Claude on Question 31, Sep 17
Which JavaScript framework should I start a new project with today?Short answer: React, via Vite for a SPA or Next.js if you need SSR/SEO. That's the safe default in 2025 because of ecosystem size, hiring, library availability, and the sheer volume of documentation and examples. But a few scenarios point elsewhere:
Pick by what you're building:
- •Content-heavy site (blog, docs, marketing, e-commerce catalog): Astro. Ships almost no JS by default, and you can drop in React/Svelte/Vue components as islands where you need interactivity. Using a full app framework for this is overkill.
- •Dashboard / internal tool / app behind a login: Vite + React + React Router. You don't need SSR, and skipping Next.js avoids a lot of complexity around server components, caching, and deployment.
- •Public app that needs SEO and fast first loads: Next.js or Nuxt (Vue). Both are mature and have good hosting stories.
- •Small team, you value DX and speed of writing code: SvelteKit. Less boilerplate, genuinely pleasant, smaller bundles. Trade-off is a thinner ecosystem — you'll occasionally write your own wrapper for something React has three options for.
- •Large team, enterprise, long-lived codebase: Angular. Modern Angular (signals, standalone components) is much better than its old reputation suggests, and its opinionated structure and batteries-included tooling are real advantages when 30 people touch the same repo.
- •Web + mobile from one skillset: React, so you can reuse knowledge with React Native.
Two things that matter more than the framework choice:
- 1.Your rendering strategy. SPA vs. SSR vs. static generation affects your architecture, hosting cost, and debugging experience far more than React vs. Vue does. Decide this deliberately rather than inheriting it from a framework's defaults.
- 2.What you or your team already know. Familiarity with a "worse" framework beats learning a "better" one on a real deadline. Frameworks converge on the same ideas anyway — components, reactive state, file-based routing.
Worth avoiding: starting with Solid or Qwik unless you specifically want their architectural properties and are comfortable being an early adopter. They're technically impressive but you'll hit gaps.
One caveat: my information has a cutoff, so check current versions and release notes before committing — Next.js in particular moves fast and has had some rough migrations. The broad landscape above has been stable for a while, though.
What are you building? I can give a more specific recommendation.
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Extracted picks, in order · confidence medium
- React
- Astro
- Next.js
- SvelteKit
- Angular
Highlighted: the names the extractor took as picks, where they appear verbatim (5 of 5).
Short answer: **React, via Vite for a SPA or Next.js if you need SSR/SEO.** That's the safe default in 2025 because of ecosystem size, hiring, library availability, and the sheer volume of documentation and examples. But a few scenarios point elsewhere:
**Pick by what you're building:**
- **Content-heavy site** (blog, docs, marketing, e-commerce catalog): **Astro**. Ships almost no JS by default, and you can drop in React/Svelte/Vue components as islands where you need interactivity. Using a full app framework for this is overkill.
- **Dashboard / internal tool / app behind a login**: **Vite + React + React Router**. You don't need SSR, and skipping Next.js avoids a lot of complexity around server components, caching, and deployment.
- **Public app that needs SEO and fast first loads**: **Next.js** or **Nuxt** (Vue). Both are mature and have good hosting stories.
- **Small team, you value DX and speed of writing code**: **SvelteKit**. Less boilerplate, genuinely pleasant, smaller bundles. Trade-off is a thinner ecosystem — you'll occasionally write your own wrapper for something React has three options for.
- **Large team, enterprise, long-lived codebase**: **Angular**. Modern Angular (signals, standalone components) is much better than its old reputation suggests, and its opinionated structure and batteries-included tooling are real advantages when 30 people touch the same repo.
- **Web + mobile from one skillset**: **React**, so you can reuse knowledge with React Native.
**Two things that matter more than the framework choice:**
1. **Your rendering strategy.** SPA vs. SSR vs. static generation affects your architecture, hosting cost, and debugging experience far more than React vs. Vue does. Decide this deliberately rather than inheriting it from a framework's defaults.
2. **What you or your team already know.** Familiarity with a "worse" framework beats learning a "better" one on a real deadline. Frameworks converge on the same ideas anyway — components, reactive state, file-based routing.
**Worth avoiding:** starting with Solid or Qwik unless you specifically want their architectural properties and are comfortable being an early adopter. They're technically impressive but you'll hit gaps.
One caveat: my information has a cutoff, so check current versions and release notes before committing — Next.js in particular moves fast and has had some rough migrations. The broad landscape above has been stable for a while, though.
What are you building? I can give a more specific recommendation.
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