This is How Long The Life Cycle of A JavaScript Framework Lasts

Suppose you want to build a lovely dog house for your cute, little dog. Imagine you had to do everything by yourself, from cutting wood to making paint and assembling the entire structure for the dog house. It would be quite a time consuming and cumbersome process, right?

The smarter thing to do would be to purchase certain parts & paints and then put together the dog house on the basis of a blueprint.

So when it comes to building a robust web application, sometimes the smart thing to do is to take the help of a JavaScript framework. If you manage to choose the right frameworks and come up with an efficient technology stack for your web application, the development process will be much more efficient and faster.

As you must already be aware, a JavaScript framework is a bunch of pre-written JavaScript code that acts as skeleton structures for web applications. Its benefits include performance boost, readymade solutions, keeping the UI in sync with the changing state of the webpage, and many more.

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Naturally then, the market for JavaScript frameworks is very volatile.

What Statistics Say About Framework Life Cycle

Numerous frameworks have entered and left the market over a period of time. These frameworks have varying life cycles as a result of technological elevation.

The life cycle duration and journey of a framework depend on how popular or widely used the framework is.

Major Frameworks — Background and Life Cycle Trends

jQuery, AngularJS, VueJS and ReactJS have remained prominent names when it comes to top frontend frameworks for almost a decade now. Let’s see when these were launched and how their popularity has increased or decreased over time according to Stack Overflow trends.

Source: Stack Overflow

jQuery

jQuery was invented by John Resig and was launched in 2006. One of the earliest in its niche, it had the potential to design applications that adopted the utilities of the web. Upon its launch, it enjoyed immense popularity. However, with the advancement in technology and the emergence of other players, its popularity has gradually declined.

As shown in the graph above, jQuery accounted for the most number of questions, as high as 8% at a point of time, on Stack Overflow’s surveys. But that number gradually fell to 2% during 2020.

Nevertheless, jQuery still remains relevant. The decline is not entirely because of its decreased use. Since jQuery has been around for so long, it’s only natural that a huge number of doubts and concerns have already been commonly known and are no longer asked by many Stack Overflow users.

AngularJS

Launched in 2010 by Google, AngularJS was the first framework to provide a comprehensive structure for front-end application development. It also supported the ability to generate reusable components. With novel and cutting-edge features, AngularJS became a favorite among web developers.

Years later in 2016, Google launched a TypeScript based open-source web application framework named Angular (Angular 2+). Angular was an update to the previously introduced Angular JS with better features and compatibility. As many of us had predicted, the release of various Angular versions did have a strong impact on the market share held by AngularJS.

As shown in the graph, the’ share of AngularJS among new questions increased and was at peak during 2015, at the same time around which jQuery was losing its reputation.

However, shortly after 2016, when Angular (Angular 2+) was launched, Angular JS’ share fell steeply and Angular’s popularity rose with around 3% of the questions with the tag “Angular” in 2020 which is more than the combined share of jQuery and AngularJS.

ReactJS

ReactJS is in fact a front end library that was brought to the world by Jordan Walke of Facebook. It is owned & maintained by Facebook. Launched in 2013, React was developed as a result of the need for better code to manage Facebook Ads more effectively.

After its launch, the framework became a top choice for many new web developers. It has received admiration since then and maintained quite a reputation for itself.

According to Stack Overflow trends, queries for Reactjs increased quickly with 4 % of new questions including the tag “ReactJS” in 2020. The framework is as relevant today as it was back in 2013 and is only growing by the day.

VueJS

VueJS was developed by Evan You. Released in 2014, VueJS provides a lightweight framework encompassed by an ecosystem that is officially upheld and regulated the Vue team.

Since it is mainly used for building user interfaces and single-page applications, it’s relatively less popular than the other three frameworks I mentioned above.

For the first couple of years, Vue remained an underdog but after 2017, it has shown a significant increase in its market share. VueJS is the only front end framework that has survived well for so many years despite not being backed by a giant like Google or Facebook. The VueJS community continues to grow and maintain the framework by itself.

Smaller JavaScript Frameworks: How Long Do They Survive?

For the smaller JavaScript frameworks, the life cycle is very different and much shorter.

Generally, the smaller frameworks are characterized by two phases in their life cycle: quick ascent and steady decline. As these frameworks are launched and provide interesting options to the developers, they quickly gain popularity but with newer entrants, the older ones start to become obsolete.

Source: Stack Overflow

Since around 2012, the developers have been open to adopting new JavaScript frameworks such as Meteor, BackboneJS, Redux, EmberJS, and KnockoutJs. As per the Stack Overflow figures, questions about these frameworks have grown until around 2016. This is identified as Quick Ascent.

Meteor led the race by peaking at 0.45% of the new questions. It was followed by BackboneJS and Redux with 0.35% each, EmberJS with 0.30%, and KnockoutJS with 0.25%.

Soon after they peaked, the prevalence of each of these frameworks started declining. We can say so on the basis of the fact that the number of new questions involving these tags almost descended into oblivion. This is identified as Steady Decline. The underlying reason is simple: developers tend to try and use the freshly launched frameworks with modern features and state-of-the-art technology compared to the older ones.

On average, the life cycle of smaller JavaScript frameworks is about 2 years.

The Bottom Line

While the big players dominate the front end framework market for as long as 8–10 years, long term survival for most smaller names is quite tough. The dominance enjoyed by Angular and Reactjs makes it evident that the size of the developer community has a great impact on how long the lifecycle of a framework is going to last. The more open source resources developers have access to, the larger the user base of that framework.

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