Why Vue?

Why not Angular, React, Ember, or any other good frameworks out there?

There are many reasons I would choose Vue over any other framework for a fresh project. I always base my reasoning on rationale and practicality.

Remember, these are tools which help us get the job done more efficiently, so you need to pick the right tool for the right job. If you have a hammer everything looks like a nail. Recognizing which tool is suitable for the task can save you a lot of time and money in the long run.

Here are a couple of reasons to pick Vue

A short and sweet learning curve, easy to get up and running: Getting up and running with Vue is quite straightforward. You don’t need to use a module bundler like Webpack or Parcel. You also don’t need a module bundler to React. Removing the need for module bundlers reduces the barriers to getting started.

Getting up and running with Vue is quite straightforward. You don’t need to use a module bundler like Webpack or Parcel. You also don’t need a module bundler to React. Removing the need for module bundlers reduces the barriers to getting started. Strong open-source community: Learning a framework is a huge investment and we want to make sure we’re learning the right tool at the right time.

Whilst React and Angular are backed by big companies, Vue is mostly backed by a very active open source community.

A single entity deciding what to do with a widely used tool is actually riskier than a non-traditional, corporate-backed tool.

Let’s say company X builds and maintains tool Z. What happens if company X goes bust and decides to close doors? What happens if they decide to “re-allocate resources” and ditch the project?

Judging by the Patreon page, the core Vue team is well-off and the project has super long term goals.

Friendly migration path for legacy projects that don’t want to commit 100% to a single page app (SPA): Dropping Vue in a project and slowly migrating a huge monolithic application to a single page app is a proven path.

I had a great conversation with a technical executive for an established SaaS startup. The startup has a product and is making revenue. The conversation went as follows:

Me: Why Vue? I’m fascinated since it’s not a traditional tech choice in this city. Why not React or Angular since there are more React and Angular developers around here?

Why Vue? I’m fascinated since it’s not a traditional tech choice in this city. Why not React or Angular since there are more React and Angular developers around here? Founder: We are a small team with no dedicated frontend expert. We want to rewrite our frontend, add new features and clean up the code. We don’t want to commit rewriting completely yet. Using Vue with our monolithic application and writing new features works great for us.

Vue plays well with existing server-side rendered (SSR) applications like Rails, Laravel or Node.

Vue gets along well with SSR apps

Learning Vue is fun: This my favorite reason to learn Vue. Vue is fun, Vue is fresh. We’re developers, we love to have fun.

Vue components are like lego blocks. Each component has an encapsulated view, logic, and styles. Piecing together the components is like putting legos together.

Vue and React have the best tooling by far. All of the plumbing is abstracted away so we can focus on the fun parts.

Vue vs React

Vue vs AngularJS (Angular 1)

Vue vs Angular (Angular 2)

Vue vs Ember

Vue vs Polymer

Convinced to give Vue a try? Without further ado, let’s get started in my next article “From zero to hero with Vue - Up and Running” (below).