Why do .NET developers choose Angular over React?

Why do .NET developers choose Angular over React? Front-end development isn’t easy, it’s freaking hard, which is why many professionals struggle to create needle-moving UIs for their websites and apps. React and Angular are two such platforms that have revolutionized front-end development and have the capability to create visually stunning user interfaces with desired features. Talking about .NET experts, most of them choose Angular over React because Angular uses the TypeScript language, which is quite comparable to C#, and as a result, they find it easier to work with Angular for UI development. This also helps .NET development companies in upgrading the skills of their current workforce with minimal investment. In this article, we’ll learn in detail - why .NET developers prefer Angular rather than React. Angular offers several built-in libraries similar to .NET “Angular gives the outright feeling of dealing with a framework and offers several built-in libraries similar to .NET. This limits the need to use 3rd party libraries and allows ready-to-work integrations without the fear of incompatibility with the framework. On the other hand, React requires built-on-top libraries such as Gatsby. When using Angular, a developer has access to HTML files for every component, helping them avoid mixing HTML with JavaScript in a single file. This makes Angular feel more like .NET, thus the preference by .NET developers. In React, however, The template is defined within a JS file, which can confuse .NET developers.” - Katherine Brown, Founder & Marketing Director at Spyic “.NET developers prefer Angular over React because of framework feeling. While you start learning Angular’s concepts on its framework, you will be mesmerized to learn this frontend framework. With this, you know that you are dealing with a top-notch framework straight away. Moreover, Angular provides numerous built-in libraries resembling .NET, constraining the usage of 3rd parties and allowing those ready-to-work integrations sans apprehending if or if not it will be compatible with this top-notch framework.” - Stephen Curry, Business Owner of CocoSign Angular's syntax is much closer to C# “Angular's syntax is much closer to C#, a language of preference to most .NET developers. Angular was created to attract desktop GUI developers to the business, and it appears to be working. Angular provides most of the features required for modern web front-end development, and it is not needed to go for other frameworks to create front ends with complex levels of complexity. Angular is similar to the classic object-oriented programming and MVC (model view controller) paradigms. On the other hand, React borrows heavily from FP (functional programming) and expressly frees the developer from the constraints of a rigid model and controller set . It is why experienced programmers still love the somewhat classical approach to program front ends using Angular. The presence of Web Workers and Server Side Rendering allows web apps to run at maximum speed and efficiency. Scalability is an inbuilt feature of the MVC paradigm, which makes Angular apps inherently scalable. The declarative templates mixed with the developer's components and a vast set of pre-existing parts make new feature building quick and efficient. Unlike React, Angular uses real DOM, which creates faster applications. React uses virtual DOM. Any changes we make need to be reflected in the underlying real DOM, which sometimes makes the update a bit slow.” - Daniela Sawyer, Founder of FindPeopleFast “Most C# developers prefer Angular over React because the switch to Angular is straightforward and leans towards the object-oriented nature of JavaScript, unlike React, which focuses more on JavaScript’s functionality nature. Angular is comparatively more in-built functions. It is best useful for .NET developers who want to optimize productivity using already developed software, utilize a large-scale framework with rich features and keep the app’s difficulty level low. .NET developers also choose to use Angular because it’s designed for the enterprise context and get desktop GUI developers onboard. React is less self-sufficient. However, Angular is full-fledged with the Angular package, and it doesn’t need the inclusion of any library.” - Harriet Chan, Co-Founder of CocoFinder Read More: Which technology is better AngularJS or ReactJS for frontend development? Angular uses TypeScript, a strongly-typed language “The reason why .NET developers love Angular would be due to the fact that Angular uses TypeScript. So what is special about TypeScript? Let me explain what it means for a programming language to be strongly typed. A strongly typed language forces a programmer to define the type of variable they are creating in their programs before the variable is used in the program. Programming languages that are not strongly typed allow programmers to simply declare a variable without having to state what type it will be. Rather the type of the variable is determined by the type of the value that is assigned to it when the program is running. Not being strongly typed causes a lot of issues and may trigger numerous errors like when a variable that is assigned a text as its value is suddenly used to perform arithmetic calculations. A strongly-type language will make sure the type of a variable is defined when the variable is declared, and it will only allow values that match that type to be assigned to it. .NET is a strongly typed programming framework, Angular uses TypeScript (which is strongly typed) while React is generally not. The mind of a .NET developer thinks in a strongly typed manner and when using other languages like Angular they can easily transfer this thinking. With React, it feels like the one is falling down the stairs and the guard rails are breaking at the same time to a .NET developer.” - BulamaYusuf, Founder & CEO of Intellectual Apps “.NET developers prefer using Angular rather than React because typescript (ES6+) is used by Angular (2+) which is significantly closer to C# than JavaScript (ES6+). Take a look at the type and OOP features and syntax. Even the language designer is the same. It's a big package with everything included, so you won't have to learn everything about current web front end development. It resembles the previous OOP (object-oriented programming) and MVC (model view controller) approaches to programming.” - Marilyn Gaskell, Founder of TruePeopleSearch .NET ecosystem usually contains all necessary stuff out of the box “There are a couple of things because it’s happening. The first one - .NET ecosystem usually contains all necessary stuff out of the box. Whatever you work with ASP .NET, Blazor, or other .NET technology, developers have similar experience from project to project. Every .NET framework contains routing, dependency injection implementation, way to configure a project, defined folder and file structure, etc. The same is for Angular. It’s complete framework which includes everything you need to work on a project. In those conditions developers are able seamlessly switch between different projects and even switch from a .NET backend project to a frontend project written in Angular. The situation with React is absolutely opposite. React is just a UI library. Everything you need extra must be installed and configured separately. Every task might be solved by a number of similar external packages, every project has their own folder and file structure. That’s why switching between React project might be challenging. If we join all the above Angular is a great framework for .NET developers to reuse their experience and even enrich it. React experience is not relevant for them. The second reason - .NET ecosystem uses C# as a programming language. C# is an object-oriented, statically typed language. At the same time Angular written in TypeScript rather than JavaScript. TypeScript is a superset of JavaScript which adds static typing and object-oriented features to it. That does TypeScript more like C# then JavaScript is. React design and ideology are all about functional programming. Object-oriented programming and functional programming are two different paradigms. React is also written in pure JavaScript rather than TypeScript. Yes, it’s still possible to use React with TypeScript, but it’s not always a case. Other words, Angular ecosystem is understandable and clear environment for .NET developers where they can use well-known objected-oriented practices and design patterns, write code in statically typed language and apply experience they got during whole life. Buy the way, the author of TypeScript it the same person (Anders Hejlsberg) who created C#. And the main reason he did that is to help C# developers adapt in JavaScript world. And TypeScript is closer to not only C# developers, but any developers who works with typed, object languages like Java. .NET developers are not usually familiar with functional programming world. They are not able to use their previous experience from C#. React contains not only common functional practices but also have a lot of their own ideas, concepts which you won’t meet in external world, such as React Hooks. That makes experience .NET developers get while working with React not universal and not reusable in other technologies.” - Ali Ragimov, Senior Frontend Developer atSphere Partners Angular comes with slick tooling and highly efficient architecture “The main reason comes down to the fact that Angular comes with slick tooling and highly efficient architecture that allows many large companies to effectively build apps for both their internal processes and external users. Moreover, since it offers a powerful ecosystem with good support from Google, this makes it the most reliable and stable framework with no breaking changes that help to furnish a clean and smooth API, especially in regards to front-end development. After all, enterprises often have huge numbers of users to deal with at a time. As such, this often demands a framework to be self-sufficient in order to fulfill every single need. And, not only does Angular offer the compatibility feature, but it is also an open-source that can effectively boost performance, making it the perfect choice for developing marketplaces and enterprise portals.” - Eden Cheng, Co-Founder of PeopleFinderFree Looking to Hire ASP.NET Developer for your business? CONNECT US Angular is a lot simpler to use, especially when you are not an expert in JavaScript “.NET developers love Angular rather than React because it is a lot simpler to use, especially when you are not an expert in JavaScript. Angular uses TypeScript which is an extension of the JavaScript language that lets you write code with fewer lines of code and have fewer errors in your application. Additionally, Angular has more features built-in so there's no need to install various packages. Most of the features include routing, two-way binding, and dependency injection. React, however, is a JavaScript library for building user interfaces. It is very popular but not as popular as Angular. As a .NET developer, you may need to create your app or extend an existing app by using React. In this case, you need to know how to integrate React with an existing project. It is quite easy to integrate React with Angular since both of them have a similar structure and philosophy.” - Lynda Fairly, Co-founder ofNumlooker Conclusion React and Angular have been the most recommended platforms for frontend development. It enables to create aesthetically appealing user interfaces for websites or apps with required functionalities. In this blog, we learned the reasons why .NET professionals prefer Angular rather than React. To conclude, Angular employs TypeScript language, which is quite similar to C# and takes less effort for .NET professionals to learn.

Kapil Panchal

A passionate Technical writer and an SEO freak working as a Content Development Manager at iFour Technolab, USA. With extensive experience in IT, Services, and Product sectors, I relish writing about technology and love sharing exceptional insights on various platforms. I believe in constant learning and am passionate about being better every day.