An Intuitive and Beginner-Friendly Overview of Vue JS

Although JavaScript has become a full-grown programming language on its own, its ecosystem holds much more value than the language itself. Technologies like back-end and front-end frameworks offer a smoother development experience and empower you to build power systems used by millions of people.

And while the main competitors of the JS market are TezJS and React vs Angular, there is another rival that has been seeing an astounding rise in popularity due to its smooth learning curve, clean syntax, and unmatched flexibility - Vue JS.

Developers seemed to have found this holy grail of frameworks that is in the sweet spot between verbose React and opinionated Angular. It is the best of both worlds, with a dash of Knockout reactivity magic! All that results in a very graceful solution that evolves as per your needs.

For our fellow coworkers, it was love from the first code snippet. Vue JS was a breeze for the developers at Radixweb, and they were able to get a hold of it and start building apps in a matter of hours/days.

So, we decided to share our two cents on this JavaScript framework, how it fits just right in a dev project, and why we use as well as suggest it to our clients.

Here it goes!

What is Vue JS?

Vue is the brainchild of Evan You – a former Google developer who had the idea of taking out the best parts of the then JS frameworks and making a lightweight and easy-to-use framework for his own personal use.

But it turned out to be a lot more than that. Vue is a “progressive JavaScript framework” for front-end development. If you are thinking "One more UI framework?" the answer is yes, except it differs from the others.

First of all, it's important for you to know that Evan designed Vue JS for incremental integration, meaning you do not have to make everything from scratch if you have an existing app. You just have to create a new part in Vue and integrate it with the rest.

Secondly, this framework is exceptionally easy to learn out of all the front-end frameworks for web development. Developers can easily pick the basics of Vue within a few hours of testing stuff and reading documents. It also takes efficient ideas from its rivals, such as the data binding feature. The DOM (Document Object Model) gets coupled with the data and becomes reactive to changes.

Installing Vue also comes with a virtual DOM that renders data without refreshing or modifying the entire app every time you make a change.

In addition, the component-based architecture enables developers to break down the app into multiple reusable sub-components and manage each of them individually.

So far, so good, which makes us question – how does it actually work?

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How Does Vue JS Work?

In order to help you understand how Vue JS works, here we have shown some code in advance with the message – Hello Everyone!

The view part of your app is what Vue mainly focuses on. And it does so by utilizing the MVVM architecture pattern. It will integrate the Model-View part (view instance) with the DOM (view part) using its data-binding feature.

In the end, the model part becomes the data in your view instance that will provide the data to the app. The code schematized of Hello Everyone looks something like this:

Vue is a next-gen front-end tool, and apps built with it consist of a number of components. When you launch the instance of the global app, you will get a root instance – comprising a tree of components that have their distinct root instance.

Reasons Vue JS is Worth Using in Your Project

Vue JS version is a widely recognized framework and gaining huge traction in the world of front-end development. However, just because it is trending and popular does not mean you should rely on it.

Thus, bringing forth the key benefits of Vue and the undeniable reasons why it could be a substantial choice for your project.

1. Flexibility

Vue is extremely scalable and flexible.

In software development practice, it means you can use this framework to create small, interactive modules as well as huge single-page applications.

Simply put, you can mold it as per your requirements – a full-fledged tool to execute an entire project or just a library in the project.

2. Component-Based Architecture

Like its competitors, VueJS has a component-based architecture that enables you to divide all the front-end code into independent modules. Those modules, comprising styles, logic, and templates, work together to set up the application.

Moreover, it automatically breaks down the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code, eliminating the need to create separate files for HTML components or CSS styles.

3. Simplicity

Developers adore Vue for its simplistic nature. You can literally create a Vue JS app with 5-6 lines of code. It is also one of the top web development stacks for its ability to streamline the whole development process by automating certain tasks under the hood like:

• Managing configurations
• Linking DOM to the data
• Creating watchers for each element

4. Reusability

Due to its component-based architecture, Vue offers reusable single file components inside which styles, props, hooks, and other critical elements are inherently present.

This framework assembles components for reusing in functionalities instead of breaking down the code into arbitrary layers. This leads to maintainable, portable, and cohesive UI components. The final results are improved code readability, less repetitive coding, and optimized testing and deployment.

5. Top-Notch Performance

Vue JS is an incredibly lightweight framework with a bundle size of around 20KB. It really makes the best out of your invested resources without compromising the quality of the app or its efficiency and performance.

Additionally, apps built with this framework are also smaller in size, and hence, they use less bandwidth, have faster loading speed, and excel at SEO ranking. Because of its minimal attributes, installing Vue and starting to work on it is possible within just a few minutes. As Vue handles a great deal of optimizations on its own, you do not need to tweak the app as it scales.

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6. Two-Way Data Binding

One of the greatest advantages of Vue is its two-way data binding feature that works with virtual DOM to enable minimal coding.

In other words, you can make changes in the View layer or Model layer, and the framework will update the rest of the layers accordingly. It helps developers keep the code array values and variables in sync across the entire app.

The upshot is a consistent data flow that allows you to save plenty of cost and time in the automation testing and debugging stage.

7. Handy Conventions

More often than not, developers find it immensely time and resource-consuming to write boilerplate codes. Vue JS helps them overcome such troubles by offering a range of effort-saving conventions and pre-configured solutions.

Some of those solutions include native support for things like composing elements, animations, and state management. If this sounds too technical for you, the gist is Vue is highly useful and saves your time from wasting in reinventing the wheel.

8. Extensive Documentation

One important reason Vue draws the attention of developers is its extensive and super-friendly documentation. Apart from the introductory guide, it comes with a fundamental overview of the tool, substantial information on the installation procedure, and a comparison with frameworks TezJS, Angular vs React vs Vue.

The Vue documentation has answers to all the issues developers might face with a clear and concise explanation of each concept and functionality. The Vue community also frequently updates the document to incorporate best practices and recent changes.

Shedding Some Light on the Vue JS Ecosystem

The Vue ecosystem essentially comprises modern frameworks, tools, and a core library that pave the way toward an easy and smooth development process.

And although the framework itself is minimalistic and lightweight, it features all the essential resources for developers to build high-functioning apps. Have a look at them!

• Vue Router - It is the official router of Vue JS development that helps in URL redirection. In other words, when a user clicks on a link on the webpage, the router changes the URL and displays the desired page.
• Vue CLI – Vue CLI provides the needed toolset that facilitates working with this framework. Additionally, it reduces the project setup time, supports testing, and helps in project scaffolding.
• Vuex – It is the state management library for Vue development. Vuex links stubbed data with web API data by building a clean interface and integrating it with the Vue app.
• Vue Loader – Vue Loader helps in loading webpack into the app so that you can host all the components in an SFCs format, write custom CSS for each component, manage static assets, and create a powerful and flexible UI workflow.
• Vue Server Render – While Vue is primary a client-side build tool, Vue SSR allows you to develop server-side apps as well. Web apps of this kind work on both back-end and front-end and are very efficient in terms of loading speed and SEO.
• DevTools – This browser extension makes it exceptionally easy to check and debug Vue JS apps. You can also use it to test the states, events, and components of your application.
• Vuetify – Although it is not an official part of the Vue ecosystem, Vuetify offers an array of tools for creating dynamic and engaging UIs. It also enables you to create cross-platform apps in a simple but productive manner,

A Glimpse into the Popularity of Vue JS

At this point, it should be pretty clear to you that Vue is one of the most popular and trending JS frameworks, outdoing even Angular and React. These two old stagers have 82.5k and 191k stars on GitHub, whereas Vue has already bagged 198k stars!

Developers, as well as business leaders, are increasingly shifting to Vue from other frameworks because of its component libraries, easy integration with existing apps, enhanced performance, high scalability, and so on.

This framework is a part of the primary tech stack of many well-established companies around the world, such as Netflix, Facebook, Nintendo, Grammarly, Xiaomi, Gitlab, Alibaba, etc.

Additionally, Vue JS won second place in the 2021 JavaScript Rising Stars report, just after React and followed by Svelte and Angular.

And from our development perspective, Vue was the very first framework that makes it incredibly easy to add new members to a project. We have seen junior developers taking just some hours and getting productive like never before in mid-sized projects, all thanks to the beauty of single-file elements that help people smoothly navigate and scale through the application codebase.

Although it started relatively small back in 2015, the latest JavaScript usage statistics show quite the opposite now. Believe us, each and every month, we kind of scratch our heads to choose the best and most suitable components and plugins as they pop up like crazy!

To cut a long story short, the Vue JS ecosystem has pretty much everything it needs to create a variety of apps. And the best part about all this is the fact that the Vue core team developed the most important libraries like Vuex and Vue Router. This means best-in-class compatibility and support for the main framework.

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And the EpilogueTime for a quick recap.Vue JS has a sizeable toolset, a robust community, hundreds of useful libraries, and is developer and user-friendly.This framework also scales well and manages performance issues. It is flexible by nature and also has a short learning curve.What's not to like about it? And if you still need more reasons, we wholeheartedly welcome you to go through the State of Vue.js 2022 report. You will find several great reasons why organizations of different sizes and shapes opt for this framework for their development needs.Alternatively, you can talk to our in-house Vue JS experts and get actionable insights on whether it is the right choice for your next project (pretty sure it would be!).So, reach out to us so that you can confidently create your next big thing!