5 Vue.js Benefits That Make Life Better

What is Vue.js?

Vue.js is described as “a progressive framework for building user interfaces.” What differentiates this framework from other JavaScript web development frameworks is that its architecture is designed to be incrementally adaptable. We at ProCoders love the framework for its lightweight nature that makes it super convenient to build apps quickly.

This article analyses some of the various reasons why it is an efficient framework for developing web apps. We would look at Vue.js advantages and disadvantages and also offer some lessons from our own experience in building web apps using this framework. However, before then, there needs to be a brief introduction.

Evan You created Vue.js while working at Google as a creative technologist. Thus in some ways, it is similar to Google’s JavaScript framework Angular (like in the use of the virtual DOM, plus Vuex for Redux-like state management).

However, it is designed to solve the challenges that exist(ed) with Angular and React. Of course, there are pros and cons of Vue.js, but the latter outweigh the former. It is open-source and is, in fact, backed by donations from sponsors and partners, which include Vehikl, Modus Create, Rangle, Laravel, StoreKit, DevExpress, and many more.

This open approach has made the framework much-loved in the developer community and despite being an indie project, its functionalities, support, and adoption rival those of Facebook’s React and Google’s Angular.

Vue.js currently has almost 200,000 stars (186k, as against React’s 171k and Angular’s 74.7k) on GitHub, showing the amount of interest that developers have found in the framework. Ever since the first version was introduced in 2014 (7 years ago), it has gone on to become a very important front end web development framework powering millions of websites around the world.

However, there are Vue.js pros and cons that must be understood before choosing the framework for your project.

Top 5 Advantages of Vue.js

The benefits of building a website with Vue.js are immense. Only introduced 7 years ago, it is amazing what feats the framework has achieved.

1. Easy to Learn

Vue.js is loved by developers because it is versatile and lightweight, yet this does not take anything away from its functionality, which rivals those of heavier frameworks such as React and Angular. Anyone who has some experience in front-end development can master it within a couple of days.

The only prerequisite for understanding it is to understand the ‘big three’ web development technologies: JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. For other frameworks like Angular and React, you would need to learn other languages in order to use them effectively, in Angular’s case, you need to learn to use TypeScript; Vue.js has no such requirement.

2. Progressiveness

The framework is correctly defined as progressive, which means that it is incrementally adoptable; it gradually introduces additional markup to the HTML code. In doing so, it adapts to the needs of the developer, instead of requiring a developer to rewrite an existing application or start a server.

Vue.js can be added to your HTML code as a simple script tag and it progressively extends, adapting to your needs, until it can manage the entire layer. That’s why it is called the ‘new jQuery’ in some quarters. This is one of the major pros of using Vue.js particularly when a developer has to transition from another framework.

3. Community and Support

Angular is backed by Google, React is backed by Facebook, but Vue.js is entirely backed by the open-source community, relying on the contributions of local developers and the donation of sponsors to forge ahead. Yet, the latter has managed to significantly challenge Angular and React as the framework of choice for web development.

Vue.js benefits developers by providing excellent and responsive support. Most queries to the official platform are resolved in a matter of hours; the same goes for GitHub issues. The platform also sticks to consistent release cycles to update information and support guides.

4. Best of Both Worlds

Another advantage of Vue.js is that since it is inspired by Angular and React, it learns from and takes all the best features of both Angular and React, while discarding the not-so-good ones. For instance, like React, Vue.js features the Virtual DOM but it uses automatic dependency management to automatically determine which components are re-rendered when the state is changed.

In React, this doesn’t happen by default and you have to manually apply the shouldComponentUpdate method to each component. Also, Vue.js uses some Angular-like templating syntax, but without requiring developers to learn a new language (TypeScript). This remains a strong pro to hire Vue.js developers.

5. Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) Architecture

Any discussion of vue benefits would be incomplete without reference to its architecture. The MVVM architecture that Vue.js uses is excellent for enhancing UI experience. Basically, MVVM simplifies user interface event-driven programming. This improves system performance.

Mind you, this framework mainly focuses on the ViewModel layer of this MVVM architecture. By separating the user interface from the application logic, it eliminates any need for application redesign when the user interface gets outdated; instead, one can easily just plug in a desired template to the application and keep it running.

Some Disadvantages of Vue.js

There is no perfect technology out there. Even the best technologies have certain drawbacks and the drawbacks of Vue.js are highlighted in this section, even though they take nothing out of the excellence of the framework. However, knowing what to expect performance-wise and functionality-wise can help you to more correctly determine if the framework would be useful for building your app. So, here we go:

• Lack of scalability: presently, it is mainly used for building lightweight web apps such as Single Page Applications as well as user interfaces. It lacks the scalability that enables building large complex applications. This may be due to the framework still being an indie project not backed by any technology giant. However, this limitation is real and should be among your consideration when choosing the tech stack for your app.

• Lack of plugins: it is not yet as established as the likes of Angular and React; therefore, it has fewer plugins than the latter two. Usually, developers have to turn to different languages to overcome the challenges that result from this issue.
• Small community: there are many innovations and events going on in the community side, but the community is really small and composed of many non-English speakers. Not to worry though, if you are hiring from ProCoders; our developers are proficient in English and use the framework excellently.

Websites Built With Vue.js

This section lists some of the most popular websites and web apps that are built using Vue.js. In addition, you can find a complete list of websites using Vue.js on their platforms here on its GitHub page. You can also use Wappalyzer to analyse the technology stack of any website and determine if a website is using Vue.js.

• Google Careers: it would be surprising to many people to find out that Google does use Vue.js. Google Careers, an open platform for applying for positions at Google is built with Vue.js.
• GitLab: DevOps platform, GitLab has been using Vue.js since 2016. Justifying its decision, some of the reasons why the team chose Vue.js include its simplicity and ease of use and that it requires less code. In describing its use of Vue.js after one year, a GitLab staff developer wrote “A lot of our problems have been solved, by us and others.” In fact, till now, GitLab maintains a Vue style guide for writing high-quality Vue.js code as part of its development style guides.

• 9Gag: 9Gag is a popular social network for sharing memes and short videos. Founded in 2008, 9Gag would go on to change their site layout and the JS framework ten years later. It transitioned from React and then began a journey with Vue.js that has powered their website app till date. 9Gag presently has several million users as well as over 2 billion monthly social video views.
• Upwork: Upwork, one of the world’s most popular freelance platforms uses Vue.js on its website, as well as Nuxt.js (and other Upwork alternatives), a web application framework that’s based on Vue.js. Upwork ranks #303 globally on Alexa’s global internet engagement ranking, attracting millions of visitors per day.

• Behance: Behance is a global platform for creatives (especially designers and illustrators) to share their projects and showcase their best work. Behance, owned by Adobe, has over 12 million users and projects on the website have been viewed over 4 billion times.
• NBC Sports: NBC Sports is an American sports news website that shows videos, live streams, schedules, sports, and so on.

• Tencent QQ: Tencent QQ, or simply QQ, is China’s most popular super app and the world’s 4th most visited website, according to Alexa rankings. Via instant messaging, QQ provides a variety of services including social games, microblogging (Q Zone), shopping, music, and the likes.

What Projects You May Use Vue.js Benefits in?

If you go through the list of Vue.js projects, you are sure to find a variety of applications of Vue.js for building web apps performing different functions. Versatility is one of the advantages of Vue.js. One Vue.js website offers ‘Online Training for Language Proficiency Tests’, another is ‘A streaming website for creating internet television’, while yet another functions as a ‘Business communication service.’

There is almost no type of project you want to build that it cannot handle. However, we would focus on the best and most popular kinds of projects that can be built with Vue.js here. Each point identifies a key feature of Vue.js, its benefit, and an example of an app that it enables. Basically, this section highlights the practical benefits of using Vue.js. You can hire remote developers to carry out your project.

Building a ToDo App with Composition API

The Composition API to share and reuse code more easily, especially when dealing with large applications. It helps developers to organise code logically in order to maintain and manage complex components better. With this Composition API, you can build a simple ToDo app with easily reusable code.

User Registration App with Vuex

Vuex is the state management pattern and library for Vue.js. Its equivalent in React is Redux. Vuex stores all an application’s components, stateful or stateless. If you are not ready to apply Vue.js to your entire application at once, you can start by using Vuex to build the user registration and login page. Vuex and webpack can also be used to build a simple web chat app in Vue.js.

Blog with Vue Router

The Vue.js official router includes features that greatly ease the process of building Single Page Applications. It has features that enable you to customise scroll behaviour and navigation control, link with automatic active CSS classes, and use nested route/view mapping, among others. With this feature you can easily build a Hacker News clone or your own blog from scratch.

Dynamic Update Apps with Virtual DOM

One of the best features of Vue.js, gleaned from React, is the concept of the Virtual DOM. By bypassing the real DOM for a virtual one, the app becomes more efficient in displaying dynamic content updates.

More so, using the virtual DOM instead of the real DOM keeps the app lightweight and the virtual DOM can even be eventually synced with the real DOM through a library. Apps like Netflix benefit from using the virtual DOM and while Netflix is actually built with React, you can build a similar app on Vue.js based on the same concept, such is Vueflix, a Netflix clone.

Our Experience in Vue.js

ProCoders has had significant experience building web apps with Vue.js for various clients. You can always reach us to outsource app development or for your outstaffing needs if you wonder how to hire Vue.js developers. Our experience ranges across different fields and industries, including Travel, Internet of Things (IoT), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), media production, entertainment, etc.

The first example is a web app for a British tour company, Blue-o-Two; the app was to enable customers to easily find and book tours. Another example is a customer-facing CRM tool for Distilj, a distillery located in Kentucky, the United States. With the app, Distilj’s customers were able to customise their bourbon production; this enabled the company to deliver a better user experience.

The scope of requirements for our work with Same Day Courier Network (SDCN), a trading platform for the transport industry, was more different than the other two. ProCoders had to integrate with SDCN’s IT staff to update the code base of their web and mobile applications as well as expand their functionalities to meet their evolving business needs.

Even though ProCoders is located in Ukraine, we have been able to handle these projects from companies in Great Britain, the United States, and Israel efficiently. We maintain teams of development professionals and apply their skills to any project we receive.

Through these staff augmentation services, our clients at home and most especially abroad have remained consistently satisfied. Therefore, to find developers for startup and develop your next app using Vue.js or other technologies, look no further than ProCoders. Working with us helps you to unlock all the benefits of Vue.js.

Conclusion

Vue.js has a lot of attractive features, but it is definitely not for all kinds of projects. This article has been dedicated to analysing various Vue pros and cons. For one, you may experience issues building large, complex websites. However, as long as the website and its codebase are lightweight, you are good to go with Vue.js. Once you have determined what frameworks to work with, the next thing is to determine who builds the app.

That’s what ProCoders is available for. We assemble teams to build web and mobile apps for our clients, who are mostly offshore. Contact us today to discuss requirements for your next Vue.js app and hire remote developers.