In this video, we’re going to answer several questions, like:

• What is Vue.js and who created it;
• Why should you use Vue.js; and
• What’s the job market like for Vue.js

What is Vue.js?

Vue.js, or simply “Vue”, is a JavaScript library for creating user interfaces for the web.

It’s in the same cateogory of tools as React and Angular.

Later in the course we’re going to see exactly what kind of things Vue.js is useful for creating, but in short, if you want to make a web page dynamic by using JavaScript, Vue is likely to be a tool of interest to you.

Ecosystem

When we talk about “Vue.js”, we’re generally referring to the core library. But Vue should really be thought of as a small ecosystem of separate but highly compatible tools including Vue Router, Vuex, Vue CLI, Vue Devtools and Vue Test Utils.

We’ll get better acquainted with all of those tools later in the course.

Who’s behind Vue?

Who’s behind Vue?

Vue was conceived in 2014 by a very clever guy named Evan You. Evan is still the driving force behind Vue, and the only full-time maintainer…

…though he’s now assisted by the Vue core team, which consists of about 10-15 developers from around the world.

Vue is free, open-source software under the MIT license, but unlike React and Angular, Vue development is not backed by a large company, so the project relies on patrons and corporate sponsors.

This has in no way hampered Vue’s growth, though; on the contrary, its popularity has skyrocketed in the past year or two, going from relative obscurity, to now being talked about in the same league as corporate-backed frameworks like React and Angular.

Some people even predict that Vue will become the dominant JavaScript UI framework someday.

Why you should use Vue.js

Why has Vue become so popular? Well, to me it’s not a complicated answer: it’s because Vue is great!

If you’re not sure you can believe me, take a look at this:

As you can see here, Vue is the third most starred project on all of GitHub with over 125,000 stars, making it the most starred JavaScript UI library on GitHub, with more than React or Angular. This is a clear indiciation developers really like it.

Let’s get more rigorous than that, though, and look at what aspects of Vue specifically that developers love.

Vue’s benefits

Focus

Vue has a very singular purpose: to help you create reactive, component-based user interfaces for the web. Every part of Vue’s API is related to this purpose.

Small API

As a result of this focus, Vue has quite a small API. I haven’t actually counted, but there really aren’t too many methods or config properties in the Vue API, which makes it quite easy for a developer to learn.

Fast and lightweight

Vue is very fast, as Vue’s developers have put a lot of emphasis on ensuring that Vue can render a dynamic page quickly.

Also, because it has a small API, it’s a very lightweight framework, meaning adding Vue to a project only adds around ~ 25Kb to the web page.

Versatility

There a many kinds of interactive UIs you may want to build as web developer, from a simple widget on a page, all the way up to an enterprise-scale, data-driven single-page app.

An amazing thing about Vue is that it works great in both of the scenarios and many others in between.

We’re going to go into more detail about this point in the next video.

Excellent documentation

Because Vue is focused and simple, and also because of the hard work of the Vue contributors, the Vue documentation is easy, logical and very thorough.

In fact, an experienced developer can learn the basics of Vue.js quite comfortably by just following the docs from top to bottom.

Made to be easy

Ultimately, the reason that Vue is easy was that it was designed to be. Other frameworks, like Angular, are designed to be powerful and robust, but not necessarily easy.

Vue, though, was always meant to be a framework that you could use to quickly and easily add interactivity to a page.

Who’s using Vue

So who’s using Vue? Obviously there are thousands of small companies using it, but some of the large ones you may know include Alibaba, Adobe, IBM, NASA, Nintendo, and Trivago.

While this is an impressive list, you may think it is substantially smaller than the list of companies using React or Angular.

This is because Vue has only just stated to become popular in the last year or two, and it takes a bit of time for companies to catch on.

But since Vue is so popular with developers now, it’s only a matter of time before companies start listening to their developers and introducing it into their products. This means it’s a great time to be learning Vue!