If you’re a beginner or junior front end developer and you’re wondering if you should learn react (react js), vue or angular to get a job, you’re in the right place.
In this post, we’re going to compare the most popular JavaScript frameworks and look at their:
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1- History
2- Job market
3- Learning curve
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In the end, I’ll give you my recommendation about what JavaScript framework to learn to get a front end job.
Difference between a JavaScript framework and a JavaScript library
Software developers often use the terms framework and library interchangeably but they’re different.
A framework is reusable code that provides a structure or skeleton to build applications. So when we use a framework we have to build our application according to that framework.
Frameworks dictate how we should structure our application:
Application structure - How we should structure the application
Application startup - How the application should get started
Component interaction - How the numerous components should interact with each other and so on
Vue and Angular are popular JavaScript frameworks for building frontend applications.
A JavaScript library is a collection of reusable code that is used to solve common problems or perform a function.
For instance, we have libraries for machine learning, computer vision, mathematical calculations, etc.
React is a JavaScript library for building interactive user interfaces.
‍Why do we have to use a JavaScript framework or library?
‍A question we get asked often from our Alida School students is:
When building an application, do we always have to use a JavaScript library or JavaScript framework or can we just use JavaScript?
The short answer is: You can just use JavaScript.
However, imagine that you want to build a desk: Would you rather buy pieces of wood and put the desk together or would you go to the forest and cut the trees first?
Hopefully, you concluded that it’s faster and more efficient to buy the pieces of wood which have already been cut and are ready for you to use. This is the exact reason why we use frameworks and libraries: to increase our productivity and speed up the development process.
‍ There’s a lot of code tested, available and ready for us to reuse.
‍React, Vue and Angular are the top three tools for building applications but which one is better and has more job opportunities and is the most popular?‍

Let’s look at the history of Angular, React and Vue:
Angular is the oldest framework out of the three. Angular was developed by Google and was initially released in 2010. Until 2016 it used to be called angular.js.
 In 2016 the angular team completely rewrote angular and released angular 2 which had nothing in common with the previous version of angular. This was a completely new framework. To reduce the confusion, the angular team decided to drop the .js from the name and they called the new framework just angular.
All of the applications built with angular.js had to be rebuilt with angular which made many developers unhappy.
React was developed and is maintained by Facebook and it has been around since 2013. It’s used by major companies such as UBER, Twitter, Paypal, Netflix and of course Facebook, just to name a few.
React has a massive community, which means that if you get stuck in a problem, probably someone else has faced that problem and solved it, and it has many third party libraries, packages, extensions and tutorials and courses.
Vue or Vue.js is the newest framework out of angular and react, and it’s the only framework not developed and maintained by a major corporation.
Vue was developed in 2014 by a former Google employee and it’s presently maintained by a group of dedicated developers. Although it’s a new framework, Vue has gained a lot of popularity in the past few years.
The learning curve
‍Angular is a full-blown framework or a complete solution because of this it has a steep learning curve.
In contrast, react is just a library and not a complete solution, hence it has fewer concepts that you need to learn and understand.
It’s easier to learn Vue than angular and it reasonably takes the same amount of time and effort as learning react.
Although some people argue that it’s even easier to learn than react but that’s of course subjective and varies from person to person.
If you’re a beginner developer or junior developer, I recommend you to start with react because it’s easier to learn than angular and gives you plenty of job opportunities. Another advantage of learning react is that you can easily and quickly learn react native to build mobile apps.
React native is the most popular cross-platform development language, this will expand your career opportunities.
So if you’re looking for a job as a front end developer or full stack developer, invest your time and energy in learning react.