All in on React

We've seen this pattern play out before - when the industry consensually gravitates towards a particular tech trend. Think of how we moved from server-rendered pages to single-page apps, or from managing our own servers to cloud platforms. We've also seen this with programming languages when they gain then lose popularity with the masses over time.

Most times, the new tech trends are just better. Sometimes it's just better not to swim against the current.

I've spent almost 5 years working with Angular. Good years. Years learning and becoming an expert in the framework, discovering and wrestling with it's opinionated patterns, building and optimizing services that would make any many enterprise architects proud. Angular played a big part in my understanding of software design especially OOP. And for that, I'm grateful.

But, I can no longer ignore the progress being made with React.

Every time a new tool launches, every time a fancy library drops, there's this pattern. "Here's how to use it with React." React, React, React. Next.js too. No Angular. Just React.

It's probably the React community that makes this happen. They're relentless. Shipping polished tools, writing solid docs, and somehow always staying a step ahead.

Even tech giants are onto this. Yes, Google uses Angular extensively. They built it. A number of big companies also use Angular. But not as many as the ones that use React. Meta, Amazon, Netflix, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Uber, Spotify, Discord, Atlassian, Trello, Canva, Twitch, OpenAI. These are companies whose products we use on a regular. I have personally not heard of a company switching from React to Angular.

Let's not forget React Native. Even beyond the web, React has been prospering.

And here's another think that hit me recently. Anthropic chose React for Claude's interactive demos. When they generate React components, you can actually see the AI-generated website running right there in the chat. Angular? Sure, they generate the code, but it stays just that - code. When the tools building tools default to React, you know something's up.

I could stick with Angular. They're making some interesting updates. Stand-alone components, signals, deferrable views, etc. But it still feels like they're playing catch-up and not leading the game. There might still be comfort there. Less competition for jobs, established patterns, enterprise stability. Angular is still very much alive. But it doesn't sit right with me anymore.

Is it safer to be one of the few Angular developers in a shrinking pool? Or to jump into the deep end of React, where yes, the water's crowded, but it's also where all the fun is happening?

I could be wrong. It's possible that in eight years, we'll all be writing in a WASM-powered framework built on top of Rust. Or we won't even be writing code. That's the thing with this industry - everything's changing.

All things considered, one thing's for sure, the energy is with React at the moment. I'm tired of feeling left out when a cool tool comes out and there's no thought for Angular documentation.

We often say, "frameworks are just tools, what matters most is what we build with them." This is definitely true to the end user, but let's be honest - frameworks ARE a big deal. While being a great programmer who can learn fast is important, employers still prefer someone familiar with their stack. Someone with experience. I might as well start building that experience now.