##Angular versus React
The first major difference our group noticed between these two frameworks was the amount of set up that React required. After getting past the initial frustration of getting something meaningful to load on our web page, we started to see the benefit of choosing React. We discovered that React uses a virtual DOM and looks for differences between this virtual and real DOM so that only relevant portions are updated. This feature means increased speed and performance when dealing with larger data sets.
We decided to use React's JSX language in this project. JSX combines JavaScript with in line HTML in a JavaScript file, separate from our HTML file. This was an adjustment from Angular's style of including apps, controllers, expressions, and directives directly in your HTML page. We found the JSX language easy to learn because we did not need to research proprietary features like we did when learning about Angular's directives.
Our group agreed that the code we wrote in React seemed to have a closer relationship to the DOM compared to Angular's more obscured relationship. Fore example, React uses state to handle events. A change in state will trigger a render or re-render of DOM elements instead of Angular's directives which seem to obscure the DOM. Also, React utilizes more traditional JavaScript techniques like looping over HTML elements for a repeat effect instead of Angular's ng-repeat directive.
After completing the project and getting more comfortable with React, it is easy to see why this framework is an important addition to our developer tool belts.
Resources:
https://www.codementor.io/reactjs/tutorial/react-vs-angularjs
https://facebook.github.io/react/docs/thinking-in-react.html