Web components vs. React

The article provides a comprehensive comparison between web components and React, highlighting their distinct purposes and features. Web components allow for the creation of reusable and encapsulated custom HTML elements that can be used across various frontend libraries and frameworks, making them framework-agnostic. They rely on technologies like custom elements, the shadow DOM, and HTML templates to offer isolated styling and reusability. React, on the other hand, is a declarative JavaScript library for building dynamic user interfaces through a component-based development pattern. It offers two syntactical approaches—class and functional components—and provides a vast ecosystem of UI libraries and tools, though it requires additional dependencies for tasks like routing. While web components are native and more memory-efficient, they have a complex API that may not be as developer-friendly as React's JSX-based approach. The article concludes that while neither technology will replace the other due to their differing goals, they can be used together depending on development needs, with web components potentially complementing React's capabilities in certain scenarios.