The Future of Frameworks: What's in for Developers?

What frameworks have in store for developers in 2020?

In the previous article, I mentioned about the best mobile app development frameworks of 2020. Well, all these ease, the comfort of development (be it a website or mobile app) wouldn’t have been possible without Javascript, which is the backbone of the major frameworks (Angular, React, Vue).

Javascript, a 15 years old scripting language created by Brendan Eich is the most demanded in the industry considering its mature ecosystem and how with changing time, the capability and the endurance of the foundation keep getting more profound.

The updates didn’t stop with Javascript. Even the major Javascript frameworks, i.e. Angular, React and Vue are evolving with every version upgrade. Let’s have a look at what the latest version of these frameworks has in store for all the businesses.

1. AngularJS

AngularJS also known as Angular 1 is an open-source javascript framework created by Misko Heavery to handle the downfall of HTML. Angular 1, the first version of the framework was released in 2009 and it marked the foundation of successful front-end development. With each update, the framework became robust offering the best performance to the developers.

Recently, the latest version i.e. Angular 9 released, promising developers with better improvements, rid of large bundle files, enhanced user experience, less compiling and debugging time, and more.

Let’s see:

● Default Ivy Compiler: Angular 9 has a default Ivy compiler in its core structure that would help with quick compilation and debugging. Previously, whenever a section of the code needed to be fixed, the compiler compiled all the components, even the ones which were not necessary. With the Ivy compiler, the component which needs a compilation would be compiled, giving developers a breath of air.

● Progressive Hydration: With progressive hydration possible, the page loading time of the parallax scrolling website has improved as only the required components would be loaded at one time instead of a complete website.

● Improved CSS class and Style Binding: CSS and material design can be managed through a consistent, precedence order. In previous versions, the CSS and material design were not compatible, and if an application had a competing style that would be automatically replaced with another.

● Reduced Dependency: The bundle size which affected the overall Angular’s performance is now likely to reduce by 25-40% based on the app size. All the thanks to AngularJS 9’s Ivy compiler and its tree shaking feature that ensures less code.

In addition to these, there are many minor updates in the latest version of AngularJS development such as improved type checking, internationalization(i18n), selector-less directives, phantom variables, ng update, API extractor update, IDE and language service improvements, Typescript 3.7 support, etc.

2. ReactJS

ReactJS, initially launched in 2009 by Facebook, is a javascript library used for building web interfaces. The framework provides simplicity, convenience, and a better UI for frontend development; and with each upgrade, came durability and advancement. This is the major reason why many big companies such as Netflix, Dropbox, PayPal, Uber use it.

Lately, Feb 2020 saw a release of ReactJS latest version 16.13.0, while the ReactJS version 17 is expected to be released around September or October this year.

As there won’t be any major updates in version 17 according to the ReactJS team, let’s have a look at the features, the team has imbibed in ReactJS version 16.13.0.

● Concurrent Mode: Instead of updating every team member about the files that you are working on and that they shouldn’t touch it, the concurrent mode will automatically hydrate the section you are working on and the team can also work concurrently on the other sections.

● Suspense: This feature enables components to wait before loading the code, data, and images. Instead of going on a round trip for every component and waiting until the entire data loads, suspense feature allows rendering important data earlier without delaying the fetching of less important data.

● Component Stacks in Hydration Warning: With a component stack added to the warning, developers can easily locate the bug and fix it, which was not possible in the previous versions.

Moreover, the feature allows them to isolate the bugs and develop their programs.

In addition to these, there are secondary updates such as new warnings for updates, conflicting style rules, deprecated string refs, and more, renaming unsafe lifecycle methods, scheduler(experimental stage), and normal bug fixes.

3. Vue.js

Vue is an MVVM javascript framework for building web interfaces. It was developed in 2014 by Evan You, an ex-Google employee. Despite being the youngest, it gained popularity over the years and is practiced by big companies like 9Gag, Alibaba, and Gitlab.

The latest version of Vue, i.e. Vue 3 is set to officially release in Q3 of 2020. However, the team has already released the Alpha version and here’s what we can expect:

● Composition API: This is used for better organization and sharing/reusing of code which was not possible in Options API. Though the composition API was already launched a few months back, with Vue 3, we won’t have to install it as a plugin, the API will be in-built.

● No Root Templates: In Vue 2, the template tag could take only one root element. Even the two <p> tags had to be enclosed with <div> tag. This is eliminated with Vue 3. We can directly add the tags in the <template> section without requiring a <div> tag. The image below explains it well.

- Suspense: This feature renders a default/fallback component until the main component fetches data. It can be used for both a part of the template or the whole template.

- Multiple V Models: Vue 3 helps with two-way data binding as it provides multiple v models. We can use it with a form list or custom components.

Older version compatibility, better reactivity, global mounting, in-built portal are other features that will make the development easier than before.

And this is it…

All three of these frameworks are being updated with advanced features, competing for better performance and stability. And if honestly said, the improvements in their latest iteration make them worth a try, even though the final decision will be based on the project scale and other relevant requirements.

What are your thoughts on this?