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As a web developer, you might have come across this curious argument between the developers that which framework of javascript is much more popular and widely used. This question is important from a lot of perspectives such as current demand and future growth in career and most importantly which one would give us a higher pay scale.
It would be justifiable to know both the frameworks properly before making any judgment, so let's dive deeper into the prime features of both frameworks.
Framework vs Library: React is an open-source library of javascript which is based on typescript as well as javascript platform and follows OOPS with functional and class-based components. It's not a complete framework like Angular, which provides all the features under one umbrella. A framework is a collection of libraries.
Unidirectional Data flow: React follows the unidirectional means the flow of the data happens from the parent component to the child component. In the case of Angular, it follows the two-way data binding where the data can be transferred from parent to child and vice versa. Whereas React doesn't have this feature as built-in but we can implement it manually. Unidirectional helps react to maintain the state mutation and its tracking simpler.
Virtual DOM: React uses the virtual DOM which is a copy of the actual DOM in its memory and the updated part occurred due to the changes in the state and props can only be updated in the actual DOM. This makes the updation faster and restricts the rerendering of the actual DOM. Angular does the rerendering but it happens in chunks and with the help of the new IVY compiler, it's quite faster than the traditional one. So, there's not a major benefit of VDOM as both frameworks are evolving.
Server-side rendering: React supports this feature which causes your application some benefits of rendering the application partially on the server side. Again this feature is also available in Angular as well. Perhaps you can install some supporting libraries from npm to add this feature in angular version 7 onwards.
Library dependencies: React is made up of a single library and gives the flexibility to add multiple other open-source libraries to add features such as routing, HTTP API calls, forms, react-redux, and a lot more. But in the case of Angular you have to use all the libraries which are already present in the 'angular/devkit' and more from the same umbrella of angular. There are some limitations to the third-party libraries integration with angular.
Version updates: Both of these frameworks are coming up with the latest releases and adding new features to their arsenal. React has much more backward compatibility as compared to angular. Whereas there are major changes to existing libraries that happen in the case of Angular, thus updating the version can be a tedious task sometimes.
Ultimately it depends on the scope and features of the framework that is majorly used in the application. If you're using a Ferrari to drive to the grocery shop instead of driving it to reach another city then you're totally wasting its potential. Hence, the argument on the better framework between Angular and React is meaningless and it all depends on the scope of your Project. Thank you.