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GitHub Stars !== Usage: React Is Still Blowing Vue and Angular Away
- nashashmi 8y agoMaybe star power is more of a sign of acceleration than usage. For example, if I have several projects in react, and then I start to move into Vue, it is not like I am going to convert my past projects over to Vue as well. I'll only be starting my future projects in Vue. So that means more and more developers are beginning to get interested into Vue.
- cokelee 8y agoOne observation worth remembering: Enterprise usage would most likely be hosted locally / downloaded once per version and used by N internal projects.
- hinkley 8y agoArtifactory is a pain in the butt, but it’s atill a lot better than sharing a gigabit line with twenty other developers, the IT dept and those assholes in management who watch the ball gane on their work computer.
- baby 8y agoI agree that number of use is a good factor when choosing a framework. But Vue has incredible tools, resources and community so don't let that get in your way. I've tried all three and Vue is just such a pleasure to use.
- bovermyer 8y agoOK. I will still continue to eschew Angular and React in favor of Vue. It works with my brain best.
- kankroc 8y agoPeople have wildly different views on what Github stars are. Some see it as a way to bookmark project you find interesting while other simply stars whenever they feel like the project is impressive. Bottomline is: it's not a good metric, it's simply a way to see how "popular" something is and how likely it is that some random developer saw your project. While anecdotal, I've starred Vue because I see it as a cool project and I've starred React as another cool project. In both case, I did toy projects with the frameworks and never used it in production. On the other hand, apache/httpd I did a lot of projects with and I did not give it a star yet. In my opinion stars are not endorsement, they're a questionable way to measure how likely it is that your coworker have heard of a given project.
- 49531 8y agoAlso having created, promoted, and contributed to repositories with >100 stars it seems that ~10% of people who view the repository will star it. Not sure how reliable it is but I've always taken stars to indicate how many people have seen the project.
- styfle 8y agoI have a couple projects that are getting a decent amount of stars recently and I'm looking at the stats for the last two weeks: - One has 3750 unique visitors, and 680 stars in 2 weeks - Another has 80 unique visitors, 20 stars in 2 weeks
- hahamrfunnyguy 8y agoI use 'em like bookmarks.
- prophesi 8y agoYeah, a more interesting article would be "Github Stars === x", because I've never been sure what they're for.
- bamboo_7 8y agoOhhhhh, now I understand why that one ex-coworker that 'follow' stars about 20 projects a week. I always used them as bookmarks and I couldn't believe that they ever were going to use that many things.
- tropshop 8y agoReact ecosystem heavily encourages the use of build tools dependent on NPM package management. Vue users are more likely to bypass NPM. They are often on-boarded with the gentler approach most familiar to those who "sprinkle in some jQuery" - Drop in a <script> tag and you are ready to rock. This approach is more likely to use a local file or from CDN.
- chrisco255 8y agoCurious how Vue users are getting by without Webpack / Parcel for Babel and maintaining 3rd party dependencies via NPM? Copying and pasting Vue components from Stack Overflow? That approach may be fine for small web pages, but for commercial applications, it's not a viable approach.
- cosarara 8y agoYou don't need babel if you don't use jsx (which for vue is the default). I've personally only used vue the way you would use jquery. Adding a full webpack/babel/npm stack with a build step and all would be too much work; I barely understand what webpack is in the first place.
- neurotrace 8y agoIf you barely understand what Webpack is then you probably aren't in a good position to argue for or against it's usage. You do need Babel if you intend to use newer JavaScript features but still have to support older browsers or even many mobile browsers. If you're only writing with ES5 features then you don't need any transpilation but many people want to use the new features available in newer versions of JavaScript/ECMAScript. Webpack is great for, among other things, combining your code into single packages instead of including many script tags. It's also useful for optimizing the output of your build in various ways which makes it very valuable for large-scale applications.
- tropshop 8y agoWe avoid Webpack/Parcel and NPM dependencies entirely. I understand that convenience wins for most people, but it comes with a cost. Dependencies are magically stitched together with limited developer insight, arbitrary 3rd party code can make it into your production bundle on a whim, and it is far from "optimized" output. We use rollup[1] for our production bundle. We manage all 3rd party dependencies by source control. We don't need to rely on NPM for ES5/ES6/CommonJS/AMD/Modules - We have full control of each dependency to use the code that is most fit. Sometimes that is already checked-in by the author, sometimes we need to build it, sometimes we can use the modern ES6 code directly, sometimes we can remove duplicate polyfills already in our bundle. It takes bit more discipline, but the extra security, optimal build, and peace of mind knowing how things work, are well worth the effort to us. [1] https://rollupjs.org https://rollupjs.org
- briandear 8y agoI star plenty of things that might be crap, but have something interesting about them. Not saying that applies here, but some of my favorite libraries aren’t starred because I use them so much and have the page memorized. Stars are a terrible metric. For example, I don’t have Rails starred.
- md224 8y agoConsidering FuckItJS has 2.9k stars, I would hope that stars !== usage. :)
- KeitIG 8y agoOf course GitHub stars do not show usage, it shows interest. Considering Vue came later, we can also say its interest grew much faster. There is no winner anyway, both React and Vue are amazing tools giving you the power to solve the same problem in different ways: building UIs.
- hinkley 8y agoBack when dinosaurs roamed the earth and we all walked to school uphill, everybody used Struts for server side page rendering. And at least a half of them hated it. When something better came along they dropped it like a rock. Usage is a poor predictor of future sucesses. If people ar rooting for someone else, people have already started turning on you.
- gakos 8y agoAppreciate !== vs !=, no type conversion on Stars and Usage in comparison. Also, agreed. Would be more interesting to crawl all repos to see which have React vs Vue vs Angular for a more detailed understanding of usage.
- taylorswift_ 8y agoWhy do people care which framework "blows" the other one away? In my opinion, it literally doesn't matter at all and arguing over such things seems amateur. Use whatever tool gets the job done.
- chrisco255 8y agoI mean, I could technically dig a hole in the ground with a spoon...it would get the job done, after all...or I could use a shovel or a back hoe. All three are capable of digging holes. Discussing which tools work best is an important question in software development. After all, the tools you choose can be force multipliers in your overall productivity as a team or organization.
- taylorswift_ 8y ago> Discussing which tools work best is an important question in software development. I completely agree, but would you write an article titled "Spoons still blowing away Forks in digging holes"?
- chrisco255 8y agoMaybe...if Forks were more popular on Github?
- bausshf 8y agoIs this a crossover episode?
- mohaine 8y agoNo, because the cost of switching between the two is roughly zero. If switching took 6 months and $100K there would be lots of articles in the hole digging community about when and why to pick between the two.
- dictum 8y ago> Why do people care which framework "blows" the other one away? I suppose two factors: - The scale/"startups = growth" tenet of Silicon Valley/Wall Street trickling down to micro business decisions — pick as many of (whatever is most popular | comes from Massively Scaled Company | used by companies trying to Massively Scale | growing in popularity fast) as possible - Feedback loop of bosses/managers who make technical decisions based on hirability/availability of paid long-term technical support/brand name (In 2018, nobody ever gets fired for choosing whatever is the equivalent of IBM now)
- toufique 8y agoGitHub Stars !== Usage. GitHub Stars ~ Interestingness.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- IanDrake 8y agoI wonder to what extent npm downloads can be attributed to version changes.
- frou_dh 8y agoWhile we're talking about starring, here's a great webapp that lets you tag and organise your existing GitHub stars beyond the anemic official capability (filter by language) https://astralapp.com/ https://astralapp.com/ (I'm unaffiliated)
- nostalgeek 8y agoA lot of people using Vue just link Vue from a CDN and drop it in a webpage as a script, without using NPM. Does the stats account that fact? Sure you can do that with React as well, but you wont in production with JSX as one needs to compile it with node.js toolchain. Same for Angular. Vue usage is more like jQuery usage than React in practice.
- lhorie 8y agoYou can also look at job postings as another metric of popularity. Last I checked, Vue wasn't sought nearly as much as React.
- MentallyRetired 8y agoAs a recent job seeker (and attainer), I can attest. React is multitudes more in-demand from an employment perspective.
- O4epegb 8y agounpkg stats: React 138,829,602 VueJs 33,952,225
- iammiles 8y agoAfter building two large applications using React, Redux, Redux Sagas, and Typescript, I feel burnt out. I'm honestly surprised Elm or ReasonML aren't more popular as they seem to provide all those aforementioned libraries in one go.
- duderific 8y agoVue is ascending precisely because it combines some of the better features of those libraries - most notably, the centralized data store concept, which was the driving force behind developing Redux (having your state in one place instead of spread out across many components.)
- rk06 8y agoThe problem with elm and reasonML is that they are entirely different languages. Untill they are validated by big companies like Google, FaceBook or Microsoft, they won't become mainstream.
- AngeloAnolin 8y agoNot really big fan of articles like this. Why the need to compare and say this one has more stars, or is more used, etc. I am thankful that we have these frameworks / libraries / modules that have greatly helped in our software development process. At the end of the day, what matters is developer productivity, their happiness and satisfaction (regardless of the toolkit they use), and the overall value that their product brings to their intended target (outcomes). P.S. I use Vue, React, Angular, whichever suits the need of the client the most.
- w0m 8y agoIf approaching a choice of tech stack in a bubble; it can be a useful datapoint to know which is more widely used. Waaaay back when, maybe I would have chosen jQuery instead of MooTools if I had better metrics, both did everything I wanted. Though to be fair; by the time it would have mattered I had moved on.
- symmitchry 8y agoIn general I agree with you, but our company is very "consistency" heavy. So someone high up has to make a decision: which framework to adopt, because once that decision is made, it's sticking for a long time. And sadly I don't think developer happiness & satisfaction are real concerns for a company that knows how to make money.
- pgm8705 8y agoIt's a reasonable expectation that a framework with more users will have more documentation, more examples, more contributions from the community, etc. While I agree that a developer should choose based on what will make them most productive and happy, popularity is still an important factor. When comparing 2 or more frameworks or libraries to use, I always check out the github repo and look at the number of stars. I don't see a problem with this article pointing out that this metric may not be the best indicator of usage.
- bonestamp2 8y agoAlso, in enterprise consultant built apps we often have to consider what kind of talent we're going to be able to get for that project. It's much easier to get Angular and React developers than Vue developers at the moment. That could certainly change in a year of course.
- bhouston 8y agoI think that Vue.js is on the ascendance. I mentioned this earlier. It is on track to exceed React.js if things continue in this fashion. Github stars are a reflection of interest. I do worry that Vue.js is mostly one guy, you like to at least have a higher bus factor than one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor
- rmason 8y agoVue was started by one guy. Vue is lead by one guy. But there's a core team behind Vue and it's growing ;<).
- NuSkooler 8y ago...and usage != "better".
- ct520 8y agoI for one measure my developer e-peen (used to get me real women interwebz dates) by how many stars my framework of choices uses. I am shocked and appalled by these findings.
- sidcool 8y agoReact is indeed the new jQuery.
- aldoushuxley001 8y agoIsn't Vue the new jQuery? Because you can drop it in so much easier
- DanHulton 8y agoIn usage, maybe. React is the "people are learning this instead of raw javascript" kind of default that jQuery became. I hope it does the same thing that jQuery did, and that is essentially make itself unnecessary in a lot of ways. Take all the really good features of React and make them browser-native. To a certain degree, this is already happening. Web components are inching closer every day.
- hesarenu 8y agoReact apps would require more raw JavaScript then say Vue/angular with their own template logic stuff.
- galfarragem 8y agoWhile Vue fits my brain _way_ better, most companies use React. Why? Their decision makers feel safer. (FB backing) This makes me reluctant to jump in and burn bridges.
- tomhallett 8y agoOne thing to think about is what is the motivation/incentive for someone to take a specific action. For me personally, I will "star" something that I find interesting AND I think I might forget how to find it again. Example: people might forget the exact name/repo for colors.js so they will be incentivized to star it, but no one will forget "apache". That's why vue might gain more stars than the current dominant players (react and/or angular)
- bobinux 8y agoMy Pentium 4 CPU fan is still blowing better than any of these JS frameworks will ever will.
- lsalvatore 8y agoNo one I work with has ever even brought up the possibility of switching from React to Vue, let alone counting Github stars. Compare to when React came out, it was immediate consensus that we need to switch from Backbone to React. When Angular gained popularity, we did not have an urge to switch because it felt unclear what the scope and direction of Angular actually was. React (really JSX) solves the single problem of making HTML a part of JavaScript. For me, it's game over, they have solved the problem or came close enough to where I'm comfortable staying in the React ecosystem for the rest of my career. With React there's no weird "v-if ng-if" template logic that you have to grapple with. To me, Handlebars already gave me enough taste of how horrible and limiting maintaining template logic outside of components is. Just my take. No desire to even download Vue and try it out, I don't foresee any productivity gains from it.
- MentallyRetired 8y agoI've tried Vue out and have pretty clear gains in productivity, personally. For me, it really zeroed in on the pain points of React.
- crooked-v 8y agoTo me, React also has the killer feature of being "generic enough" that I can see directly migrate-able variants of it still being used in ten years. The backend may change, but the basic setup of JSX -> function transpiling with param-attribute equivalency is simple enough to be a new foundational structure.
- lsalvatore 8y agoYep, React seems to have been built from the beginning as a new foundation. It leveraged ES6 features just as they were coming out, so we got to learn a new way to write JavaScript and HTML at the same time.
- baddox 8y agoThat's a big one for me, particularly with the way I prefer to write all my React components: as stateless functional components (just a function that takes props as its only argument and returns some JSX). For adding state, lifecycle methods, etc. I'm using recompose, which is also generic enough that I could easily see myself reimplementing it for some future view library.
- jmvoodoo 8y agoVue, React and Angular (and many other frameworks) have enough critical mass that they aren't going away, and will continue to get regular updates. This, combined with how well the framework fits your particular use case and team, is all that matters. Why we focus on which one is "biggest" is beyond me. Biggest doesn't matter. Big enough does. Once a framework achieves that size, it can be considered for things other than personal toy projects, and all the other factors are what should guide your final decision.
- acupofnope 8y agowhy does this matter? (not trying to be argumentative. genuinely curious)
- mrlala 8y agoI found Angular to be a godsend. I'm not a web developer by any means, but I wanted to move some of my applications from pure C# to be client-side web based, with a still powerful C# server end. Angular2 allowed me to very simply create a fullscale web application which is MANAGABLE. It's OK if I don't touch any web code for a month or two, I can go back to it and it's very clear how all the components are laid out etc. I find a lot of frameworks require that you are already an extremely knowledgeable web developer.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- mfer 8y agoMooTools is in wider use on the web than Angular, React, and Vue.js combined. https://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/javascript_library/all https://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/javascript_library... It's funny, to me anyway, that this post look at the developer/development side of things rather than the end consumers of apps/sites side of things.
- yzmtf2008 8y agoIsn't the survey you posted, counting the "number of pages" (which isn't exactly a good metric in the world of SPAs), even funnier by entirely looking at the development side of things?
- mike-cardwell 8y agoI've never heard anyone say that you can do X in Vue much easier than in React. I've heard a bunch of people say that it's easier to learn than React, but I found React very very easy to learn anyway. Basically, I've not heard a convincing reason to look into Vue yet, so I haven't. Also, people contact me about jobs involving React several times a week. I've never been contacted about a job involving Vue. Not once. I'm sure Vue is good, but shrug, so is React.
- abritinthebay 8y agoI don't think it should be framed as Vue vs React in the first place. They approach similar (but not quite the same) problems in different ways. They are both really great! It doesn't have to be zero sum.
- fiatjaf 8y agoThe Vue community is not friendly.
- bartaxyz 8y agoI was thinking what is the reason that Vue have more stars than React given it is not used more (perhaps in China it is). My guess would be that it's because Vue is more community driven than React. Vue is dependent only on community while React is dependent on Facebook & community. Therefore I believe Vue community share more excitement for the project.
- pull_my_finger 8y agoI had a friend say something that I think is a pretty good way to look at it. He said: "React is the blockbuster hit at the box office, while Vue is the critics' darling" The big question is if it's good enough to replace what's already established. Things will probably equalize eventually, but by the time Vue overtakes, if it does, there will probably be some kind of new and shinier thing that intends to replace both of them.
- luord 8y agoThat's alright to me, I use vue in my own projects and react at work and while I greatly prefer one, I don't hate the other (anymore). An aside note is that I wish there were fewer developers in this type of threads pretending that the abomination that is JSX makes react better than vue... which can use JSX just fine.
- rv77ax 8y agoI think using number of downloaded will also count number of build on each commit. Imagine if you have three branch in your repository, each push will rebuild the project (redownload dependencies). If you push three times a day it will download three dependencies three times. Also, some project include their dependencies to VCS which only count once per build.