Open Source Frameworks: 2021 Top Choices | UPDIVISION

A lot of things go into a software development process ━ planning, prototype building, testing, and then some. For us, here at UPDIVISION, open source frameworks are a big aide in that process.

Whether they’re made for the frontend or backend, open source frameworks help speed up development time. They make writing, maintaining and scaling apps easier by helping developers solve common code tasks faster. If someone already did it, why build it from scratch? (Unless you’re a beginner and you want to learn, of course.)

In 2021, our developers specialize in 5 open source frameworks and tools, and today we’re doing to tell you why they’re awesome.

Frontend Frameworks

1. Vue.js

Vue.js is a progressive UI-building open source JavaScript framework. It was created by Evan You in 2013, who was then working at Google - the creator of a competing framework, Angular. Compared to other popular ones, Vue.js is small (Literally. It’s 30KB) and easy to learn. Of course, you should have a good understanding of JavaScript before you head onto using it.

Here’s why Vue.js is so great:

• It allows you to create a more maintainable, testable codebase.
• The ‘progressive’ stuff means you can plug Vue into any part of your existing server-side app if you want to give it a more interactive experience.
• It allows you to split up a page into multiple, reusable components.
• Gives you a fast virtual DOM.

2. Nuxt.js

Nuxt.js is a higher-level open source framework made on top of Vue that helps you build production-ready apps. In some way, it’s a framework framework. It’s got a modular architecture with over 50 modules you can use to make your app development faster. And it supports static website generation based on Vue apps.

Here’s what we like about Nuxt.js:

• It helps structure and organize your code into folders
• It automatically generates Vue Router configuration so it doesn’t take too long.
• Nuxt is pre-configured to generate your app on a server so you can add SEO tags to the app. This allows for a better indexing in search results.
• It improves user experience by getting your Vue apps to load faster in browsers.

3. React

React is a JavaScript library that helps you build interactive user interfaces. Basically, it’s the V in MVC. It’s a component-based library, which means you can customize and give various interactions to each section of your page. Think search bars with an auto-complete feature. It also allows you to have page elements render themselves differently based on their state. For instance, a piece of text turning into a different color after you clicked it.

Here’s what we like about React:

• You can add or remove components without breaking the entire code. Thus, you can always make small, incremental changes to a specific component whilst everything else remains untouched.
• Components are written using JSX, an extension to the JavaScript language syntax. JSX looks like HTML, so that component writing is accessible to more developers.
• For routing or calling HTTP services, you can use any library you prefer.
• It’s a small library, so it won’t take you a long time to learn how to use it. Plus, you can get started even if you’re not a JavaScript pro yet.

Backend Frameworks

4. Laravel

Laravel is a server-side open source PHP framework that gives you built-in features so you can build apps faster. Essentially, Laravel takes you from spending 1 hour building a log-in page to making it in 5 minutes. It provides a thorough dependency injection, an expressive database abstraction layer, queues and scheduled jobs, unit and integration testing, and more. We’ve actually talked about it before, so here you can read some more in-depth info about it.

In essence, here’s what we like about Laravel:

• You can install code packages or create your own, to add new features to your app.
• It’s got built-in support for fast, distributed cache systems like Redis. So you can scale apps quick and easy.
• You get a sleek command-line interface that also provides pre-built commands.
• It has an MVC (Model-View-Controller) architecture, which allows for a more logical separation of an app’s components.

5. Node.js

This one is not a framework, but we wanted to mention it anyway.

Node.js is a cross-platform, backend JavaScript runtime environment that runs on the Chrome V8 engine. It executes JavaScript code outside a web browser, which means it allows you to write command line tools with JavaScript, and to do server-side scripting. Basically, it helps bridge the gap between server-side and client-side coding.

Here are some of our favorite things about Node.js:

• You can use it to build highly scalable, data intensive, real-time apps. Most of all, they’ll be very fast.
• It’s a great framework to use for prototyping.
• If you’re already a frontend developer, you can dip your toes into the backend by learning Node.js. This way, you don’t need to learn a particular backend language.
• There’s a wide variety of open source libraries you can use on top of Node.js.

Overall, there are lots of good open source tools and technologies out there. As always, it comes down to your project’s specifications and requirements. Some tools suit specific types of projects better, just like we use Laravel to build admin dashboards. The best part of open source, after all, is that you can contribute to these tools’ code.

If you’re looking for complex software development, contact us and we’ll see what kind of cool things we can build together.

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