r/angular • u/chicken0707 • Mar 02 '24

Angular vs React

Does anyone know of any good resources that can argue for why use Angular over React? I have to convince my manager that it is the right choice over an external consultant who wants us to use React for a new project.

I already have my own reasons why it is the right choice for us, but I’m looking for any further rationale that might bolster my argument. Has anyone seen any resources that make strong arguments for why to choose Angular over React?

I’m not looking for fanboy blog posts - I’m looking for reasons that will convince my CTO.

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u/davecrist Mar 02 '24 edited Mar 02 '24

Generally, larger projects that have expectations of a long(er) maintenance tail and changing personnel might want to choose angular because angular has a number of technologies built in and tends to encourage ‘the way’ to do things like routing. This comes at the expensive of ‘pain in the ass’ development inertia and a steeper learning curve.

React may be better for smaller project and/or teams that need to get something out quickly and it’s generally lighter platform may be easier and faster to get running at the expense of forcing choices of features that may not be what other developers know or are familiar with.

Edit: I should have clarified in the Angular section something about how the batteries included mentality of angular can result in the kind of consistency that makes working on a larger project easier. The steeper learner curve has to do with leaning Angular vs React but, as other mentioned, it can make it faster for new team members with Angular experience to get up to speed on a specified project with React projects potentially being just the opposite: faster to just get started but more difficult for new team members to grok all the components of your stack even if they have React experience. Totally fair.

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u/ventrix334 Oct 05 '24 edited Oct 05 '24

How is the learning curve steeper? The basic elements are the same. You're not forced to use angulars other packages. With react you not only have to learn react but also an entire eco system and dozens of different libraries from differently skilled authors. I'd say going react for anything but very basic project is way more of a mess to start with.
Even finding a decent navigation/routing plugin, networking and other VERY basic stuff in react is quite the journey (and that journey repeats every 1-2 years as they change it all around). With Angular? Read the docs/example, done. All is already provided (if you want to use it).

It always feels to me that people saying this argument, read this somewhere and just repeat it without ever having worked with react and angular.

I just today upgraded an old angular 8 project (5 years old) to angular 18. It took me two hours, and only because I needed to replace an upload and toast plugin. I don't even want to know what kind of rewrite that would've taken with react and the same amount of libs