Both were developed by Facebook but React is a JavaScript library of reusable components designed to create web apps (complex websites), whereas React Native is designed to build native mobile apps with reusable components.

Major features of React are:

• It uses the virtual DOM instead of the real DOM
• It uses server-side rendering
• It follows uni-directional data flow or data binding

React is a Javascript library, and hence, it is made with Javascript. So to make use of it, you use Javascript primarily. Optionally, you can choose to use JSX or Javascript eXtension, an XML-Esque language, to build UI components. The JSX syntax would still be converted to its Javascript equivalent, but it is much easier to write.

Due to React’s popularity, there are also bindings for almost every language that transpiles to JavaScript (TypeScript, Flow, ReasonML, ClojureScript, PureScript, etc.). There are also plentiful of documentation on how to integrate it with other languages (for example, ReactJS.NET, which makes it easy to use in C# applications).

JSX is a syntax extension of JavaScript. It is used with React to describe what the user interface should look like. By using JSX, we can write HTML structures in the same file that contains JavaScript code.

React is really fast compared to other techs, and it is so because of one main reason, the Virtual DOM. The DOM or document object model is a representation of the HTML code. It’s what gives Javascript the ability to manipulate HTML elements. It makes use of the DOM API to achieve this. Unfortunately manipulating the DOM can prove tiresome due to the nature of modern websites.

The React Virtual DOM is a simpler copy of the actual DOM which you interact with React. Instead of reloading the whole DOM each time there is a change in state, it re-creates the React DOM and compares it to the previous version using a difference algorithm. It then instructs the DOM to reload only the affected area. This significantly reduces the time taken to update a page.

React and Angular are the 2 most popular client-side web application development frameworks/libraries. The Angular/React difference is also a duel between two tech giants: Google, the company behind Angular and Facebook, behind React. Even if the purpose and possible application of these 2 frameworks is the same, some differences exist.

The major difference between the two frameworks is that on one hand React manipulates a virtual DOM (Document Object Model) while Angular manipulates the real DOM of the page. This has a real impact on the performance of your page. Indeed, React’s virtual DOM is much faster. 

Here is a list of other notable differences between Angular and React:

• TypeScript is mandatory for developing an application with Angular while it is optional for React.
• React uses a virtual DOM and not Angular. As explained above, this different paradigm allows React to gain performance compared to Angular.
• There is more flexibility with React: choosing your tools and libraries is possible. With Angular some libraries are imposed because they are part of the framework.
• React has a larger community, therefore, you will have an easier time finding help in case of problems or bugs by developing your application in React.
• An Angular project is faster to start and set up while a React project can take longer to launch or architect
• React uses JSX for HTML rendering within JavaScript while Angular uses regular .html files.