As a Front-end Developer, when you want to develop a modern web application, choosing the right tool for building that web application is a crucial decision that can have an impact on your projects. I guess you have probably heard of Create React App (CRA) and Vite.js in the React ecosystem right? They are the two popular tools for creating a React web application. While both tools are offering the same purpose, they are some key differences we would discuss that will make Vite.js a much better choice for your next web development project. In this article, we will explain both tools and explore why Vite.js is the superior choice.

What is Create React App?

Create React App (CRA) is a User Interface library that was developed by the React team at Facebook (Yeah, The Social Media Giant). It’s a UI library that is well popular in the Tech world. It provides a configured development environment for building react applications without worrying about the building process involved, we just want to write some JSX. CRA is a great tool when getting started it allows developers to focus solely on writing React code without worrying about the underlying technology.

What is Vite.js?

Vite.js is a fast modern build tool and development server for modern web development applications that was created by Evan You, the creator of Vue.js. It is designed to be a lightweight, fast, and easy-to-use tool. Did you know that Vite is the French word for “Fast” we should probably call it Fast.js.

Vite.js provides a modern development experience to achieve faster build time and instant hot-reloading which allows real-time updates to your application as changes are been made during development.

Let's get down to why Vite.js is a better choice for development than CRA.

Faster Development Experience

When it comes to starting a new project or making changes to your code, vite.js provide a much faster development experience compared to CRA. Vite.js leverages the native ES Module in modern browsers to provide instant page reloading which enables you as a developer to see changes reflected immediately without waiting for the build process to complete giving you a much more productive and enjoyable development experience. Vite.js also support Vue.js, React.js, and Vanilla JavaScript, which makes it a versatile tool that can be used with different framework and library.

In contrast, CRA can be more complex to configure and use. It uses a more traditional build system that takes longer to compile and reloading changes takes like forever.

Faster Build Times

One of the main benefits of using Vite.js is its power of being fast when it comes to building your project for production. Vite.js uses a highly optimized build system that takes advantage of native ES modules and dynamic imports to reduce the size of your written code, allow for the fast build of your application, and improve performance which can help a lot when building a larger project.

In contrast, CRA uses Webpack which can be slow and can result in much longer build times.

More Flexible Configuration

Vite.js has a simpler configuration compared to CRA. Vite.js allows you to easily configure your development and production environment using a configuration file which allows you to customize the build process to meet your specific needs and add additional features like CSS preprocessors (SASS, LESS) or Typescript support.

In contrast, CRA is more prescriptive in its configuration. It provides a set of pre-configured options that have to be followed and can be difficult to override or customize to your needs as a beginner.

Large Ecosystem

Vite.js is loved by front-end developers because of the problems it is solving. It has a large and growing ecosystem of plugins and tools that can be used to extend its functionality. This makes it easier to integrate Vite.js into existing workflows and projects without any trouble. Isn’t that great?

Conclusion

While both CRA and Vite.js offer a development experience for react.js applications. Vite.js is a fast, efficient, and superior choice for building modern web applications, no doubt. Its modern development server and support for native ES modules make it a better choice compare to CRA. By using Vite.js developers can have a better development experience building applications that are faster and more efficient. If you are starting a new React project give Vite.js a try and see the huge difference for yourself. You will never go back.