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Without taking anyone’s side in the battle backend vs frontend, it is fair to say both are equally important when it comes to delivering great products to your users. Frontend development is important as it represents the first point of contact with clients/customers, and if it doesn’t function seamlessly and slows down or deteriorates user experience, it can cost you more than a few clients. Everything your users interact with comes under the domain of front-end development and if you want to keep your retention rate high, you need to do your homework and find the most suitable front-end framework for your venture. In this post, we are looking at up-and-coming frameworks that are clearing their way in the popularity contest.

First, and foremost, let’s take a step back and briefly explain what a framework is. In software development, a framework represents a very useful tool that provides pre-written reusable components that enable creation of user interfaces in a more efficient and scalable way. Frameworks allow developers to save more time and write more consistent code with a reduced number of errors.

Frameworks are a widely used tool in the development process, but you need to take into careful consideration which one is best suited for your demands. You need to evaluate the needs of your business, projects, preferences to find out which is the perfect match for you. Even though it is possible to use almost any framework to develop anything, some might fit better and boost your product even further.

So, who are the top players in this field you need to consider?

For years now, there have been 3 major players dominating the field in terms of frontend frameworks: React, Angular and Vue. These have been the most famous and most popular ones when it comes to frontend development, each with its advantages and applications. Let’s briefly go through each of these frameworks and list their pros and cons.

Some of the most listed advantages that made people fall in love with these frameworks are:

React

• Easy to learn
• Reusable components
• High performance
• Provides access to many great tools
• Reduces coding
• Large community

Angular

• Maintained by Google
• Coding made easier
• High performance
• Two-way data binding
• Large community

Vue

• Lightweight
• Detailed documentations
• Easy to learn
• Flexible and customizable
• Simple integration

Yet every popular framework has the other side of the coin:

React

• Lack of documentation
• JSX complexity
• Fast development pace
• Incomplete tooling set

Angular

• Not suitable for beginner learners
• SEO limitations
• Too many versions
• Heavy framework

Vue

• Lack of support
• Lack of plugins
• Language barrier (most of discussions are in Chinese)
• Lack of experienced experts

According to the 2022 State of JS survery React, Vue and Angular are still holding strong in terms of user retention: 67.9% respondents said they would use React again, Vue 35.7%, and Angular 20.8%, meaning these technologies are still here to stay, with React blazing its path of glory for some time now.

Competition on the rise?

Even though these stars are still popular, there are some new ones showing up on the horizon. The top 3 to look out for in the future are showing up to be Solid, Svelte and Qwik. React, Angular and Vue win in the retention category, but new kids on the block represent the top 3 developers would like to learn in the future – with 46% surveyed developers said would like to learn Solid and Qwik, and 45% Svelte (source: 2022 State of JS survery).

Who are these new rising stars and what do they have to offer?

Solid is a relatively new framework that came to the scene in 2020. It was created by a software engineer Ryan Carniato, inspired by React, yet, unlike React it doesn’t use the Virtual DOM. It is a declarative JavaScript library for creating user interfaces, and it designed for creating single-page applications. Its simplicity might be one of the reasons it is on “to learn” developers list, as it has a simple API that enables developers to fast forward and build web apps quickly, without any complex coding processes. With speed being everything nowadays, Solid has specifically been designed to provide high performance to larger apps as it is built on reactivity, meaning you only update parts of the app dependent on reactive values. Similarly to React and Vue it uses a programming model that implies components that react to changes and update UI automatically.

Following the trends, Solid continues down the path of small-footprint technology that requires minimal resources. It reduces necessary app space on devices and data usage which is and will be a “sine qua non” requirement for apps in the future.  Moreover, the framework itself is lightweight compared to its predecessors, giving another bonus point in its favor. Another advantage of this up-and-coming framework is that its flexibility provides developers with basic building blocks allowing them to customize it to their own needs. Microsoft, Atlassian and Red Hat are just some of the companies that use Solid to build web apps and we believe more are to come in the future.

However, it needs to be pointed out that as a relatively new framework, Solid has a limited ecosystem and no official documentation, as well as limited third-party integrations.

Svelte is an open-source frontend framework created by Rich Harris and released in 2016, and gaining momentum ever since. This framework found the inspiration in React and Vue as well, but with one difference that particularly stands out. Svelte has made a significant change by shifting the work from runtime to compile time.  Rather than relying on a tool during runtime, the code is compiled to vanilla JavaScript during the building stage, allowing the application to start without any external dependencies.

This kind of paradigm shift allows for creation of fast and lightweight applications, with the help of reactive programming at the core of this framework as well. Alongside speed and efficiency, another feature that makes Svelte appealing is its component-based architecture that promotes modular approach, allowing for creation of multiple reusable components.

In 2021, Svelte was voted as the most loved web framework in annual Stack Overflow survey. Its unrivaled performance and speed are what draws the spotlight of developer’s attention as well as its simplicity to learn.

Some of the established companies using Svelte are GoDaddy, Rakuten, The New York Times etc.

As the case with Solid, Svelte is a young framework which means there is still lack of support and tooling, and a smaller community compared to already established frameworks.

Last, but not least, on our list of frameworks to watch in future is Qwik. Qwik was first released in 2020 by a team of Google developers (namely Misko Hevery in collaboration with Adam Bradley and Manu Almeida) with the goal of achieving top performance with HTML first approach and minimal JavaScript. What makes its performance so great is that it delays execution of JavaScript as long as possible.

Qwik introduced the concept of “resumability” that implies, as they mention in their documentation “…pausing execution in the server and resuming execution in the client without having to replay and download all of the application logic.”  Qwik avoids using hydration to improve first interaction and, instead, as its creator Misko Hevery mentiones in a post “It [can] continues where the server left off. There is but the tiniest amount of code to execute on the client.”

Other great feature of Qwik is that it’s progressive. This framework delivers sites with no JavaScript and only downloads the code when it is required by specific actions performed by the user rather than downloading everything beforehand.

As one of the modern frameworks, the disadvantage we face with Qwik is the same as with the two previous ones: lack of support and small community. Moreover, as it is designed for small to medium-sized applications, there could be a number of limitations when developing more complex applications.

Final thoughts

With everchanging tech scene, new solutions are bound to come and pave their way as better alternatives at how we do things. Speed is now of the essence when delivering content to users, and these 3 new frameworks are competing to improve it even further. Whether they will rise to the challenge and become new champions, remains to be seen in the future.

Feel free to share your thoughts with us in comments regarding the future of frontend development.