Ask HN: Polymer vs. React

1 point·CHaro··3 comments

I've been doing react for a bit and I really like it, but my friend has been doing polymer and really loving it. From what I can tell they seem the same. What the difference between them?

View on HN

I haven't used Polymer, but:

1. They are not at all the same. Polymer is definitely a framework, while React isn't. They do a few things the same, but even their data-binding features are different.

2. React is way more popular, which matters a lot. It means tutorials, sample code, and Q&A is far easier to find.

3. Polymer is based on Web Components and relies heavily on polyfills. You may or may not care about this (I don't think it matters that much).

4. React is backed and used by Facebook, which means it's less likely to be abandoned or buggy.

Polymer is a framework based on web-components (a relatively low level fmk - it's not angular). Webcomps is a coming standard to be implemented natively by browser, so you'll have a native components model, at last ! But webcomps aren't ready yet. Polymer is heavily based on polyfills and is slow or won't work on older browsers because of that. But yes, Polymer has a great API.

I'd say React is the best response TODAY if you want a component approach.

And if you want to see what future could look like, give a try to Polymer Dart =)

Apparently the beta of Polymer, which should be out very soon, has huge performance improvements. Sounds like it is going to be very usable even in modern browsers, including mobile, without native shadow dom. Have a look at the 0.8 branch.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com