React vs. Angular: Which framework to opt for in 2021?

The web development tech stack today is multifaceted and extremely rich, what with all the available existing frameworks and libraries. React, and Angular come from a lineage of two powerful competitors, Facebook and Google. Angular is relatively new to the game, and React already established itself in the industry. Their performance is often debated upon. Let's take a closer look at their respective strengths and weaknesses.

ReactJS

React can come in handy for cross-platform mobile development, for the creation of 3D and VR user interfaces, for web development and more. React.JS is becoming a popular choice for server-side IoT applications. Let's try and sell you on this with its advantages that have served us well in the past.

Advantages:

1. Separation of Concerns in React: Altering one component won't affect the rest of your code here. The separation of concerns is a useful advantage. With it, you can pass the rest to the child components after efficiently managing the required data. Meaning you don't find yourself lost in the compound code interactions between IoT sensors and the data.
2. Component Lifecycle Method: In every ReactJS application, the components are rendered onto virtual DOM as ReactJS is a component-based JS library. The components follow the same method before or after rendering onto DOM. Here you receive and act consequently without accessing more data than required. And the lifecycle method streamlines the app's interactions with the real world, ensuring that all the components keep up with data changes.
3. Compositional Structure: Instead of structure-based inheritance, React works on the compositional structure, allowing you to organize your code in a better way. You are required to create an object and then another object that inherits an object or class in object-oriented programming. Using the inheritance model can be complicated and hard to follow for some projects, but with React Native, fortunately, it's a lot like building a Lego set. You will be able to use or create other components within, once you create a component.
4. A rich and open toolset: React is an open-source technology, free and accessible for all. React has its rich ecosystem, including tools like Flux/Redux and node.js for backend or open-source task-specific libraries listed on NPM.
5. SEO friendly: Meaning more visibility for your site. React projects pair well with search engines like Google, and the credit for this goes to backend rendering. High performance and speed contribute to better SEO, providing all-inclusive user experience.
6. Strong community: More than 1,000 contributors worldwide support and maintain the React library. The solid, active, and vibrant corporate support keep the technology thriving.
7. Smooth transition to React Native: It makes it easier for React developers to switch to React Native and build mobile apps with a native feel and look. In a React mobile application, one can reuse React web application to fasten the development speed.

AngularJS

Coming to Angular, an open-source front-end framework that has gained massive traction over the years for ensuring lighter & faster apps and eliminating unnecessary code, the advantages are again numerous.

It helps build dynamic and interactive single-page applications with its exciting features, including two-way binding,  templating, modularization, dependency injection, RESTful API handling, and AJAX handling. To convey the components of the application easily, designers can use HTML as a template language and even extend HTML syntax. To build dynamic applications with Angular, you won't have to rely on third-party libraries. Let's list out some more of the advantages.

Advantages:

1. Supported by Google: Google has extended Long-Term Support (LTS), meaning Google plans to stick with it and further scale up the Angular ecosystem. So Angular has an exciting future ahead of it.
2. Typescript: TypeScript language, a superscript for JavaScript, is used to build Angular applications. It supports types (interfaces, primitives, etc.), ensuring security. When performing maintenance tasks or writing the code, it helps catch and eliminate errors early. TypeScript is not a stand-alone language, unlike CoffeeScript or Dart. You can take the existing ES2015+ JS or ES5 code easily with TypeScript, and based on what you are configuring. It will compile it down. It completely supports core ES2016/ES2017, and ES2015 features such as async/await or decorators. If you have created proper map files during the build time, you can debug TypeScript code directly in an editor or the browser. This language ensures improved refactoring, navigation, and auto-completion services. When needed, you can even opt-out of its inbuilt features.
3. Declarative UI: To define the UI of the application, Angular uses HTML. Compared to JavaScript, HTML is a less convoluted language. HTML is also an intuitive and declarative language. You won't have to invest your time in deciding what loads first and in program flows. Angular will take care of it once you define what you require.
4. POJO: You won't need any additional getter and setter functions with Angular since every object it uses is POJO (Plain Old JavaScript Object). By providing all the conventional JavaScript functionalities, it enables object manipulation. While also looping over these objects when needed, you can add or remove properties from the objects.
5. Easy Testing: Testing is extremely simple in Angular. Its modules have the application parts that are easy to manipulate. While effectively performing automatic testing, you can load the necessary services with module separation. Follow the "one file-one module" principle, and you don't even need to remember the module loading order.
6. Simplified MVC Pattern: Angular framework comes with the MVC (Model-View-Controller) architectural software setup. But it isn't based on the established standards. Angular doesn't ask developers to build a code that could unite them after splitting an application into different MVC components.
7. Modular Structure: Whether it is components, pipes, directives, or services, Angular organizes code into buckets. These buckets are referred to as modules. Segregating it into features and reusable chunks, modules make application functionality organization easy. Modules also allow for lazy loading, paving the way for application feature loading in the background or on-demand.

Aspects to consider when choosing between Angular and React

• Consider the MVC Pattern. Angular is developed based on the MVC architecture, while React comes with only the view component of MVC, which could increase the lines of code.
• Coming to data binding that helps you establish a connection between the business logic of the app and the UI, Angular uses a two-way coupling that lets the framework connect the model data to the DOM through the controller affecting the app performance, while React implements a one-way data binding. Debugging becomes more natural when the data is directed only one way, especially for applications that are quite large.It doesn't affect the performance when you try to develop complex applications since React has a one-way data binding.  With Angular, you'll have to tackle this issue. Moreover, React engineers have added a built-in virtual DOM feature that allows the server to save a light 'DOM tree,' leading to less loading time on the browser.  
• Both Angular and React can come in handy for writing applications. But they are inherently very different frameworks. React is a better choice if you are leaning towards a simple and small-sized application. Then there is nothing like Angular if scalability with more features is what you care for. I hope we helped.
• Consider the MVC Pattern. Angular is developed based on the MVC architecture, while React comes with only the view component of MVC, which could increase the lines of code.
• Coming to data binding that helps you establish a connection between the business logic of the app and the UI, Angular uses a two-way coupling that lets the framework connect the model data to the DOM through the controller affecting the app performance, while React implements a one-way data binding. Debugging becomes more natural when the data is directed only one way, especially for applications that are quite large.It doesn't affect the performance when you try to develop complex applications since React has a one-way data binding.  With Angular, you'll have to tackle this issue. Moreover, React engineers have added a built-in virtual DOM feature that allows the server to save a light 'DOM tree,' leading to less loading time on the browser.

Both Angular and React can come in handy for writing applications. But they are inherently very different frameworks. React is a better choice if you are leaning towards a smaller-sized application. And there is nothing like Angular if scalability with more features is what you care for. I hope we helped.