Part 1: History of Web Technology Development
Web technology (also known as Web 2, to distinguish it from the concept of Web 3 – blockchain web applications) has come a long way, from the early static websites to the powerful and complex web applications we have today. This journey can be divided into four main phases, each marked by breakthrough steps:
Phase 1: The Foundation (1990s)
This was the formative phase of the web, with the emergence of the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript trio. These three technologies laid the foundation for building static websites, displaying simple information and limited interaction with users.
Phase 2: Progress (2000s)
The appearance of PHP and Flash in this phase marked a significant step forward for the web. PHP, a server-side programming language, enabled complex logic processing, creating dynamic web applications and extending the range of web applications to more areas. Flash, with its ability to create interactive multimedia content, helped to make the web experience richer and more engaging.
Phase 3: Elevation (2010s)
This phase saw the explosion of new web technologies such as jQuery, HTML5, and Node.js. jQuery, a JavaScript library, helped simplify website interaction and event handling. HTML5 brought many new features to web design and programming, such as embedded video, responsive design, and advanced CSS effects. Node.js, a JavaScript environment that enables efficient server-side web application development, opened up the possibility of building larger and more complex web applications.
Phase 4: Refinement (Since 2010)
The emergence of the Single Page Application (SPA) concept in this phase marked a turning point, bringing web technology to a new level. SPAs use popular JavaScript frameworks like React, Angular, and Vue.js to create web applications with a smooth user experience, high interactivity, and powerful scalability. The use of TypeScript, an extension language of JavaScript, helps improve security and organize the codebase more effectively. Thanks to these advances, web applications today can meet all needs from simple to complex, from online shopping websites to large-scale enterprise and financial management systems.
The explosive growth of web technology opens up a myriad of options for developers when starting a new project. So, how do you make an informed decision about the right technology platform?
For the backend, developers have a wide range of popular programming languages to choose from, including PHP, Java, .NET, Node.js, Python, and Django. Each language has its own strengths and weaknesses, and is suitable for different logic processing needs. The choice of the right language depends on the nature of the logical problem to be solved, ensuring efficiency and optimization for the project.
For the frontend, TypeScript has become the dominant language due to its security and tighter code organization than JavaScript. On this basis, Frontend frameworks play a role in improving productivity, promoting code organization, and ensuring consistency between projects by using shared components, layout systems, and JavaScript libraries.
However, choosing the right frontend framework is still a challenge for large-scale web projects. Each framework like React, Angular, and Vue.js has its own unique architecture, optimized for different project scopes.
For small and medium-sized projects with no special characteristics, the differences between frontend platforms become less significant, and the choice of framework is not too important. The criterion here is to suit the experience of the development team. For example, React JS or VueJs can be preferred because of their ease of access and use.
In contrast, for large projects (tens of modules, functions, multiple development teams, and multiple stages), a thorough analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of each framework is essential to choose the most suitable solution.
Part 2: Characteristics of Large Projects
What is considered a large web software project?
In the field of web development, a “large project” refers not only to a specific technology but also to the scale and complexity of the project. A large frontend web project typically has the following characteristics:
Large size: Includes a huge number of features, functions, and user interactions. This leads to a large codebase and potentially hundreds or even thousands of web pages.
Multiple development teams: Due to the large scale of the project, it often requires multiple development teams to work on different parts of the frontend simultaneously. This requires a well-defined architecture and clear communication channels.
Long development lifecycle: Large projects can take months or even years to develop and deploy. This means that the frontend needs to adapt to potential changes and updates over time.
Scalability: The frontend needs to handle potentially high volumes of users and data traffic without affecting performance or user experience.
Frontend framework selection criteria for large projects
With the characteristics of large projects mentioned above, to solve them, we need to choose a platform that meets:
🔎 Modular Architecture: Supports breaking down a frontend project into independent modules that can be developed, tested, and deployed independently.
🔎 Code Organization: The ability to organize a clear source code structure, ensuring maintainability for a large development team.
Popular Frontend Frameworks Today
Angular, developed by Google, is a comprehensive user interface framework with powerful features such as declarative templates, two-way data binding, dependency injection, and routing capabilities.
React, maintained by Facebook, is a widely adopted JavaScript library, famous for its virtual DOM, component-based architecture, and one-way data binding.
Vue.js is an innovative front-end framework known for its simplicity and flexibility.
In addition to Angular, React, and Vue.js, there is also Ember.js, a convention-centric frontend framework, and Svelte, a compiler-based frontend framework known for its performance and small size. However, the communities of these frameworks are still limited, so in this article, we want to focus on 3 frameworks including Angular, React, and Vue.js.
Part 3. Evaluating frontend frameworks according to some criteria
1️. Comparing performance and scalability
Evaluating the performance and scalability of frontend frameworks is essential. We will compare factors such as rendering speed, virtual DOM efficiency, bundle size, and caching. Understanding the impact of these factors on page load time, user experience, and the ability to handle large datasets will support you in the process of choosing the right framework.
Render speed:
React: Famous for its fast-rendering speed thanks to virtual DOM and smart updates.
Vue.js: Fast rendering speed, performance can be affected by the reactive system.
Angular: Slower rendering speed due to complex compiler and MVC architecture.
Virtual DOM efficiency:
React: Uses virtual DOM most efficiently, only updates the changed part.
Vue.js: Good virtual DOM efficiency, reactive system can be more complex than React.
Angular: Lower virtual DOM efficiency due to complex MVC architecture.
Bundle size:
React: Compact bundle size thanks to tree shaking mechanism.
Vue.js: Small bundle size, can be larger than React if using many features.
Angular: Largest bundle size due to many built-in libraries and tools.
Storage mechanism:
React: Supports many storage mechanisms such as Redux, MobX.
Vue.js: Provides Vuex to store and manage application state.
Angular: Uses built-in Angular ngrx to store and manage application state.
Scalability:
React: Good scalability due to modular architecture and high flexibility.
Vue.js: Good scalability, easy to extend the application with new features.
Angular: Good scalability, can be more complex due to MVC architecture.
So, in terms of performance and scalability
React: High rendering performance, compact bundle, high flexibility.
Vue.js: Balances performance, bundle, ease of use.
Angular: Large, complex projects, clear architecture, high stability, many built-in features.
2️. Experience of the programming team and support from the community
Besides performance and scalability, the development experience of the programming team (developer experience) and support from the community are key factors when choosing a framework. We will evaluate the development experience each framework provides, including development tools, debugging capabilities, and testing support. We will also look at the availability of development documentation, the quality of documentation, and the community activity for each framework.
Development Tools:
React: Provides a variety of powerful development tools such as Create React App, React DevTools, and Redux DevTools, which help optimize the development process.
Vue.js: Provides Vue CLI and Vue DevTools, which support efficient development and easy debugging.
Angular: Provides Angular CLI, Angular DevTools, and NgRx, which support comprehensive development with a clear MVC architecture.
Debugging Capabilities:
React: Virtual DOM-based rendering system makes it easy to identify and debug UI issues.
Vue.js: Provides a powerful reactive system that supports efficient debugging.
Angular: Angular’s MVC architecture is beneficial in breaking down problems and simplifying debugging.
However, since Angular’s MVC structure can be more complex than React and Vue.js, it can be more difficult to pinpoint the source of errors, especially for new developers. Some errors may arise due to the way Angular works internally, requiring developers to have in-depth knowledge of the framework to understand and resolve.
3️. Backend Interoperability
When choosing a frontend framework, backend integration is important. We will analyze each framework’s compatibility and integration options with popular backend technologies such as Node.js, Django, or Ruby on Rails. This evaluation includes factors such as API interaction, data retrieval, server-side rendering, and routing to ensure a tightly-knit ecosystem. Specifically,
React uses libraries such as Axios or Fetch API to communicate with the backend API. Provides the React Router library to manage routing. Also uses hooks such as useState and useEffect to manage state and retrieve data.
Vue.js uses libraries such as Axios or Vue Resource to communicate with the backend API. Provides Vue Router to manage routing. Also uses Vuex or other state management libraries to manage state and retrieve data.
Angular provides a built-in HttpClient to communicate with the backend API. Use Angular Router to manage routing. At the same time, use HTTP services and observables to retrieve data and update state automatically.
Thus, in terms of interacting with the Backend, all three frameworks provide powerful backend integration with many options and supporting libraries. However, Angular is still superior because it has integrated the HttpClient component as a packaged library instead of directly using Axios or Fetch like React and Vuejs.
In short, for large-scale web application development projects, Angular is superior thanks to its clear architecture, scalability, and many pre-written libraries. However, development requires a team of experienced programmers. In addition, it is necessary to calculate in advance the factor that some tasks will have less contribution from the community because the number of experienced Angular programmers is less than React or Vuejs.
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