There are a great number of Web Frameworks to learn and focus on, some offer all the features out of the box to build web applications that a scalable and handle a large number of user interactions and some are lean and minimalist and allows to extend functionalities via plugins and libraries.
The list is huge and creates a question, on how to pick the one that suits your need or your career goal. Below mentioned are the Top 7 Web Frameworks to focus on in 2021. The Web Frameworks mentioned here are based on the Stack Overflow survey for the year 2020 and contains the Top 7 most wanted Web Frameworks of 2020.
Top 7 Web Frameworks
Here is a snapshot of the most wanted Top 7 Web Framework as per the Stack Overflow survey. (Link to survey)
React
React is one of the most popular front-end JavaScript library (not a framework) to build an interactive UI and is voted as the top in the list. The library is developed by Facebook and was the first to introduce the component-based architecture, which was later adopted by many other JavaScript frameworks. React is best suited for developing a Single Page Application (SPA).
React is easy to learn and implement. It is a declarative language and focuses on what should happen instead of how it should happen and works on the philosophy of “Write Once, run anywhere”. Over a small period of time React has gained a huge community base that actively contributes to developing tools and components for the library.
React is an already proven frontend library for large scale application. The Facebook frontend is entirely developed using React and works seamlessly with thousands of components. This is one of the biggest reasons for being adopted by large enterprises.
Vue
Vue is the second most wanted JavaScript Framework after React for developing a highly interactive front-end user interface. The framework promotes high decoupling and is a progressive framework and is built to be incrementally adoptable. It is can be easily integrated with other libraries or existing projects (A part of the project can be in Vue and can coexist with other frameworks without any issues). The framework is a perfect candidate for building a Single Page Application (SPA) with a combination of new toolings and supporting libraries.
One of the best things about using Vue is no build setup is required unlike other frameworks, we only need to include the script tag and we are ready to go. Vue is very easy to learn just the basic knowledge of HTML, CSS, and JS is required to start with. Vue officially provides essential libraries for routing, unit testing, debugging tools, etc and there is no need to ground around searching for what suits them best to perform any task. Not to forget it work equally well with other libraries.
Vue has a large community base and is a community-driven framework, great documentation, and got the best of the Angular and React frameworks. Vue is evolving very fast and is being extensively used by the community and in the industry.
Angular
Angular stands at the third position as the most demanded front-end Web Frameworks and is used mostly for building scaleable Single Page Application (SPA) and front-end desktop web apps. It is based in TypeScript language (a JavaScript superset) and has gained immense popularity over the years. It is component-based and uses MVC architecture implementation. Angular allows us to easily build new features using declarative templates and allows us to extend existing components to build our own.
Angular offers two-way binding a notable feature that helps to reduce the unnecessary boilerplate code for managing DOM components. The framework manages the synchronization between the DOM and the model thus making it easier to develop the application. Another noted feature is its ability to handle dependencies via Dependency Injection, which allows the developer to easily manage the application into the various modules and make them easily testable. Angular also allows to easily manipulate DOM using directives and behaviors.
Angular is backed by Google, regular updates and enhancement are periodically released. It has good documentation support. It has evolved into a mature and enterprise-grade framework and is used by many big companies like Google, Microsoft, Paypal, etc.
Django
Django stands at the fourth position in the most wanted Web Frameworks list. Django is a high-level web development framework based on Python. The framework provides an easy way of rapid web development by providing a set of libraries that does the heavy lifting. The framework is built by experienced developers keeping in mind to abstract away all the hassle to reinvent the wheel in web development.
Django is very easy to learn and helps the developers to build a website in no time. The framework provides common features like user authentication, content administration, caching, and many more right out of the box. The framework also provides excellent security features and handles security issues like SQL injection, cross-site scripting, click-jacking, etc. It has a vast community base and has well-managed documentation. The framework is already being used by many companies like Mozilla, Disqus, Pinterest.
ASP.NET Core
ASP.NET Core is a redesign of ASP.NET and is a cross-platform and open-source Web Framework and stands at the fifth position in the list. ASP.NET Core is one of the fastest-growing Web Framework due to its high performance and lightweight nature and as per the survey, it is the most loved Web framework of 2020. The application developed using this framework can be deployed on a variety of platforms like Apache, Docker, IIS, and can also be self-hosted. Multiple versions of ASP.NET Core can coexist side-by-side.
With the introduction of the Blazor framework which sits on top of the ASP.NET Core user can develop Web applications using C# language and can build Server apps, Web Assembly (Single Page Apps) as well as Progressive Web Application. ASP.NET Core allows easy integration with other UI frameworks. Regular updates, enhancements, and new features are released at regular intervals and they are all well documented.
Flask
Flask is a Python Framework and stands at the sixth position in the most wanted list. Flask is a lightweight micro-framework and is based on the Werkzeug toolkit and Jinja2 template engine. Flask is minimalist and modular by design. Flask does not come with bundled functionalities as in database integration, forms library, migrations tool, etc. But all the features can be incorporated using various extensions and plugins.
It is easy to learn and get started with as there is little boilerplate code compared to other frameworks for getting an application up and running. If you are already a Python developer, learning the framework will be a breeze. It has got good documentation support and API references.
Express
Express has gained huge popularity over a period of time and stands at the seventh position in the most wanted list. It is a minimalist, fast, and flexible Web Application Framework for Node.js and provides a good list of features to build web and mobile applications. It provides the core framework functionalities without masking the feature of Node.js and takes full advantage of the robust performance asynchronous nature of Node.js.
It is flexible enough and allows the use of multiple extensions and plugins to enhance its capabilities. It supports URL base HTTP routing system and is a robust, adjustable, and modular framework. It has good community support and has well-managed documentation.
Conclusion
React and Vue was the most wanted Web Frameworks for 2020 and is believed to continue with the same trend. ASP.NET Core is gaining more and more popularity and was the most loved Web Framework in 2020. Choosing the right framework depends upon a number of factor and the most important being the how well the framework fit to your concept you want to build. All the frameworks mentioned are most wanted and popular and are well used in the industry and are worth looking at.
I hope you find the post on Top 7 Web Frameworks to focus on in 2021 useful. Thanks for visiting. Cheers!!!
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