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  4. Javascript UI Libraries
  5. AngularJS vs Stimulus

AngularJS vs Stimulus

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

AngularJS
AngularJS
Stacks61.5K
Followers44.5K
Votes5.3K
GitHub Stars59.0K
Forks27.3K
Stimulus
Stimulus
Stacks132
Followers106
Votes16

AngularJS vs Stimulus: What are the differences?

# Introduction
AngularJS and Stimulus are both JavaScript frameworks used for building dynamic web applications, but they have several key differences.

1. **Architecture**: AngularJS is a full-fledged framework with its own architecture and conventions, providing features like data binding, directives, and dependency injection out of the box. Stimulus, on the other hand, is a lightweight framework that focuses on adding interactivity to existing HTML by using a controller-based approach without the need for a complex architecture.

2. **Scalability**: AngularJS is designed for building complex single-page applications (SPAs) with many views and components. It comes with built-in routing and powerful tools for managing state. In contrast, Stimulus is more suitable for enhancing smaller to medium-sized applications where a full-fledged framework like AngularJS might be overkill.

3. **Learning Curve**: AngularJS has a steeper learning curve due to its complex architecture and comprehensive set of features. Developers need to understand concepts like controllers, services, and scopes. On the other hand, Stimulus has a shallow learning curve, as it builds on familiar HTML and JavaScript patterns, making it easier for developers to get up to speed quickly.

4. **Performance**: AngularJS can suffer from performance issues in large applications due to its two-way data binding system and digest loop. As the application grows, digest cycles can become slower, impacting performance. Stimulus, being a simpler framework, tends to have better performance as it does not have the overhead of digest cycles and complex data bindings.

5. **Community and Ecosystem**: AngularJS has a large and well-established community with a vast ecosystem of libraries, tools, and resources. This can be beneficial for developers looking for support and additional features. Stimulus, being a newer framework, has a smaller community and ecosystem, which may limit the availability of resources and third-party plugins.

6. **Flexibility and Extensibility**: AngularJS provides a lot of built-in functionality and features, making it less flexible in terms of customization. Stimulus, on the other hand, offers more flexibility and extensibility, allowing developers to easily integrate it with other libraries or tools and customize the behavior of their components as needed.

In Summary, AngularJS is a comprehensive framework suitable for building complex SPAs, while Stimulus is a lightweight framework that focuses on enhancing existing HTML elements with interactivity.

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Advice on AngularJS, Stimulus

Simon
Simon

Senior Fullstack Developer at QUANTUSflow Software GmbH

Apr 22, 2020

DecidedonVuetifyVuetifyVue.jsVue.jsNuxt.jsNuxt.js

Our whole Vue.js frontend stack (incl. SSR) consists of the following tools:

  • @{Nuxt.js}|tool:7304| consisting of @{Vue CLI}|tool:9559|, @{Vue Router}|tool:6932|, @{vuex}|tool:6705|, @{Webpack}|tool:1682| and @{Sass}|tool:1171| (Bundler for @{HTML5}|tool:2538|, @{CSS 3}|tool:6727|), @{Babel}|tool:2739| (Transpiler for @{JavaScript}|tool:1209|),
  • Vue Styleguidist as our style guide and pool of developed @{Vue.js}|tool:3837| components
  • @{Vuetify}|tool:6163| as Material Component Framework (for fast app development)
  • @{TypeScript}|tool:1612| as programming language
  • @{Apollo}|tool:5508| / @{GraphQL}|tool:3820| (incl. @{GraphiQL}|tool:7879|) for data access layer (https://apollo.vuejs.org/)
  • @{ESLint}|tool:3337|, @{TSLint}|tool:5561| and @{Prettier}|tool:7035| for coding style and code analyzes
  • @{Jest}|tool:830| as testing framework
  • @{Google Fonts}|tool:2652| and @{Font Awesome}|tool:3244| for typography and icon toolkit
  • @{NativeScript-Vue}|tool:9623| for mobile development

The main reason we have chosen Vue.js over React and AngularJS is related to the following artifacts:

  • Empowered HTML. Vue.js has many similar approaches with Angular. This helps to optimize HTML blocks handling with the use of different components.
  • Detailed documentation. Vue.js has very good documentation which can fasten learning curve for developers.
  • Adaptability. It provides a rapid switching period from other frameworks. It has similarities with Angular and React in terms of design and architecture.
  • Awesome integration. Vue.js can be used for both building single-page applications and more difficult web interfaces of apps. Smaller interactive parts can be easily integrated into the existing infrastructure with no negative effect on the entire system.
  • Large scaling. Vue.js can help to develop pretty large reusable templates.
  • Tiny size. Vue.js weights around 20KB keeping its speed and flexibility. It allows reaching much better performance in comparison to other frameworks.
5.13M views5.13M
Comments
John Clifford
John Clifford

Software Engineer at CircleYY

Jun 8, 2020

Decided

I used React not just because it is more popular than Angular. But the declarative and composition it gives out of the box is fascinating and React.js is just a very small UI library and you can build anything on top of it.

Composing components is the strongest asset of React for me as it can breakdown your application into smaller pieces which makes it easy to reuse and scale.

455k views455k
Comments
José
José

Head of Engineering & Development at Chiper

Jun 23, 2020

Decided

It is a very versatile library that provides great development speed. Although, with a bad organization, maintaining projects can be a disaster. With a good architecture, this does not happen.

Angular is obviously powerful and robust. I do not rule it out for any future application, in fact with the arrival of micro frontends and cross-functional teams I think it could be useful. However, if I have to build a stack from scratch again, I'm left with react.

592k views592k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

AngularJS
AngularJS
Stimulus
Stimulus

AngularJS lets you write client-side web applications as if you had a smarter browser. It lets you use good old HTML (or HAML, Jade and friends!) as your template language and lets you extend HTML’s syntax to express your application’s components clearly and succinctly. It automatically synchronizes data from your UI (view) with your JavaScript objects (model) through 2-way data binding.

Stimulus is a JavaScript framework with modest ambitions. It doesn't seek to take over your entire front-end—in fact, it's not concerned with rendering HTML at all.

Statistics
GitHub Stars
59.0K
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Forks
27.3K
GitHub Forks
-
Stacks
61.5K
Stacks
132
Followers
44.5K
Followers
106
Votes
5.3K
Votes
16
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 889
    Quick to develop
  • 589
    Great mvc
  • 573
    Powerful
  • 520
    Restful
  • 505
    Backed by google
Cons
  • 12
    Complex
  • 4
    Dependency injection
  • 3
    Event Listener Overload
  • 2
    Hard to learn
  • 2
    Learning Curve
Pros
  • 5
    No Javascript on Backend
  • 5
    Simple and easy to start with
  • 4
    Balance between Front End and BackEnd
  • 2
    Easy way to add functionality to rails views
Cons
  • 2
    Steep learning curve
Integrations
JavaScript
JavaScript
JavaScript
JavaScript

What are some alternatives to AngularJS, Stimulus?

jQuery

jQuery

jQuery is a cross-platform JavaScript library designed to simplify the client-side scripting of HTML.

React

React

Lots of people use React as the V in MVC. Since React makes no assumptions about the rest of your technology stack, it's easy to try it out on a small feature in an existing project.

Vue.js

Vue.js

It is a library for building interactive web interfaces. It provides data-reactive components with a simple and flexible API.

jQuery UI

jQuery UI

Whether you're building highly interactive web applications or you just need to add a date picker to a form control, jQuery UI is the perfect choice.

Ember.js

Ember.js

A JavaScript framework that does all of the heavy lifting that you'd normally have to do by hand. There are tasks that are common to every web app; It does those things for you, so you can focus on building killer features and UI.

Backbone.js

Backbone.js

Backbone supplies structure to JavaScript-heavy applications by providing models key-value binding and custom events, collections with a rich API of enumerable functions, views with declarative event handling, and connects it all to your existing application over a RESTful JSON interface.

Svelte

Svelte

If you've ever built a JavaScript application, the chances are you've encountered – or at least heard of – frameworks like React, Angular, Vue and Ractive. Like Svelte, these tools all share a goal of making it easy to build slick interactive user interfaces. Rather than interpreting your application code at run time, your app is converted into ideal JavaScript at build time. That means you don't pay the performance cost of the framework's abstractions, or incur a penalty when your app first loads.

Angular

Angular

It is a TypeScript-based open-source web application framework. It is a development platform for building mobile and desktop web applications.

Aurelia

Aurelia

Aurelia is a next generation JavaScript client framework that leverages simple conventions to empower your creativity.

Flux

Flux

Flux is the application architecture that Facebook uses for building client-side web applications. It complements React's composable view components by utilizing a unidirectional data flow. It's more of a pattern rather than a formal framework, and you can start using Flux immediately without a lot of new code.

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