & USA offering mobility solutions to global companies across various industries from the last ten years.

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