Characterize Vue.js
Preface
What does Vue.js mean to you?
Whether you write Vue.js for work every day, explore it as a hobby, or simply know the name through social media — there are all kinds of perspectives.
Too much to learn?
Lack of rules makes it confusing?
Easy?
Migration is painful?
But somehow you like it?
Or you still don't?
Everyone holds different feelings and impressions.
Today, I want to take those intuitions you've felt about Vue.js and organize them systematically. That's what this essay attempts to do.
Let me characterize Vue.js through 4 distinct characters.
Vue.js is Easy?
Have you heard this phrase before?
"Vue.js is Easy"
You often see the Easy/Simple comparison in discussions.
Honestly, I'm not particularly fond of this phrase.
First, what feels "easy" is highly subjective and depends heavily on one's background.
I'm already hesitant to casually use the word "easy," but this phrase can create two misconceptions.
Misconception 1: "Vue.js has become difficult"
Vue.js announced version 3 with the Composition API in 2020, bringing significant changes.
And since then, it has continued to evolve.
During this time, some have said "Vue.js has become difficult" or "the old Vue.js was simpler and better."
Indeed, there was a time when Vue.js aimed to be simple and approachable — more "Easy" than it is today.
But here's what I want you to consider: "Was it really Vue.js that became difficult?"
I don't think so.
What became difficult was the Web.
Since the 2010s when frontend development emerged, the complexity of UIs, the scale of frontend codebases, and performance challenges have all grown. Web applications as a whole became more difficult.
Vue.js simply followed those needs.
Evidence for this: "Vue.js still supports traditional patterns."
Specifically: not using TypeScript, using Vue.js from a CDN, Options API — these legacy patterns are still supported today.
In other words, you can still use "the Vue that wasn't difficult."
Misconception 2: "Vue.js has no rules, so it's bad"
This is the misconception that "Vue.js is easy but has no rules. That breeds bugs and makes code messy."
Establishing design patterns and conventions in programs is generally considered good practice. I agree.
However, there are important considerations when establishing rules.
First: "What problem does this rule solve?"
Rules need purpose. You should always consider what benefits a rule provides.
Second: The tradeoffs it creates.
Conventions aren't free. The stronger the constraints, the more compliance is expected, reducing flexibility and increasing learning costs.
Does this mean I'm saying rules are bad? No.
"Choose what fits you based on tradeoffs."
Web applications are incredibly diverse. The teams and companies building them are equally diverse.
There's no silver bullet that works for everything.
Moreover, design and conventions aren't binary.
I'm not saying "rules aren't needed." I'm saying "rules are needed, but there are many options. The ability to choose has great value."
Whether the framework or the implementer takes responsibility is a tradeoff.
When implementers take that responsibility, they trade some accountability for flexibility in conventions.
The response "Vue.js is easy but has no rules, so it's bad" fails to adequately consider this tradeoff.
Vue.js is Approachable
So what is Vue.js, really?
I believe Vue.js is Approachable.
The word "Approachable" actually appears at the top of the official documentation.
Despite various tradeoffs, the consistent point is "easy to approach for various use cases."
Vue.js is also called "The Progressive Framework."
This is a related concept to Approachable — meaning "a framework that can grow with you and adapt to your needs."
You can start with enhancing static HTML without a build step, then scale up to SPA, SSR, or SSG as needed — or start with a full-stack setup from the beginning.
Approachable at any scale, from any starting point — this is another expression of Vue.js's flexibility.
Vue.js is an Approachable UI framework.
It hasn't become difficult, nor does it sacrifice stability for simplicity.
It's about flexible choices.
Vue.js followed the Web as it became more complex. Traditional patterns are still available.
Implementers can flexibly choose conventions and design.
This is the first character of Vue.js I want to discuss today.
I've written a deeper dive on this topic. Check it out if you're interested.
Vue.js is a Language
Before explaining how Vue.js is a language, let's review what programming languages are.
What is a Programming Language?
What is a programming language?
It's a language for writing programs. Just as the name suggests.
You know that many programming languages exist in this world.
JavaScript, TypeScript, Rust, C++, Haskell.
And not just those. HTML, CSS, and JSON are also part of this family.
These are classified as "general-purpose programming languages" or "domain-specific languages (DSL)." Both are languages.
Why do so many languages exist?
Think about this: what format does a computer actually need to store programs?
The answer is binary. With just binary, everything can be described.
In most situations, any language ultimately becomes binary to execute.
So who are programming languages for?
Undoubtedly, they're for us — humans.
There are diverse things to describe in the world.
Hardware control, operating systems, browsers, web applications, CLI tools.
Each domain requires different knowledge.
Many languages exist to provide "writability" and "correctness" for humans based on various concepts in each domain.
Starting from unstructured programming, we created syntax to give control knowledge to programming languages themselves, created OOP languages for OOP, FP languages for FP, new languages to escape memory management, and data description languages to describe data.
Vue.js is a Language for Describing UI
So what about Vue.js?
Vue.js can be understood as a language for describing UI.
Languages for describing UI already exist: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
Vue.js extends these with missing knowledge.
1. Declarative Template Description
Describing UI templates declaratively and dynamically.
This practice wasn't common when HTML, CSS, and JavaScript first appeared.
As the Web evolved, the complexity of client-side code grew, various UI description methods emerged, and we learned that declarative UI description is better for stability and readability.
Vue.js supports a language for describing templates and solved this problem.
2. Component-Centered Design
Bundling related HTML, CSS, and JavaScript together to increase cohesion of UI-related code.
Additionally, scoped CSS and slots are part of the extended knowledge Vue.js provides.
<script setup lang="ts">
import { ref } from 'vue';
const count = ref(0);
function increment() {
count.value++;
}
</script>
<template>
<button type="button" @click="increment">count is: {{ count }}</button>
</template>
<style scoped>
button {
color: #42b883;
}
</style>What's notable here is that in the <script> section, you can use the JavaScript mental model almost as-is.
As long as you're mindful of the boundary between View and ViewModel — that is, Reactivity — the rest is just plain JavaScript.
There are almost no special rules or framework-specific constraints. This is another aspect of Vue.js's Approachability.
3. Compiler as Optimizer
Performance tuning that can be statically analyzed by a compiler shouldn't be done by hand.
Such optimization should be left to the compiler while we focus on the essential task of describing UI.
Vue.js's compiler performs various optimizations:
- Static Hoisting: Hoists static nodes to avoid regeneration
- Patch Flags: Adds flags to dynamic parts for faster diff detection
- Tree Flattening: Flattens nested static nodes
- Vapor Mode: More direct rendering without virtual DOM
Syntax as Language Features
You know if statements, while, for, loop, and so on.
But from the computer's perspective, these are essentially just "check and jump."
Why do multiple syntaxes exist for this single "check and jump" instruction?
Because it's easier for humans when each use case has its own meaning.
When you simply want to branch: "if." When you want to repeat while a condition holds: "while."
Even though it's just a jump for the computer, such meaning helps humans write programs.
The same applies to Vue.js.
Programmatically, passing data between components is just "passing."
But when describing UI, we can extend UI knowledge and add meaning:
- When you want to bind data to a component:
v-bind - When you want to subscribe/emit events:
v-on,emit - When you want to inject templates into components:
slot
Yes, Vue.js organized the knowledge that arises when describing UI as a language.
This is very much the philosophy of programming languages.
Language Tools
One more thing not to forget: "Vue.js has well-developed language tools."
Creating a programming language involves many challenges.
Specification design, compiler implementation, and language tools.
It takes enormous time and effort.
Indeed, Vue.js was somewhat behind other frameworks in the past.
But time has passed, and with tremendous effort, things have improved significantly.
I want to express gratitude again to vuejs/language-tools, Johnson Chu, and all community members.
I've written a deeper dive on "Vue.js is a language" as well.
Vue.js: An Expanding Ecosystem
Another major characteristic of Vue.js is the ecosystem that starts from Vue.js and expands beyond its boundaries.
Vite — The Revolution That Started from Vue
As you know, Vite is now essential in modern frontend development.
Originally, Vite started as vue-dev-server.
This was Evan You's idea to use browser's Native ESM for a no-bundler development setup.
Then it was renamed to Vite as a No-bundle Dev Server for Vue Single-File Components, and in v2, the core became framework agnostic, positioning it as "Next Generation Frontend Tooling."
Yes. Vite started from Vue.js, continued to evolve, and has now expanded beyond Vue.js as a frontend tool.
Volar.js — Language Tools Framework
I mentioned earlier that Vue.js has a language aspect and excellent language tools.
Vue.js has had several language tool implementations in the past, but now vuejs/language-tools is the official language tool.
Originally, it started as Volar, a VSCode extension for Vue.js, as a community member's personal project.
Volar evolved over 2 years of immense effort to reach v1.0 and became Vue.js's official recommended tool.
From there, the core functionality independent of Vue.js was extracted as Volar.js, and Vue.js's language tools became vuejs/language-tools.
Volar.js is now spreading as the foundation for language tools in Astro, MDX, and Analog (Angular's meta-framework).
UnJS — Ecosystem Expanding from Nuxt
UnJS stands for Unified JavaScript or Unleash JavaScript — a collection of JavaScript libraries.
The concept is: one purpose per library, high quality, works in any environment, and collaborative.
UnJS was developed by Pooya Parsa, who was a lead engineer for Nuxt2, as a separate ecosystem from Nuxt. The server engine extracted during Nuxt3 development and libraries Pooya had created were rebranded as the UnJS organization.
UnJS and Nuxt collaborate closely, and many Nuxt features are now implemented by UnJS.
Notable examples include the HTTP framework h3 and the server engine Nitro built on top of it.
Nitro is also used in Analog and others.
ecosystem-ci — Shared Testing Mechanisms
Vue.js has a vast ecosystem.
State management libraries, UI frameworks, routers, testing libraries — truly many.
The Vue2 to Vue3 upgrade made ecosystem adoption a major challenge.
So a mechanism for integration testing of these downstream ecosystems was introduced.
This originally came from Vite's integration testing with Svelte, and the mechanism was adopted in Vue.js.
And again, beyond Vue.js/Vite, similar mechanisms have been adopted in Svelte, Astro, Oxc, and more.
VoidZero and the Challenge of a Unified Toolchain
The expansion of the Vue.js ecosystem has led to an even greater challenge.
The Fragmentation Problem
Through developing Vite, Evan You faced challenges that the entire JavaScript ecosystem shares.
"Every application relies on a myriad of third-party dependencies, and configuring them to work well together remains one of the most daunting tasks."
While Vite greatly improved the developer experience, internally it still had various dependencies, requiring abstractions and workarounds to smooth over inconsistencies. Duplicated parsing and serialization costs across different tools became bottlenecks.
The Birth of VoidZero
In 2024, Evan You founded VoidZero.
With a vision: "Building the next-generation unified JavaScript toolchain."
VoidZero's vision centers on building an integrated development stack with four characteristics:
Oxc — High-Speed Compiler Written in Rust
Oxc (JavaScript Oxidation Compiler) is a JavaScript/TypeScript toolchain written in Rust, led by Boshen.
A comprehensive toolset including parser, linter (Oxlint), formatter (Oxfmt), transformer, minifier, and resolver, achieving overwhelming performance:
- Oxlint: 50-100x faster than ESLint
- Oxfmt: 35x faster than Prettier
- oxc-resolver: 30x faster than webpack's enhanced-resolve
- transformer: 40x faster than Babel
Oxlint 1.0 was released as stable in June 2025, with over 5,200 early adopters including Shopify and Airbnb.
Rolldown — Rust-Based Bundler
Rolldown is a Rust-based bundler developed by VoidZero, achieving 10-30x faster performance than Rollup with a Rollup-compatible API.
Vite 8 Beta was announced in November 2025, with the transition to Rolldown underway.
Full-bundle integration hasn't been achieved yet, but the goal is to eventually replace the previous esbuild + Rollup combination.
Early testing has already shown impressive performance improvements:
- GitLab: Build time 2.5 min → 40 sec
- Excalidraw: 3-16x faster builds
- Memory usage: 100x reduction in some cases
This initiative aims to make Vite the entry point to an end-to-end toolchain maintained by the same team: build tool (Vite), bundler (Rolldown), and compiler (Oxc).
Vite+ — Unified Toolchain
VoidZero also announced Vite+.
As a superset of Vite, it provides the tools developers need as a single, unified toolchain:
vite new— Project scaffoldingvite test— Unit testing via Vitestvite lint— Linting via Oxlintvite fmt— Formatting via Oxfmtvite lib— Library bundlingvite run— Monorepo task runnervite ui— GUI devtools
Trust and Commitment to Open Source
What's crucial here is VoidZero's stance on open source.
"The trust the community has placed in Vite" prompted deep reflection on its future direction.
VoidZero clearly declares:
"Everything we've open-sourced will remain open source. Vite, Vitest, Rolldown, and Oxc will remain open source."
And importantly, VoidZero provides first-class support for Vue.js. These tools that started from Vue.js will continue to deliver the best experience for the Vue.js ecosystem.
These projects are already adopted by major organizations including OpenAI, Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Shopify. Their reliability is proven.
Vue.js is Community
The final character. This is an inseparable, essential element of Vue.js.
What Emerges from Community
Many of the projects I've introduced started as personal projects by community members.
- Volar — From Johnson Chu's personal project to Vue.js official language tools
- Oxc — The Rust parser Boshen started became VoidZero's core technology
- UnJS — Pooya Parsa's work outside Nuxt became an independent ecosystem
This isn't coincidence.
The Vue.js community has the power for individual passion to move the entire ecosystem.
Chain of Trust
The phenomenon of Vue.js's ecosystem influencing other frameworks and tools cannot be explained by technical superiority alone.
It's trust.
As Evan You stated when founding VoidZero:
"The trust the community has placed in Vite"
This trust wasn't built overnight.
Over 10 years of consistent commitment to open source, consideration for backward compatibility, and listening to the community's voice.
As a result, tools that started from Vue.js are used in the React ecosystem, in Svelte, in Solid.
Contribution to the Web Community
This isn't just a Vue.js community story.
It's a contribution to the entire Web developer community.
- Vite changed the development experience for all frameworks beyond Vue.js
- Volar.js enabled language support for Astro and MDX
- Nitro was adopted by meta-frameworks beyond Nuxt
- Oxc and Rolldown are contributing to speeding up the entire JavaScript toolchain
Innovation born in one community spreads across boundaries to the entire Web.
This is the true power of open source, and the value that the Vue.js community embodies, in my view.
Conclusion
I've characterized Vue.js through 4 characters.
- Approachable — Flexible choices, easy to approach for various use cases
- Language — A domain-specific language for describing UI
- Ecosystem — Starting from Vue.js, expanding beyond its boundaries
- Community — Individual passion drives the ecosystem and builds trust
These aren't independent characteristics.
They influence and reinforce each other.
Because it's Approachable, many people join and the community grows.
Because the community grows, language tools and the ecosystem develop.
Because the ecosystem develops, more choices emerge and Approachability increases.
This cycle is the essence of Vue.js's value, I believe.
Vue.js isn't just a UI framework.
It's approachable,
a language designed for humans,
an ecosystem that expands beyond boundaries,
and a community connected by trust and passion.
This is merely my personal essay and does not represent the official views of the Vue.js Team.