Angular vs React – My Experience in the AI Era

I’ve been working with Angular professionally for quite a while, and I’ve also spent time building personal projects with React. Both are powerful tools for building modern web applications, but switching between them taught me something simple: once you understand the fundamentals, adapting to different frameworks becomes much easier.

My Angular Background

At work, Angular has been my main tool. I appreciate its strong structure, opinionated architecture, and built-in tooling. The tight TypeScript integration, dependency injection, and CLI automation make it well suited for large, enterprise-level applications. It enforces consistency across teams and projects, which is a big advantage when many developers are involved.

That said, the same structure can feel heavy at times. Even small features often require a fair amount of setup—modules, services, decorators, and configuration. This ceremony is part of what makes Angular reliable, but it also makes it less flexible than libraries like React.

Switching to React

When I started using React for personal projects, the transition was surprisingly smooth. Component-based thinking was already familiar from Angular, and once I understood JSX and hooks, everything clicked.

React feels lightweight, unopinionated, and closer to plain JavaScript. Setting up a project - especially with tools like Vite or Next.js—was fast and enjoyable. I could focus more on building ideas and less on configuration.

Frameworks in the AI Era

In today’s AI-driven development landscape, learning a specific framework is much less of a barrier. With tools like Cursor, ChatGPT, and AI-assisted documentation, developers can move faster than ever. You don’t need to memorize every API before writing code.

If you understand core web concepts: components, state, data flow, and reactivity - you can pick up almost any framework quickly. That’s why the real value isn’t choosing Angular or React, but understanding why they exist and how they work.

Final Thoughts

Both Angular and React are excellent choices. Angular offers structure and consistency; React offers flexibility and creative freedom. In the era of AI-assisted coding, moving between them is easier than ever.

The most important thing is to start building. The rest comes naturally along the way.