Vue.js is an open-source front-end JavaScript framework created in 2014 by a lone developer, Evan You. Since its inception, it has gained massive popularity among developers and companies alike. Let’s take a look at how that happened and who uses Vue in 2021.
Why are companies using Vue.js?
Over the recent years, Vue continues to be used by companies of all sizes, and it’s easy to understand why. It’s uncomplicated to learn and easily integrated into existing projects written using other frameworks and languages. Its official documentation is simply stellar and continues to be the first-choice learning resource for Vue.js across the board. Moreover, a road to a working prototype is quick with Vue, and its scalability is proven by various teams that used the framework to develop large-scale applications .
Top reasons to use Vue.js
- Vue is open-source, so developers can use, change, and adapt it freely to match your app’s requirements.
- Its popularity means that there are many ready-to-use modules and libraries, as well as an active community of devoted developers who maintain and update useful and organized documentation that can be used when encountering any issue.
- Vue is remarkably simple to learn by all JavaScript developers, and a large talent pool already exists, making recruitment for your project less demanding.
- The Vue.js code can be written quickly, especially by experienced developers, and it makes the MVP development relatively quick and easy as well.
- Integrating the framework with an existing project is pretty straightforward.
- It’s versatile: you can use Vue to build enterprise-sized applications as well as simple one-page apps.
What is Vue.js used for?
Being a front-end framework, Vue.js is heavily used in the development of progressive web apps (you can learn more about PWAs here) and extending functionalities of existing applications, but use cases vary from company to company. To really understand how modern businesses use Vue, let’s explore 10 interesting Vue usage examples.
1. Nintendo
Nintendo is a Japanese company that produces internationally renowned video games (including the iconic Super Mario and The Legend of Zelda series) and consoles (for example GameCube, Wii, and Switch). The famous company uses Vue.js on multiple of its official websites, including German and French regional sites, as well as in My Nintendo site where it helps in handling their user reward system.
2. Passionate People
A software consultancy company from the Netherlands, Passionate People , used Vue.js for one of their most ambitious internal projects in 2021 — the creation of a multi-theme, fully dynamic administration UI for various user roles. It quickly became apparent that Vue’s friendly learning curve, cohesive ecosystem, and top-notch documentation would help in making that happen.
All internal projects at Passionate People are being created by a very lean development team that receives additional help only when it’s needed. Before choosing Vue, the team experimented with React and Web Components (based on Polymer 2 and then lit-html), but both approaches were ultimately abandoned. Writing the codebase in React required everyone working on the task to learn and understand some additional concepts before being able to contribute. Using Web Components resulted in adding more elements than the team felt comfortable with.
With Vue however, the team spent less time writing documentation and integrating external dependencies, and more focusing on the implementation itself. It also turned out that team members who join the team for a limited time can quickly get up to speed with the project and start programming.
3. FindlayWebTech
FindlayWebTech is a consultancy-focused business that helps companies in developing web and mobile applications. Thomas Findlay, the company owner, as well as a Full-Stack Web & Mobile Developer, decided to employ React and Vue after jQuery proved unsatisfactory for some applications, especially larger ones.
He praises Vue.js for being very declarative, component-based, offering two-way data binding, as well as for having an easy learning curve and superb documentation. For FindlayWebTech, Vue quickly became the favorite framework that they usually choose for all new projects besides those with a specific stack determined by the client.
4. Adobe
Adobe is a massive American software company that specializes in developing tools dedicated to a wide range of creative professionals: graphic designers, illustrators, photographers, animators, video editors, and others. At the company, Vue.js is primarily used in the development of Behance, which is a popular online platform where users can showcase their creative work of all kinds and be discovered by companies that routinely search the platform for talent. But that’s not all — there are smaller Adobe projects that were made with Vue as well, i.e., the advertorial “ Schrift Bewegt “ for the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung.
5. BridgeU
The need to introduce new, complex functionalities to an existing monolithic Ruby on Rails application resulted in the BridgeU development team deciding on implementing JavaScript elements. After some testing, the edtech start-up chose to use Vue, since it felt similar to Ruby in a lot of ways. Within 2 years since the implementation, Vue.js became the sole programming method used in their front-end.
How did that happen? BridgeU developers say that one of the main reasons was single-file components, a feature that lets developers contain and reuse smaller parts of a functionality, which is extremely useful when managing large codebases. With single-file components, a developer can focus on a smaller part of a bigger feature, which results in faster iterations. The second huge reason for the start-up to stick with Vue.js was an abundance of open-source libraries that are available to use with the framework (or JavaScript in general). It means that writing some features from scratch is no longer necessary.
As a result, BridgeU offers a clean, modern User Interface that makes them stand out from the crowd, especially in the educational software industry, where many competitors still use outdated technologies.
6. Eve
The company behind an event-management platform, Eve, is a fast-growing, multicultural start-up from Munich founded in 2018. It should come with no surprise that the company that grows quickly and employs engineers with diverse backgrounds prefers to use technologies that allow for quick development but have enough flexibility to scale the app as needed.
After testing Vue, Angular, and React frameworks, An Phan, the Head of Engineering at Eve, decided on using Vue.js because of its friendly learning curve and mature ecosystem. Only one day after this decision, every team member (none of them being Vue specialists at that point) had their first Vue commit done. Building on widely available high-quality libraries, and extensive use of official documentation, the company was able to launch its core product in record time — with no sacrifices to its quality.
7. Gitlab
Gitlab started using Vue in 2016 because it gave the developers enough freedom to be creative while offering a structure that acts as a safety net to keep the programming work efficient. This choice resulted in being able to produce the same effects with less code, with a feature like GitLab Issue being thinned down from 30 to 1 (literally one) line of code. The developers quickly noticed the improved performance of elements rewritten in Vue.js but decided to put additional restrictions on their Vue usage: all new features must follow a Flux architecture, and mixing Vue with jQuery is to be avoided. Everyone interested can read through Gitlab’s Vue documentation online.
8. Coursedog
Coursedog, a SaaS platform for colleges and universities that manages schedule optimization, curriculum, and catalog management, was conceived in 2018, when two students, Justin Wenig and Nick Diao tried to register for core computer science classes at their university. They quickly discovered that a lot of schools continued to rely on spreadsheets and legacy tools for this, and decided to do something about it. In 2020, their company, Coursedog, became the industry leader, growing to 45 team members, 60+ university partners, and 700,000+ students using their software.
This quick growth was in part possible because the team chose Vue to create early demos. While working on them, developers discovered that the framework enabled them to iterate quickly, as well as create and reuse features fast. At the same time, it was also providing the easily scaled architecture that allowed them to create a large and powerful product over time. So they continued to use Vue.js.
The team emphasizes that Vue’s generous learning curve allows junior developers with little Vue experience to quickly catch up and start contributing to the code. The developers also praise the composition-api plugin available for Vue 2.x that helped them further scale the frontend. The company eagerly waits for the third-party libraries to catch up with Vue 3.0, expecting more performance gains and the improvement of developer experience.
9. Extradom
The Polish company Extradom, one of the biggest companies in the local architecture industry, approached Monterail in 2017 with an idea of a 3D interior design Web app. The client wanted an outstandingly stable app with impressive UX, and the ability to integrate external assets via REST API, available on all modern platforms. We chose to use Vue.js for this project to be able to easily manage data from big and complex external tools, as well as to create a top-notch UX/UI. As a result, Extradom had a working MVP in 8 months and a new digital product that enabled them to cooperate closely with e-commerce partners.
Vue.js for business — is it the right choice?
Are you convinced that Vue.js is right for your project? Do you want to know more about Vue usages in business? With 30+ Vue-based projects and the official Vue Partner title under our belt, you can trust in our expertise and build your Vue.js software the uncomplicated way: with us. Our specialists will gladly answer your questions, ask their own, and help you decide your next steps.
Originally published at https://www.monterail.com.
