Comparative Analysis of Blazor, Angular, React, Vue and Node for Web development

Comparative Analysis of Blazor, Angular, React, Vue and Node for Web development Table of Content 1. Introduction 2. User Interface 3. Performance 4. Security and Identity 5. Response Time 6. Easy Learning Curve 7. Focus on devices 8. Data Accessibility 9. Complexity 10. Data binding 11. Deployment and Hosting 12. Framework Evolution 13. Community Support 14. Adoption & Popularity 15. Version Migration 16. Easy integration 17. Final Choice Introduction There are a huge number of front-end frameworks available today in market, each with different strengths and weaknesses. This makes it tricky to conclude which one you should invest your time in learning, or which is most suitable for your next project. Hence, we conducted one survey among the MVP’s, software developers, Team leaders, project managers, business managers, QA to know their perspective and discover the final alternative.     Blazor Angular Vue React NodeJS First release 2018 14-Sep-16 February 2014 May 29, 2013 May 27, 2009 Developed by Microsoft Google Evan You Facebook OpenJS Foundation Type Web Framework Web Framework JavaScript Framework JavaScript Library Runtime Environment Architecture Client Side/ Server Side Full-fledged MVC framework Flux-inspired application MVC Single Threaded Event Loop Data binding Two-way data binding String Interpolation Two-Way Data Binding Two-way data binding One-way data binding   Popular projects Damselfly Story book Koel, Faviator Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat Axios, Strapi In this article, we will look at a few of the most popular web frameworks, and how they fare against each other. We will examine various parameters of these frameworks and take a deep dive analysis, which generally eases the process of deciding about the most promising front-end web frameworks. We analysed the most significant insights of 36 subject experts comprising various designations such as Software Developer, CEO/CIO/CXO, Project Manager, and other professionals, to represent the facts of Blazor, Angular, Vue, React, NodeJS. The above figure demonstrates various experts with different functional roles shared their insights based on their experience on these technologies. Now, let’s dive deeper into the key findings of each technology. User Interface User Interface is extremely important for any website or application to captivate the audience and persuade them to stay on it. A well-designed UI with simplicity in features can effectively turn visitors into customers And that’s the reason, businesses focus on adopting the best Front-end development platforms for their software projects. In our survey, we have found that around 44% of professionals believe Angular as the best platform to build intuitive UI for any software project. Imani Francies from US Insurance Agents says “When you need to build immersive and complex single-page applications but don't have the time or need to do needless coding, Angular is a reasonable choice. Angular, on the other hand, is a good fit for businesses with big teams and programmers who are already familiar with TypeScript. Angular can be suitable for various projects, but it more ideal when completing a fully equipped and complete web application for long-term use.” Besides, about 39% of professionals have voted Vue as the second preferable platform for front-end development. While React stands at third with 36% expert preference, and Blazor with 28%. However, Node remained a less desirable platform for UI development with a preferred rate of just 20%. Performance “Along with UI, the next factor which plays a critical role in providing a remarkable user experience is website performance. It results in increased return visits, minimal bounce rates, higher ranks in organic search, etc. As per the performance-wise survey report, React has been the primary choice for 41% of professionals while Angular remains second with 45% of professionals giving 4 out of 5 ratings. Vue and Node remained third competitive with minor differences in choice. Blazor was less preferable by professionals when it comes to performance. A techno-business consultant from Infogion clarifies “If the development team has prior .NET expertise, now want to upgrade the age-old asp.net setup to something really dynamic and get a single page application, go for Blazor. It's Microsoft so there will be strings attached. Blazor is for .NET guys. If I have an already-running .NET environment or web applications, I would prefer Blazor since my team's learning curve will shortened, we can reuse some of the old stuff and our basic architecture will remain the same. Overall less cost.” Read More: React Vs Angular: Choose Right Front-end Framework For Your Project Security and Identity The tremendous pace of technologies has forced every organization to take proper provisions and steps to preserve data security. Identity management and access control are some of the ways to manage system access, eliminate data breaches, and elevate strong security in the premises. To entail the facts of security, we have surveyed the opinions of 36 software experts. It was discovered that about 34% of professionals preferred to React because of its incredible security features. On the other hand, Angular and Vue are equally preferred as the second choices. Surprisingly, with a little difference in choice rate, Node remained as the third desired platform for building apps. Blazor has been a less preferable one in case of security. Parikshit Sharma, a dexterous software expert says “Node supports server side rendering and has better security and can be used for both purpose (frontend and backend development).” Response Time To understand it simply, response time can be determined as the sum of service time and wait time. Response time is all about fetching and displaying quick responses to user requests. This is one of the factors that determine your application success. Maintaining expected response time is a must factor for any website or application because no user has the patience to wait for slow loading results and quickly starts moving to other sites. While performing survey on the technologies based on quick response time, what we discovered is around 58% of preference has been given to React whereas Angular was the next favorite platform for experts in delivering faster response time. However, 38% of professionals voted for the node as the third-best platform while Blazor stood at fourth with a preferred rate of 35%. Demographically, Vue has remained as a less preferred platform when it comes to response time. Parikshit Sharma believes “React uses virtual dom which is very fast and has smooth performance. I would like to recommend it for startups or small to medium scale applications” A technical expert from Infogion adds “Angular is the JS Framework of choice if you want single page application or just want to use the power of JS in your web apps. If your goal is to develop a complex restaurant booking or food delivery application or an OTA (Online Travel Agent) platform where one book flight, hotel, holiday etc. go for Angular.” He also says “It has a wide pool of 3rd-party components. For a multi-featured application (we developed a CRM using it) where I need different independent modules working at various point in the whole application, I would go for Angular.” Easy Learning Curve Just having magnificent features and functionality support is not enough for any technology to get high adoption. In fact, how easy it is to learn is also an aspect of importance for any technology. To put it simply, the technology that is easy to learn and supports stunning features is considered the leading one in the market. Oftentimes, the way you prospect the technologies is very different compared to how professionals find them to utilize. On that note, we tried to find out which technology has an easy learning curve to get quicker adoption, and what we actually found is not less than a surprise. Over 30% of professionals say – “Vue has some extraordinary features that help us to build powerful single page web apps and its simple syntax style makes us very easy to learn.” With minor differences in the learning curve, Angular and Blazor stood as the second recommended language demographically. Yet it is difficult to define the clear facts, but based on the insights of 36 professionals we spoke with, 14 of them rated React with 4 out of 5 stars making it the third simple-to-learn language. Comparatively, Node is quite a difficult platform to learn. Imani Francies says “I would recommend you use Blazor when you need to create a single-page application in Microsoft UI framework and if you need sharing code across client- and server-side processes enabled. Blazor is ideal for client-side applications, like to make announcements.” When asked about the Vue platform, he elucidates – “Vue is ideal for quickly delivering MVPs and startup concepts thanks to its simple learning curve and tools like Vue CLI 3 and Vue UI. Vue is also a cost-effective option for small and medium apps as a result of these factors.” Parikshit Sharma compliments “Vue provides higher customizability and hence is easier to learn than Angular or React.” Focus on devices The intriguing apps and devices created an inexorable competition among the software service providers. It brought to the point where technologies are being judged based on how perfectly they can help in building functionalities for the app. According our device-based survey report, about 15 respondents from 37 abide with react because of its incredible features. The revealed facts of Node, Vue, and Angular made us perplexed when we found that they are competitively equal with a marginal difference in their preference rates. However, Blazor was given least importance in our device-based survey report. Nick Schrader adds - “Vue is not only budget-friendly but also effective. If you are tight on a tight budget but need a quick digital product, then Vue could be the one to go with. Compare all of these tools and choose according to your company's needs. However, if it would be a bit difficult choose something that can support you in a lot of aspects rather than choosing something that is only recommended.” A software professional from Infogion says “Vue is such a sweet Framework! I recently started a project in Vue and gradually ended up implementing Next. Less time-consuming, fluid, and super-fast. If you have a project that MUST use a JS framework, you want to deliver it fast, you need all the SEO things there (versions coming up in the last 2 years have excellent Server Side Rendering), go for Vue.” Talking about Angular, an anonymous expert shared his opinion about Angular as “Enterprise-level projects, comprising of multiple modules, strict coding standards, folder structure. When team strength is large, Angular will provide you with strict standards while developing, developers have to follow certain rules. It also requires less 3rd party libraries compared to react & the most amazing thing is using the RxJS library for reactive programming. Once you grasp the idea of how it works you will be certainly biased to use this framework.” Looking to hire Angular Developer ? Your Search ends here. See here Data Accessibility Data accessibility is another top factor of consideration for any website because the insights would be incomplete without data accessibility. To talk about applications, it goes on saying that the technologies must be supportive enough to flourish the data flawlessly for any end-user. Additionally, the security factor has its own role in mitigating potential risks concerning data accessibility. In a comparative analysis of technologies, 42% of experts recommend NodeJS for impeccable data accessibility for the application. Looking at the scintillating demographics of five technologies, React was noted as the second preferred language rated by 20 professionals. With a polling rate of 43%, Vue has been predicted as the third desirable platform while Angular (35%) and Blazor (29%) remained at bottom of the list. Ashwin Hariharan states “Angular is ideal for complex enterprise web applications, that need to rely on a mature ecosystem, and require development to be standardized.” A techno-business consultant from Infogion believes “Angular has a wide pool of 3rd-party components. For a multi-featured application (we developed a CRM using it) where I need different independent modules working at various point in the whole application, I would go for Angular.” Complexity Today, we can find so many languages having implausible features that can help us to build stunning applications but what captures professionals’ interest is the fact how easily it can be learned and how strong feature support it has, eventually making it popular to adopt. Keeping a keen focus on that aspect, we did a comparative analysis survey on complexity metrics. Several notable differences between these five technologies have been observed. The opinions of software experts have really moved the needle for us in finding out the complex technologies. Statistics reveal that over 34% of professionals believe Angular is a complex platform. On the flipside, 17 out of 37 respondents say React is the toughest language. Having marginal variance in rate, Node and Vue remained as the third complex alternatives. With least probability, Blazor stands as the easiest platform with less complexity in learning. Imani describes Blazor - “Generally speaking, Blazor is really simple to use. The main benefit of Blazor is that it allows the same developer to render frontends using DLL without the need for a frontend developer. It's also useful for those who are familiar with C # but haven't had much experience with Angular / React with a frontend style of script.” Ashwin Hariharan, an Editorial Associate from Egen Solutions says “React is recommended for small to medium scale applications for web and mobile. It provides a robust developer ecosystem, fine tooling, and focus on flexibility. Alternatively, if you already have a .net codebase with .Net developers, using Blazor in your tech stack can improve development time.” Parikshit Sharma explains “Blazor is very light and easy to learn. If your team or your company has the proficiency in .NET and lacks JavaScript or web development knowledge in general, Blazor might be the way to speed up the production process.” Data binding In order to manage interactions between the front-end and backend of an application or a website, a data binding feature is crucial. Applications developed with traditional platforms lack the quality of addressing the issues like data representation according to the user’s input., dynamic display of data, etc. However, in a span of time, several platforms have evolved that seamlessly address the challenges of data binding for the application. To better understand which of these platforms has the best support for data binding, we have made consistent efforts with our survey analysis. Digging deeper into analysis, we comprehended that Angular is the first choice of professionals because of its impeccable data binding support. Imani explains – “Because Angular's component-based nature makes modules extremely reusable in the app. Changing pieces can be used to build a UI (User Interface) while still providing a stable development experience for developers.” We have witnessed a close preference rate for Node, Vue, and React technologies given by 16 experts in the case of the Data binding features. Anton Yarkov adds “Vue is an adequate contender for React. It's built on top of similar concepts, but it has some improvements and optimizations applied in the right places that allow you to do specific things better than React. The downside is that it's not using OOP principles, and it's more functional-like. Finally, you have to make a choice based on your needs.” Parikshit Sharma believes “Angular is feature-rich and supports two-way data binding and fit for a large application. I would like to recommend it for enterprise-scale applications or some big project” Francois Lanthier Nadeau says “Blazor can be recommended for huge applications needing lots of computing power. Think AutoCAD or Sketch running in the browser.” Deployment and Hosting Application Deployment is the ending phase of the SDLC process where your application or a website is hosted formally to ensure availability and accessibility to your intended users. The first released product could be an MVP with limited features which is then improved with enhanced features based on the user feedback. Deployment and hosting determine the effectiveness of your system and how quickly it responds to the changes. It is a fact that the technology which executes faster will gain great traction in user adoption. To evaluate for the same, we employed a comparative survey between the top technologies. Ideally, what we concluded with the survey is - Node is the best platform preferably chosen by a majority of professionals (18 out of 37) for smooth deployment and hosting. Imani Francies believes “Because of its single-threaded architecture, Node is best suited for non-blocking, event-driven servers. It was created with real-time, push-based architectures in mind and is used for standard websites and back-end API services.” It is wondering to know that Angular and Blazor are equally desirable for flawless deployment capabilities while Vue and react remained as next preferable with minor estimations. Ashwin Hariharan, a developer advocate at Egen shared his views “I have used it over the years and am more comfortable with it than any other UI web framework. React also lets me develop native mobile applications.” Francois Lanthier Nadeau, CEO of Snipcart expresses “If you're a JavaScript enthusiast and need backend & servers, then Node might come in handy. Often the first thing that frontend devs learn when they get to the backend part of the stack.” Read More: The Most Popular Frameworks - Angular, React And Vue Framework Evolution In just a span of years, we have witnessed so many frameworks having capabilities to address complex issues which the traditional platforms fail to do. In fact, these platforms are impeccably supportive to build flawless applications with modern traits. Although it is quite difficult to judge the best framework to develop an application it can be determined by measuring a specific set of features between the two. With regards to that, we analyzed the reviews of 37 respondents for these five platforms. About 55% of software experts conclude Angular because of its path-breaking features and incremental upgrades from time to time. Deeply analyzing the results, we observed “React” standing as a second-most favorite platform whereas Node and Vue are next in the list with equal priority. However, Blazor remained last due to the diverse nature of web development. Nick Schrader articulates “If you want to save time, money and effort choose Angular since it's been available for a long time already which means this tool is already tried and tested. On the other hand, if you prefer to use a simpler yet powerful tool then React is the best. If your team is not extensively knowledgeable, react can be of great help because of its ease of use.” Ashwin Hariharan from Egen adds “I prefer NodeJS because being a JavaScript runtime allows me to develop scalable back-ends using JavaScript. It saves me from the cognitive overhead of switching between languages and create a full-stack application using a single language.” Anton Yarkov, an adroit software professional says “I would say that node by itself is a foundation for platform-independent web development in the world. You can't avoid it. It's very useful for starters and it's going to support you while you grow and work using all other different frameworks and technologies.” Community Support For any evolving technology, the most important factor that fuels its popularity is “community support”. You might find many technologies with astonishing features, you might also find technologies that are easy to go with. But what makes it stable in the market is its community support. By having effortless community support, users can efficiently interact with high-level experts just as social media to address their concerns and complex challenges seamlessly. According to our stats, 73% of professionals believe Angular has magnificent community support, which was not in the case of other platforms. With a minor variance in priority, Node (68%) and React (66%) are the next leading ones in the list. Vue and Blazor have been less likely preferred due to the weak community support. Anton Yarkov, Senior Software Engineer at Access Softek Inc. clarifies “React is the most dominant web framework in 2021. It has a large community, a lot of experience and practice around it, tons of already made libraries, extensions, and examples that help to build your app from scratch. I like the core ideas of components and overall support of OOP, making me feel much more comfortable as I still write a lot of code using more conventional languages on the back-end.” Nick Schrader from Texas General Insurance believes “Node has strong customer support which allows assistance from well-known organizations. And it is recommended for micro-businesses that will have plans to scale up.” Adoption & Popularity Although there are so many technologies available in the market with distinct and superior feature support their popularity is recognized through how well it is adopted by the professionals. To add more value to this fact, we have made a survey among 37 software experts, and examining each of their opinions, we found React as an anticipated technology with the desired rate of 68% among the professionals. “For developers who are familiar with JavaScript, React is simple to understand. However, even if developers are unfamiliar with JavaScript, React is a good place to learn.”, says Imani Francies, an expert from US Insurance Agents. With a 62% of priority rate, Node has been the next desired platform with decent popularity. 19 out of 37 experts voted Angular which took it third place in the case of popularity and adoption. While Vue and Blazor remained less popular. Anton Yarkov from Access Softek Inc. explains “Blazor is pretty new, and not many developers familiar with it yet. And like any other technology made by Microsoft - it's primarily suitable for projects with .NET around: that are using C#, using .NET frameworks like ASP.NET or WPF, etc. You might not be so comfortable using Blazor if you're not using Microsoft stack.” An anonymous expert says “Node is a runtime rather than a framework itself. All the development environments for Angular, React & Vue are mainly based on Node. So it is mandatory. With exception to Vue, as the production grade Vuejs framework files can be linked through CDN.” Version Migration To keep up the business operations, version migration is necessary and it is therefore, organizations around the world focus on technologies that are good at version migration to avoid facing functional problems. Ashwin Hariharan from Egen believes “When you have a full-stack application that requires a server backend and when you have a team consisting of primarily JavaScript developers, Node is should be preferred.” To simplify your concerns regarding which technology looks best for version migration, we devised a survey in which the majority of respondents endorsed Node for its impeccable version migration support whereas 50% of experts believe react has perfect versioning support. Moreover, some respondents conveyed Vue and Angular with marginal differences for the same. However, Blazor ranks at last in our statistics. Ashwin Hariharan from Egen believes “When you have a full-stack application that requires a server backend and when you have a team consisting of primarily JavaScript developers, Node is should be preferred.” Francois Lanthier Nadeau, CEO of Snipcart suggests Vue and React platforms by saying that “Everywhere! Both small and big scale projects can be built and maintained using React and Vue. Great communities, lots of educational content out there, and great open source core contributors. Easier to get started if you don't have component-based dev experience.” A technical consultant from Infogion says “React is fast because of virtual DOM and a few other things. If you have independently placed dynamic modules on the same page (like a portal displaying live scores of 3 different matches on the same screen at the same time) you should consider React. Remember React is by Facebook; so if you have a social media project don't look around. Go for React.” He also says “It is very good for handling unorthodox or in other words, innovative features. Easy to learn and implement as it is pure JS.” Looking to hire NodeJS Developer ? Your Search ends here. See here Easy integration The increased number of mobile devices has created the need for flawless API integration to ramp up enterprise operations. Therefore, for technologies, it is not only a need to be a fully-featured but also remains supportive for systems integration. To get a better sense of technologies that offer easy integration support, what we have done is performed a survey with 37 professionals in which we found a long tail of reasons for the best technology. More than half of the respondents (51%) tend towards Node technology for its spotless integration support. 46% believe Angular stands the best while 15 out of 37 say react and Vue are comparatively equal with a minor difference in choice ratio. Imani, prefers Node by saying – “It makes use of an event-driven I/O architecture, which is highly powerful and allows for scalable network applications. Ultimately, it's a lightweight, modular, and cross-interface platform for executing coding.” When we insisted him on Vue and React platforms, Imani explored – “With the Electron framework, Vue is ideally suited for developing desktop and smartphone apps, as well as user interfaces and one-page applications.” And says React is recommended - “When speed, scalability, and simplicity are needed, React is the way to go. It enables programmers to build massive web applications that can alter data without requiring a page reload. Dashboards and data visualization are ideal places for React.” Deplorably, Blazor is the least preferred platform when it comes to easy integration. Ashwin Hariharan, a software expert simplifies that - “If you're embarking on a new project, and you need a framework that has a relatively shallow learning curve with great developer experience, then Vue all the way!” An Infogion techno-business consultant says “I would prefer Node to run web and mobile with the same set of APIs with equal performance. Found server expenses to be at least 25% low. Moreover, if you want to replace .NET or PHP or Scala or anything else running the environment, your obvious choice should be Node. Node is Event-driven architecture and it uses less server power. If you have both web and mobile apps like an e-commerce portal better use Node.” Final Choice Ashwin Hariharan, software engineer from Egen Solutions shares “When speaking about performance, the differences between React, Angular and Vue are negligible. Each of these UI frameworks have evolved over the years and have become very mature with a thriving ecosystem. So it is very much a matter of preference. Blazor seems to be behind than the others when it comes to performance on the front-end. However, the adoption of a particular framework in your company must always be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. There is no such thing as the "Best framework". Node is meant for backend development primarily. Depending on your application needs, you're likely to use a combination of Node + one of the front-end frameworks in this comparison.” The above diagram demonstrates the preference rate of each technology given by different Software Experts. A techno-business consultant from infogion shares his opinion that “Honestly I don't think Node should be placed in this lot. Its server technology. For example, we dont usually PHP and Node together as it is pointless. However, we use Angular+Laravel or Vue+Laravel or React+Node...in this way. One more thing, for JavaScript Framework community support is very important since unlikely PHP we don't get a piece of code for almost everything. So your writeup should have a complete section of the various community support options available for each of these frameworks.” An anonymous Software expert points and react and says “When the team is comparably small, developers just wanting deliver the project in quick sprints. Less complicated, simple projects that requires heavy DOM manipulation. Form handling, state management, inter component communication, making API calls require 3rd party libraries so need to choose them carefully. It is basically a library, not a framework.” Pointing to Vue he supposed “It’s said to have best of Angular & React. From my personal experience, we can use it in any type of project. When it comes to larger size projects, we should try to add TypeScript support.” Here are some significant highlights of Angular given by a concealed software expert. He says “Angular provides Robustness of coding structure. It also has –   Strict patterns. Customisable folder structure. Modular application. Configurable build process. Reactive programming through RxJS. Type-safety with typescript. Inbuilt support for routing form handling etc. Also the cli that helps us scaffolding the skeleton app as well as components, pipes, modules.”