After 2016 and 2017, welcome to the third edition of the JavaScript Rising Stars!

It's time to look back at the JavaScript landscape in 2018.

Let's see by the numbers which projects got traction in 2018 by comparing the numbers of stars added on GitHub over the last 12 months, and find out who are 2018's JavaScript Rising Stars.


The following graphs compare the number of stars added on GitHub over the last 12 months. We analyzed projects coming from Best of JS, a curated list of the best projects related to the web platform. Note that you can click on a project to get more info.

Table of Contents

  1. Most Popular Projects Overall
    Vue.jsReactVS CodeDenoPuppeteerCreate React AppAxiosAnt DesignVue Element AdminStorybook
  2. Front-end Frameworks
    Vue.jsReactAngularHyperappOmi
  3. Node.js Frameworks
    Next.jsNuxtNestExpressKoa
  4. React Ecosystem
    Create React AppAnt DesignGatsbyNext.jsMaterial UI
  5. Vue Ecosystem
    Vue Element AdminElementVuePressvue-cliNuxt
  6. Angular Ecosystem
    Angular CLIngx-adminMaterial Design for AngularNgRxNG-ZORRO
  7. Mobile
    React NativeWeexNativeScriptQuasarIonic
  8. Compilers
    TypeScriptBabelFlowReasonPurescript
  9. Build Tools
    ParcelWebpackRollupGulpPoi
  10. Testing Frameworks
    JestAVAMochaJasmineTape
  11. IDEs & Editors
    VS CodeAtomTheiaReactideBrackets
  12. CSS in JavaScript
    Styled ComponentsEmotionCSS ModulesLinariaPolished
  13. Static Sites
    GatsbyNext.jsVuePressNuxtHexo
  14. GraphQL
    GatsbyPrismaApollo clientGraphQLApollo Server
  15. Learning Resource
    JS Algorithms & Data Structures30 seconds of codeYou Don't Know JSAirbnb Style GuideNode.js Best Practices
  16. Conclusion

Most Popular Projects Overall

1
Vue.js

Vue.js

🖖 Vue.js is a progressive, incrementally-adoptable JavaScript framework for building UI on the web.
+45.3k☆

Trends in 2018

3.9k
2.9k
3.9k
3.7k
3.3k
9.7k
3.6k
3.3k
2.7k
2.5k
3.0k
2.8k
J
F
M
A
M
J
J
A
S
O
N
D

GitHub data

Created
2013-07
Total stars
124.1k☆

Links

GitHub
vuejs/vue
Homepage
vuejs.org
Best of JS
bestofjs.org/projects/vuejs
2
React

React

A declarative, efficient, and flexible JavaScript library for building user interfaces.
+34.2k☆
3
VS Code

VS Code

Visual Studio Code
+25.2k☆
4
Deno

Deno

A secure TypeScript runtime on V8
+21.6k☆
5
Puppeteer

Puppeteer

Headless Chrome Node API
+21.4k☆
6
Create React App

Create React App

Set up a modern web app by running one command.
+21.2k☆
7
Axios

Axios

Promise based HTTP client for the browser and node.js
+19.9k☆
8
Ant Design

Ant Design

🐜 A UI Design Language
+18.5k☆
9
Vue Element Admin

Vue Element Admin

A magical vue admin
+17.3k☆
10
Storybook

Storybook

Interactive UI component dev & test: React, React Native, Vue, Angular, Ember
+15.1k☆

These are the hottest projects of the year, all categories included.

For the third time in a row, Vue.js is the trendiest project of the year.

It got 45k stars overs the last 12 months, it's 5,000 more stars than in 2017... the momentum is still there!

At position number 4, Deno is the only new project among the TOP 10.

Deno is "a program for executing JavaScript and TypeScript outside of the web browser."

According to its creator Ryan Dahl (the father of Node.js), this secure TypeScript runtime is an attempt of addressing several issues about Node.js. Watch his video presentation.

Front-end Frameworks

1
Vue.js

Vue.js

🖖 Vue.js is a progressive, incrementally-adoptable JavaScript framework for building UI on the web.
+45.3k☆
2
React

React

A declarative, efficient, and flexible JavaScript library for building user interfaces.
+34.2k☆
3
Angular

Angular

One framework. Mobile & desktop.
+12.4k☆
4
Hyperapp

Hyperapp

1 kB JavaScript micro-framework for building declarative web applications
+7.6k☆
5
Omi

Omi

Next generation web framework using web components with omio fallback(IE8+) in tiny js.
+5.1k☆

In the battlefield of the front-end framework category, the 3 dominant actors were the same than in 2017: Vue.js, React and Angular.

If you check the graph, you may notice a peak of stars in June for both Vue.js and React. The reason? It was the time Vue.js passed React in terms of total number of stars, becoming the most popular project in the UI frameworks category. At that time, fans from both sides did their best to push their champion!

The newcomer in 2018 is Omi, a very promising UI framework that takes advantage of the Shadow DOM technology, while using the "JSX" syntax, familiar to React developers.

Node.js Frameworks

1
Next.js

Next.js

The React Framework
+12.6k☆
2
Nuxt

Nuxt

The Vue.js Developers Framework
+8.7k☆
3
Nest

Nest

A progressive Node.js framework for building efficient and scalable server-side applications on top
+8.4k☆
4
Express

Express

Fast, unopinionated, minimalist web framework for node.
+5.8k☆
5
Koa

Koa

Expressive middleware for node.js using ES2017 async functions
+5.5k☆

The 2 leading Node.js frameworks in 2018 are "full-stack frameworks" related to a specific front-end framework:

They both provide a great developer experience to set up Single-Page Applications, while providing Server-Side Rendering features.

At position number 4 Express, the number one in 2017, stays very popular, despite its age.

React Ecosystem

1
Create React App

Create React App

Set up a modern web app by running one command.
+21.2k☆
2
Ant Design

Ant Design

🐜 A UI Design Language
+18.5k☆
3
Gatsby

Gatsby

Build blazing fast, modern apps and websites with React
+13.0k☆
4
Next.js

Next.js

The React Framework
+12.6k☆
5
Material UI

Material UI

React components that implement Google's Material Design.
+11.4k☆

No surprise in the React eco-system category, the project number one in 2018 is Create React App, the de-facto tool to start a new React application.

The version 2 was released in 2018, it was a major upgrade that includes the version 4 of Webpack and the possibility to use TypeScript.

About the React library itself, the introduction of hooks is a major addition, that may change a lot of things about the way we deal with state management and side effects with React.

Vue Ecosystem

1
Vue Element Admin

Vue Element Admin

A magical vue admin
+17.3k☆
2
Element

Element

A Vue.js 2.0 UI Toolkit for Web
+12.4k☆
3
VuePress

VuePress

📝 Minimalistic Vue-powered static site generator
+10.4k☆
4
vue-cli

vue-cli

🛠️ Standard Tooling for Vue.js Development
+9.8k☆
5
Nuxt

Nuxt

The Vue.js Developers Framework
+8.7k☆

Vue.js momentum is still growing, the version 3 should take advantage of modern browsers abilities to make it even faster and easier to use.

Vue Element Admin, the most popular project of the Vue.js ecosystem, is a solution to build beautiful dashboards using Vue.js components.

vue-cli is the standard solution to build a new Vue.js application, using the modern JavaScript tooling.

It can be compared to Create React App for React but it's more flexible and it provides a Graphical User Interface that makes it very user-friendly.

Angular Ecosystem

1
Angular CLI

Angular CLI

CLI tool for Angular
+5.9k☆
2
ngx-admin

ngx-admin

Admin dashboard template based on Angular 7+, Bootstrap 4 (previously known as ng2-admin)
+4.8k☆
3
Material Design for Angular

Material Design for Angular

Material Design components for Angular
+4.3k☆
4
NgRx

NgRx

Reactive libraries for Angular
+2.5k☆
5
NG-ZORRO

NG-ZORRO

An enterprise-class UI components based on Ant Design and Angular 7. 🐜
+2.2k☆

Not one but two major upgrades in the Angular ecosystem in 2018!

Angular version 6, introduced in May, provides a lot of features related to the tooling.

As a consequence, the trendiest project of the Angular ecosystem was Angular CLI the official command line tool used to scaffold new projects and manage existing projects.

Among the new features, the update command makes it easy to update an application and its dependencies. Also, it's now possible to customize the underlying Webpack configuration without "ejecting".

Angular version 7 was announced in October.

It includes Angular CLI prompts, an upgrade of Material Design for Angular, and focuses on performance improvements, with a feature called "Virtual Scrolling".

Mobile

1
React Native

React Native

A framework for building native apps with React.
+14.6k☆
2
Weex

Weex

A framework for building Mobile cross-platform UI.
+4.4k☆
3
NativeScript

NativeScript

NativeScript is an open source framework for building truly native mobile apps with JavaScript. Use
+3.8k☆
4
Quasar

Quasar

Quasar Framework
+3.6k☆
5
Ionic

Ionic

Build amazing native and progressive web apps with open web technologies. One app running on everyth
+3.5k☆

React Native is still the leading solution to create mobile applications using the JavaScript language.

Airbnb recently published a thorough series of article explaining why they decided to drop React Native for their next products in favor of Native Apps.

For people who want to use Vue.js instead of React, there are several choices.

The 4 following projects of the category (Weex, NativeScript, Quasar and Ionic) all support Vue.js as the view layer to build mobile applications.

It's not a JavaScript project because it uses the Dart language but Flutter from Google is a great alternative to build cross-environment mobile applications.

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Conclusion

Looking back at 2018, the biggest story in the JavaScript community may be the Event-stream drama, revealed in November.

There were a lot of talks around this drama, about security concerns and the burden of maintaining open-source projects.

Talking about open source, the acquisition of GitHub by Microsoft in June was a breaking news.

Over the last months, Microsoft did a lot of moves to become one of the major actors in the JavaScript world, as shown by the success of TypeScript language and VS Code editor.

So it may not be so surprising to see a giant like Microsoft taking control of our beloved GitHub… but what a turnaround in the history of Open Source!

Thank you for your attention, and feel free to share this article or reach us on GitHub if you have any feedback… and see you next year!

Authors

Sacha Greif

Author of Discover Meteor and creator of Vulcan, a React+GraphQL open-source framework.

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