Always remember, the first impression is your last impression. Users don’t interact with the back end. They see your web front end. Front-end developers always try to make the front end aesthetically pleasant, but there are always some challenges in doing so. To make this process easy, multiple tools have been introduced by different companies. Today, I’ll discuss two of these tools — Vite and Create React App. Let’s start with Vite first.

Vite is a front-end tool for web apps created by Evan You in 2020. It is used to develop JavaScript/TypeScript apps.

Now, why should you use Vite? Well, it’s fast because it has ES modules and modern Browser APIs. It also has a built-in development server that reduces the time spent creating and deploying apps. It’s best for large apps because code loads only when needed. This means there will be small bundle sizes. This way performance will improve.

Your code size will also be smaller due to tree-shaking and code splitting, ultimately speeding up development time. You can also see changes in real-time. The built-in development server reloads quickly and has options for hot module replacement. All of this accelerates the development workflow. This also cut down the time spent on manual testing.

Also, since Vite uses native ES modules and modern web browser APIs, it’s ideal for developers who want to write modern, maintainable, scalable code. It is JSX-based and has both CSS and TypeScript support. It’s perfect for web apps that don’t require complex configurations.

Now, there’s another front-end tool: Create React App (CRA). It creates web apps by using the React JavaScript library. It has a streamlined method of making React applications. It uses webpack to build and optimize your code. But there’s a problem. CRA has a less optimized build process. The pre-configured tools and dependencies in CRA have fewer customization options. It requires the page to fully reload to display changes and contains fewer features than Vite. Pure JavaScript is also only limitedly supported in CRA. It’s also considerably slower than Vite during development due to webpack.

Now, when should you use CRA and Vite? Well, it depends! If you want to quicken your build times, go for Vite. But if you are a beginner willing to create apps that need complex configurations, use CRA. And don’t worry. CRA provides a pre-configured environment that handles most of the setup work.