CTO Interview: Why VueJS?

React was the darling of 2016, and Angular2 is about to become the trendy framework of 2017. VueJS, meanwhile, seems more discreet but just as effective, and Bluecoders.io chose it to build its hiring platform.

Why VueJS and not ReactJS or Angular 2? What are the pros and cons? Is it suitable for every project?

Bluecoders' CTO, Grégoire BALLOT, tells us everything!

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Can you introduce yourself?

My name is Grégoire Ballot, I studied computer science at Epitech, and I've been CTO at Bluecoders since the end of 2016. I take care of the technical development of technology projects at Bluecoders.

What's your tech stack?

I work with NodeJS for the backend with the Restify framework; MongoDB for the database, all deployed on EC2, Amazon's cluster of virtual machines. On the front, I use the VueJS ecosystem (vue-router, vuex, vue, vue-devtools).

ReactJS and Angular2 are popular right now. Why did you turn to VueJS?

It's true that ReactJS and Angular2 are very fashionable and have proven themselves. Nevertheless, the new version of Vue gives better performance, greater flexibility in architecture, clean code, well decomposed, and ultra-simple integration if I have to start from existing code; of course this is just an opinion.

What makes React and Angular popular is mostly the appeal that the organizations supporting them bring (I mean Facebook and Google, the respective publishers of React and Angular). On the other hand, you have VueJS, which is developed by a single person (although today there are several dozen big contributors).

I think large structures are scared to use VueJS because it was originally a small open-source project, but today, in terms of performance and possibilities, it's simply my favorite, and by far.

What's the origin of VueJS?

The origin has a name, and his name is Evan You; he's a developer who today works full time on VueJS. He's a Google alum who then worked in the rockstar team at MeteorJS. At that time he created VueJS solo as an open-source project. He wanted to offer an ultra-modular and generic framework. When he realized VueJS had some success and immense potential, he switched to full time on the project.

What are the advantages?

Certainly the fact that the framework pushes us to architect everything in a modular, ultra-generic, and well-hierarchized way. Another advantage is that it's easy to migrate a project to VueJS. Everything is divided into components, and you can clearly re-decompose an application simply and iterate later to refine the migration to VueJS.

At Bluecoders, there was a moment when we changed the architecture of our application ecosystem. Thanks to VueJS, we were able to factor out a maximum of elements by using the framework in its most fundamental conventions. It's clearly the most flexible framework I know, suited to any environment, even ours which moves a lot.

The downsides?

The framework is recent, and in the most finicky cases you can find yourself having to hack it to make it work the way you want. The community is young, the creator is a developer who created VueJS solo, and there's no giant player like with React or Angular to carry the project. This gives VueJS a less frenetic development pace and slightly slower support.

Does it combine well with Node?

It's a front-end framework, so it's fundamentally designed to interface with a back-end part, whether through a remote API or another component of the application. Yes, it interfaces well with Node! Plus it gives the advantage of having Javascript on every part, making the tech stack coherent in the end.

Can it adapt to all projects?

Of course — it's a generic framework, it's only thought of for web app use. Starting from that postulate, whatever the application, its medium, or its functioning, VueJS can integrate. The framework's modularity therefore matches all types of projects.

How did you discover VueJS?

When I arrived as a developer at Bluecoders, Christophe the founder had heard of VueJS, saying it was worth taking into account in our reflection on the technology choices for projects. We compared the performance, flexibility, and possibilities of different techs, and we realized VueJS's crazy potential.

We know JS frameworks change a lot. What do you think will be the next trendy framework?

It's still early to say — I sincerely think VueJS will rise into the big leagues soon. It won't replace React or Angular, but in my opinion will be a seriously considered alternative — VueJS already knows how to compete with them well.