At the time of writing in late 2017, Vue.js is at version 2.5. In less than four years from its first release, Vue has become one of the most popular open source projects on GitHub. This popularity is partly due to its powerful features, but also to its emphasis on developer experience and ease of adoption.
The core library of Vue.js, like React, is only for manipulating the view layer from the MVC architectural pattern. However, Vue has two official supporting libraries, Vue Router and Vuex, responsible for routing and data management respectively.
Vue is not supported by a tech giant in the way that React and Angular are and relies on donations from a small number of corporate patrons and dedicated Vue users. Even more impressively, Evan You is currently the only full-time Vue developer, though a core team of 20 more developers from around the world assist with development, maintenance, and documentation.
The key design principles of Vue are as follows:
- Focus: Vue has opted for a small, focused API, and its sole purpose is the creation of UIs
- Simplicity: Vue's syntax is terse and easy to follow
- Compactness: The core library script is ~25 KB minified, making it smaller than React and even jQuery
- Speed: Rendering benchmarks beat many of the main frameworks, including React
- Versatility: Vue works well for small jobs where you might normally use jQuery, but can scale up as a legitimate SPA solution
