May 8, 2019 at 13:15Game frameworks: JavaScript trends in 2019
TypeScript versus ES6 , React versus Angular , Jest versus Mocha ... No worse than the acclaimed series, these “battles” keep JavaScript fans in suspense, making them wonder: “What to learn next?” In addition, the army of users of each technology makes such convincing arguments that choosing a technology stack for further study becomes a very difficult task :)
Our CV Compiler analyzer processes dozens of CVs of JS developers weekly. Therefore, we also follow the “Game of frameworks”, regularly analyzing the requirements of employers. This article is based on one of these analyzes, and is dedicated to trends in JavaScript in 2019.
For analysis, we took 300 vacancies for JavaScript developers from AngelList, LinkedIn, StackOverflow, and similar sites. Using the text analysis tool we wrote earlier, we highlighted the terms that were most often encountered in these vacancies. Some of these terms are presented in this graph. (The numbers indicate the number of references).
Please note: This is a general rating of skills for positions involving JavaScript as the primary language. Of course, we don’t think that Back-End developers should know all the intricacies of React, etc. ... Moreover, this rating reflects the current demand in the labor market, which may differ from the preferences of the developers themselves (we will talk about them in the next section of this articles).
Among the languages that did not fall into the ranking, the most popular were C # (24) and PHP (16). Among DBMSs, MySQL (23) and MongoDB (23) were the leaders . Unexpectedly for ourselves, Express.js (24) was mentioned in vacancies quite infrequently, as well as Flow (23).
We decided not to include the term Agile (150) in the ranking, but it turned out to be even more popular than Git or Redux, which allows us to equate it with the “hard” skills that every JS developer needs. Same story with UX(101). Of course, you do not have to enroll in an advanced UX course (although it would hardly be a hindrance to someone). But, as a Front-End developer, you should know how to improve the user experience with techniques that are not available to designers.
The fact that we came across the terms Scalability (70), Cloud Computing (44), and Security (29) demonstrates that JavaScript trends are similar to those of the development industry as a whole.
As you may have noticed, Vue.jsnot ranked high in our ranking. There may be several reasons for this. Firstly, not every company is ready to transfer its projects to Vue.js, abandoning more generally accepted and stable front-end solutions. Secondly, many employers expect that a programmer will be able to learn Vue already in the process of work, therefore they do not include this framework in the list of initial requirements for candidates.
However, global research suggests the growing popularity of Vue.js. 28.8% of respondents to the State of JavaScript 2018 survey have already worked with this framework, and would like to repeat this experience. An interesting observation: 34% of respondents in the same survey worked with Angular, but would not want to return to this technology again.
This does not mean that at least one of the technologies (React, Vue.js or Angular) will soon raise a white flag. The choice of front-end framework depends on many factors, such as the scale of the project, as well as its architecture or geography.
The same story is repeated with GraphQL . Although this term is not in the top of our ranking, the popularity of technology is growing rapidly. 21% of respondents in the 2018 Node.js User Survey survey already use GraphQL in their work. For clarity, on April 30, 2018, 52 people downloaded Apollo (GraphQL client). Exactly a year later, 10.794 people downloaded the client.
As far as build tools are concerned, the confrontation between Parcel and Webpack deserves attention . Overview2018 JavaScript Rising Stars revealed that Parcel is slowly taking over the latter's popularity. Despite the fact that Parcel has a lot of attractive built-in functions, such as automatic configuration, a development server, or a hot swap module, so far it has not been able to push back the good old Webpack. More than 16,000 respondents to the State of JavaScript 2018 survey use Webpack to build projects. In the analysis process, we did not meet Parcel in any of the 300 vacancies.
This is what experts think about upcoming trends in JS development.
Yugo Vepsalainen,
founder of SurviveJS and React Finland ,
winner of the Blue Arrow Awards.
Twitter | Website
Kevin Ball,
Web Front-End consultant and trainer,
founder of ZenDev .
Twitter | The blog
Denis Radin,
Tech Lead at FocusReactive .
Twitter | Github
Lori Bart,
speaker, blogger, teacher,
consultant at Ten Mile Square Technologies.
Twitter | Blog | Website
Gleb Bakhmutov,
VP of Engineering at Cypress.io .
Twitter | Website
Tanya Butenko,
Software Engineer at Hireup (Australia),
founder and CEO of Muses Code JS Inc.
Twitter | Website
Overall, I believe that modern JavaScript developers are very lucky. JS and its frameworks are leaders in the ratings of the most used technologies in the world. Despite the individual confrontations of the frameworks, the generally accepted stack of technologies is quite stable, which allows you to concentrate on the use of technologies, rather than their selection. I hope this article helps you identify a list of technologies for further study!
Our CV Compiler analyzer processes dozens of CVs of JS developers weekly. Therefore, we also follow the “Game of frameworks”, regularly analyzing the requirements of employers. This article is based on one of these analyzes, and is dedicated to trends in JavaScript in 2019.
Trending skills for JS developers in 2019
For analysis, we took 300 vacancies for JavaScript developers from AngelList, LinkedIn, StackOverflow, and similar sites. Using the text analysis tool we wrote earlier, we highlighted the terms that were most often encountered in these vacancies. Some of these terms are presented in this graph. (The numbers indicate the number of references).
Please note: This is a general rating of skills for positions involving JavaScript as the primary language. Of course, we don’t think that Back-End developers should know all the intricacies of React, etc. ... Moreover, this rating reflects the current demand in the labor market, which may differ from the preferences of the developers themselves (we will talk about them in the next section of this articles).
conclusions
Among the languages that did not fall into the ranking, the most popular were C # (24) and PHP (16). Among DBMSs, MySQL (23) and MongoDB (23) were the leaders . Unexpectedly for ourselves, Express.js (24) was mentioned in vacancies quite infrequently, as well as Flow (23).
We decided not to include the term Agile (150) in the ranking, but it turned out to be even more popular than Git or Redux, which allows us to equate it with the “hard” skills that every JS developer needs. Same story with UX(101). Of course, you do not have to enroll in an advanced UX course (although it would hardly be a hindrance to someone). But, as a Front-End developer, you should know how to improve the user experience with techniques that are not available to designers.
The fact that we came across the terms Scalability (70), Cloud Computing (44), and Security (29) demonstrates that JavaScript trends are similar to those of the development industry as a whole.
As you may have noticed, Vue.jsnot ranked high in our ranking. There may be several reasons for this. Firstly, not every company is ready to transfer its projects to Vue.js, abandoning more generally accepted and stable front-end solutions. Secondly, many employers expect that a programmer will be able to learn Vue already in the process of work, therefore they do not include this framework in the list of initial requirements for candidates.
However, global research suggests the growing popularity of Vue.js. 28.8% of respondents to the State of JavaScript 2018 survey have already worked with this framework, and would like to repeat this experience. An interesting observation: 34% of respondents in the same survey worked with Angular, but would not want to return to this technology again.
This does not mean that at least one of the technologies (React, Vue.js or Angular) will soon raise a white flag. The choice of front-end framework depends on many factors, such as the scale of the project, as well as its architecture or geography.
The same story is repeated with GraphQL . Although this term is not in the top of our ranking, the popularity of technology is growing rapidly. 21% of respondents in the 2018 Node.js User Survey survey already use GraphQL in their work. For clarity, on April 30, 2018, 52 people downloaded Apollo (GraphQL client). Exactly a year later, 10.794 people downloaded the client.
As far as build tools are concerned, the confrontation between Parcel and Webpack deserves attention . Overview2018 JavaScript Rising Stars revealed that Parcel is slowly taking over the latter's popularity. Despite the fact that Parcel has a lot of attractive built-in functions, such as automatic configuration, a development server, or a hot swap module, so far it has not been able to push back the good old Webpack. More than 16,000 respondents to the State of JavaScript 2018 survey use Webpack to build projects. In the analysis process, we did not meet Parcel in any of the 300 vacancies.
What does JavaScript expect in the near future? Expert Opinions
This is what experts think about upcoming trends in JS development.
As for me, in the coming years, React will retain the right to primacy. GraphQL will begin to slowly push back the REST API, while TypeScript will overtake ECMAScript. As for the new terms, I expect to see ReasonML, Parcel, and the design system (probably not in 2020) in the latest ratings of top skills.
Another observation - it seems to me that Redux will lose its position in the next 5 years, as developers are opening new approaches to the front-end, which is good news.
Yugo Vepsalainen,
founder of SurviveJS and React Finland ,
winner of the Blue Arrow Awards.
Twitter | Website
This ranking demonstrates the continued leadership of React, Angular, and Node.js in the JavaScript ecosystem. I am inclined to believe that this trend will continue, and any developer should study in detail at least one of these frameworks. TypeScript and GraphQL will also continue to grow.
Among backend developers, Node.js. is growing in popularity. However, many companies expect JavaScript developers to be able to work with other languages, such as Java or Python. The rest of the ranking suggests that just knowing JavaScript is no longer enough. The use of common practices such as CI, Git, and TDD are mandatory for current developers.
Kevin Ball,
Web Front-End consultant and trainer,
founder of ZenDev .
Twitter | The blog
I am surprised that Express.js does not occupy one of the top positions in this rating, as this is the main framework for writing backend applications on Node.js. Perhaps this is due to the fact that the lion's share of JavaScript jobs is intended for frontend developers, but the technology itself cannot be attributed to the unpopular.
I am inclined to believe that React will continue to lead the frontend industry. The framework quickly responds to user requests and puts forward fundamentally new ideas. Facebook support also means a lot. TypeScript is also one of the major trends - I think that after 3 years we will not see a single large-scale project that does not use TS. Since the combination of TypeScript and React is well established, I think that both technologies will retain their leadership.
What really needs to be changed is the complexity of the project build process. Most likely, in the near future there will be an effective solution to this problem, such as codesandbox or Parcel.
In general, JavaScript has already formed as a fairly “mature” and stable language, so I don’t think that soon we will see inveterate battles of any technology.
Denis Radin,
Tech Lead at FocusReactive .
Twitter | Github
JavaScript has a reputation as a fast-paced language for which frameworks are released every week. I think this process will slow down slightly, even though we see the emergence of “frameworks for frameworks” such as Gatsby.
Understanding the core syntax of ES6 is crucial, along with understanding the interpretation process and the limitations of various browsers. Finally, the growth of progressive web applications and service workers is also noteworthy. Potential markets for JavaScript applications are located all over the world, and you should also understand what customers need at one point or another on the planet.
Lori Bart,
speaker, blogger, teacher,
consultant at Ten Mile Square Technologies.
Twitter | Blog | Website
Based on the needs of Cypress.io, I see that GraphQL and TypeScript will be leaders in the lists of the most required skills in 2020. It can also be predicted that hybrid frameworks (Next.js, Nuxt.js, Gatsby.js) will be used in the lion's share of projects Therefore, JavaScript developers will have to understand these technologies.
Gleb Bakhmutov,
VP of Engineering at Cypress.io .
Twitter | Website
The JavaScript ecosystem is constantly growing, and this can be confusing. At the same time, this testifies to the evolution of the language, and gives developers a great chance to learn and develop. Owning React and Next.js is a huge plus for both your resume and job search in general.
Tanya Butenko,
Software Engineer at Hireup (Australia),
founder and CEO of Muses Code JS Inc.
Twitter | Website
Overall, I believe that modern JavaScript developers are very lucky. JS and its frameworks are leaders in the ratings of the most used technologies in the world. Despite the individual confrontations of the frameworks, the generally accepted stack of technologies is quite stable, which allows you to concentrate on the use of technologies, rather than their selection. I hope this article helps you identify a list of technologies for further study!