When you search for frontend frameworks online, you will find lists and lists of frontend libraries and frameworks. So you might wonder which one you should learn as you start your journey in the world of frontend.
For a beginner, React is the best frontend framework to learn. Here is why I think so.
Disclaimer: React is a library but many people refer to it as a framework. I have written about the difference between a library and a framework here. For the rest of this post, I will refer to it as a library.
React is the most popular way to build a web app
According to the state of JS 2022 survey, React is the frontend library that developers are most likely to use again.
If you look at the results of the 2022 stack overflow developer survey, React was also voted as the most used frontend web technology by professional developers.
Why being popular matters
By being the most popular frontend library, React has
- More online courses
- More guides and tutorials
- More components and libraries
- A bigger community
All of this will help you learn and resolve the issues that you encounter while working with React. You are also more likely to find frontend positions that ask for React since it is the most widely used.
But what if React stops being popular?
The frontend world is constantly changing so it is natural for you to be concerned about how React will fare in the future. However, know that if you learn React it will be much easier for you to learn another frontend library or framework. Most modern frontend frameworks are built on similar ideas (e.g. components and declarative rendering). It might be difficult to grasp these ideas at first but then you don't have to learn them again when adopting another frontend library or framework.
So while you could start with any frontend library or framework, React will be the easiest to learn due to the number of resources available.
