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Comment by root-z | Hacker News Reader

I come from a JVM/Python background, so not familiar with JS ecosystem at all. How do people decide what to use when there are 5 most popular libraries/frameworks in each category. Not saying the diversity is a bad thing. Just wondering how people make these choices when starting a new project.

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My 2c:

1) Surrounding ecosystem. This is one of the reason React is so popular. The community and ecosystem of React packages is extremely large.

2) Personal preference. There really isn't much difference between React/Vue/Angular in terms of getting the job done (Same with most good libraries), so either you pick a library because you need a very specific piece of functionality from it, or you pick it because you/your team/your org prefers it.

Most niches don’t have multiple popular contenders except for some core concerns. Most of the time you can default to the popular one if you don’t know how to evaluate it any further, but the README and API tend to make the decision trivial. The project with the best docs is an easy deal breaker as it’s a good signal that the engineers have put some hammock time into the project and they have attention to detail.

But also, just try multiple libraries out. Sometimes one library doesn’t even give you the results you want. I notice beginners in general are resistant to that and seem to think precious time is wasted if they don’t make the perfect decision upfront. I say spend an hour playing with various libs if you can’t decide otherwise.

If all else is equal, I opt for the smallest contender (in terms of minified size). I also check the dependency graph and nope out if it’s unreasonably large.

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