Vue is a relative newcomer in the JavaScript frontend landscape, but a very serious challenger to the current leading libraries. It is simple, flexible, and very fast, while still providing a lot of features and optional tools that can help you build a modern web app efficiently. Its creator, Evan You, calls it the progressive framework:
- Vue is incrementally adoptable, with a core library focused on user interfaces that you can use in existing projects
- You can make small prototypes all the way up to large and sophisticated web applications
- Vue is approachable--the beginners can pick up the library easily, and the confirmed developers can be productive very quickly
Vue roughly follows a Model-View-ViewModel architecture, which means the View (the user interface) and the Model (the data) are separated, with the ViewModel (Vue) being a mediator between the two. It handles the updates automatically and has been already optimized for you. Therefore, you don't have to specify when a part of the View should update because Vue will choose the right way and time to do so.
The library also takes inspiration from other similar libraries such as React, Angular, and Polymer. The following is an overview of its core features:
- A reactive data system that can update your user interface automatically, with a lightweight virtual-DOM engine and minimal optimization efforts, is required
- Flexible View declaration--artist-friendly HTML templates, JSX (HTML inside JavaScript), or hyperscript render functions (pure JavaScript)
- Composable user interfaces with maintainable and reusable components
- Official companion libraries that come with routing, state management, scaffolding, and more advanced features, making Vue a non-opinionated but fully fleshed out frontend framework
