JavaScript Frameworks in 2016

Every year we see the rise of new JavaScript frameworks/libraries trying to solve some problems be it a library for helping to store client-side data or library to help authentication. These libraries eventually find their niche space. Then there are frameworks that become synonymous with web application development like Angular, NodeJS, Backbone, and then there is ES2015 which plans to change the whole JavaScript programming space to make it more like traditional languages which features like classes.

With so many frameworks to keep –up “JavaScript Fatigue[1]” sets in, to solve this problem below is a brief introduction of JavaScript frameworks which are sure to make some noise in 2016

ANGULAR 2:

Ever since Brad Green and Miskov announced their plan for Angular 2 in ngConf 2014 there have been hundreds to opinions about if Angular 2 will be as good as Angular 1 and what will be the migration path for existing applications. Though Angular 2 does not have a clear migration strategy for the existing applications mainly due to the fact that Angular 2 had dropped many of the concepts we have come to love in Angular 1 like $scope, directives. Angular team has consciously taken a direction to develop Angular in “TypeScript” though it’s optional for developing applications in Angular 2. Using Typescript Angular team had made sure they are embracing ES2015 and takes the component approach

Angular will continue to get stronger and become an integrated framework within the enterprise.

React JS:

In 2015 Facebook popularized React framework for view layer and then-on quite a few large organizations have embraced React, Airbnb being one the biggest and most vocal ones. One of the main reasons React has gained this popularity is because it’s very very fast (2 very’s here do justify how fast React rendering is). React allows us to build small, reusable components that have JavaScript logic behind it. React now is also accompanied by 2 features that are changing how we develop native applications namely, “Universal Rendering” which means to render the application on the server and on the client which helps in solving SEO issues which are seen in so many other frameworks. Second is React Native which allows us to target mobile platforms using JS, unlike hybrid apps where we have a web view, React Native compiles app down to a true-native app for iOS & Android.

Aurelia:

From the creator of Durandal come to Aurelia. Rob Eisenberg after Durandal joined the Angular team to work on Angular 2 and possibly integrate the features of Durandal in Angular, but was not very happy with the direction taken by Google. He left and announced working on a new JavaScript framework Aurelia. One of the main advantages of Aurelia is its embrace of ES 2015. “We’ve always seen Aurelia as a platform and ecosystem for building rich interactive applications on every device. In 2016, you’ll see the next phase of that vision realized as we move beyond Aurelia’s v1 release and on to other things we’re planning,” said Eisenberg. Aurelia integrates features of ES 2015 like components without any external dependencies which means that we may be able to create web applications using ES2015 without referencing any external libraries.

Honorable Mentions:

There are few other frameworks to keep an eye on:

EmberJS: One of the most opinionated frameworks which guide developers to write code using best practices. Ember will continue to have its space in the web development world mainly in very large scale applications

Vue.js: Another powerful front-end framework that tries to combine features into components. It does have large teams building or contributing to its development as of now but it promises to be a good alternative to mainstream frameworks. This is one framework to keep an eye on.