You’ve probably heard of the most popular two: Angular and React. They can really help speed up the development process and they do a good job of separating responsibilities in the code. So why shouldn’t you focus on them if they’re so great?
It’s not that you shouldn’t learn them. You should just spend more time making sure you are proficient in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript/TypeScript. When you know these foundational web development languages, then you can use the true power of the frameworks.
The problem is that many people start learning web development within a framework and when you take them out of the one they know, it’s really hard for them to shift gears. That’s mainly because what they know about HTML, CSS, and JavaScript/TypeScript comes from the context of the framework. When you can use the main web development languages alone, you can jump into any framework and start figuring out how to work with them.
For example, Angular works with components and each component can have its own HTML, CSS, and TypeScript files. What most people overlook in the beginning is that you still have to know how to write the code for those files even if they come pre-loaded from a template.
Again, that’s not to say that you shouldn’t learn the JavaScript frameworks. That just shouldn’t be your main focus until you feel like you know the base languages well enough to write a web app from scratch. You’ll find out in some cases it might be easier to write the whole thing from scratch after you deal with the updates to the different frameworks.
Which brings us to another point. JavaScript frameworks can have updates that make everything you know about them irrelevant. Angular has changed so drastically over the past few years that Angular 1.x has close to nothing in common with Angular 6.
But the two versions do have some things in common and I bet you can guess what they are: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript/TypeScript. So spend some time learning how the frameworks work so that you can use them, but make sure you understand the guts behind them first.
Not only will it help you write more efficient code, you’ll be able to jump into any JavaScript framework and start making meaningful changes. The hype behind the different frameworks is definitely deserved because they can be great, but like everything else in web development they come and go and have major releases.
What’s been your experience with JavaScript frameworks? I’ve worked mainly with Angular and I want to throw my computer out the window love it. Anybody using React or any of the others?
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