When comparing React vs Mithril, the Slant community recommends Mithril for most people. In the question“What are the best client-side JavaScript MV* frameworks?” Mithril is ranked 6th while React is ranked 7th. The most important reason people chose Mithril is:
Most other frameworks either offer a huge API to deal with model and view synchronization, or defer to other libraries & plugins to cater for relatively simple use cases. Mithril's API is tiny but complete. The natural reaction is to assume something is missing, but as you build you realise you incredibly fast, powerful and rich applications can be built using nothing but Mithril.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Easy to reuse components
Since every single UI component is created independently in JavaScript, it becomes very easy to reuse them throughout your app without having to re-write them.
Pro Supported by Facebook and Instagram
React is built by Facebook engineers initially to be used only for their inner projects especially to solve the problem of building large complex applications with constantly changing data.
Pro Server side rendering
React can render it's components and data server side, then it sends those components as HTML to the browser.
This ensures faster initial loading time and SEO friendliness out of the box, since it's indexed as any other static website by search engines.
Pro Virtual DOM support
Instead of relying on the DOM, React implements a virtual DOM from scratch, allowing it to calculate precisely what needs to be patched during the next screen refresh. This is orders of magnitude faster than fiddling with the DOM itself.
Pro One-way data flow
React's one-way data binding (or one-way data flow) means that it's easy to see where and how your UI is updated and where you need to make changes. It's also very easy to keep everything modular, fast and well-organized.
Pro Can be used with different libraries
ReactJS can be used independently as the only library for building the front-end, or it can be used alongside JavaScript libraries such as jQuery, or even Angular.
Pro Template engine independent
React provides a template engine (JSX) which is easy to use. But it's not mandatory.
Pro Widely used
The framework is widely used in the industry.
Pro Functional programming style leads to less buggy UIs
Pro Easy to write tests
Since React's virtual DOM system is implemented completely in JavaScript, it's very easy to write UI test cases.
Pro Good debugging tools
React has an official Chrome Extension which is used as a developing and debugging tool. It can be used to quickly and painlessly debug your application or view the whole application structure as it's rendered.
Pro Flux architecture pattern
Flux is a platform agnostic pattern which can technically be used with any application or programming language.
One of Flux' main features is that it enforces uni-directional data flow which means that views do not change the data directly.
With React this is useful because this way it's easier to understand an application as it starts getting more complicated. By having two-way data binding, lead to unpredictable changes, where changing one model's data would end up updating another model. By using the Flux architecture, this can be avoided.
Pro Extensive SVG support
Since React v0.15, SVG is fully supported. React supports all SVG attributes that are recognized by today's browsers.
Pro Keep control over your app's logic
React is just a view library, so you still have (almost) full control over how your app behaves.
Pro Supported by ClojureScript libraries
Reagent, Om, Rum, etc.
Pro Tested on Facebook itself
React is used on one of the most visited websites on the planet, Facebook. With stellar results and with millions of people experiencing it every day.
Pro Small, easy to learn API
Most other frameworks either offer a huge API to deal with model and view synchronization, or defer to other libraries & plugins to cater for relatively simple use cases. Mithril's API is tiny but complete. The natural reaction is to assume something is missing, but as you build you realise you incredibly fast, powerful and rich applications can be built using nothing but Mithril.
Pro Fast rendering
Mithril's loading times are very fast. This is because it's templates are compiled first and then served to the browser and because it uses a virtual DOM. The virtual DOM is a virtual tree containing all the nodes of the real DOM, every time anything changes in the virtual DOM, Mithril does not re-render the entire (real) DOM, instead it just searches and applies the differences.
Pro No need to learn another syntax to write views
Most MVC frameworks use HTML templates to render their views. They are good and useful because they are easy to read and understand. But they add more complication to an app because it's practically a new language and syntax that needs to be learned.
Mithril argues that separating markup from logic is just a separation of technologies and not concerns, so you can write Mithril views in JavaScript. Writing them in JavaScript also makes it easier to debug them (HTML templates can't be debugged).
Pro Familiar to people used to MVC
Doesn't lock you into any complicated conventions or structures, only one function is required to create either a Controller or a View. You're free to implement your architecture exactly as you want, so you can focus on the purpose of MVC, making connections between computer data and stuff in the end user's head.
Pro Small size
Weights just 8Kb gzipped and has no dependencies. A reactive stream module can be added for one extra Kb.
Pro Great documentation
Mithril has a large and expansive documentation despite it's relatively small API. Mithril's GitHub repo has more documentation than actual source code. None of that documentation is auto-generated
Pro Allows a smooth transition from other UI frameworks
One thing you need to start using Mithril is just a DOM node. With Mithril a developer is able to introduce the library step by step.
Pro Allows you to choose which JavaScript libraries to integrate in your project
Mithril gives to the developer the flexibility to chose the best JavaScript library to use for a specific task.
A huge framework like Angular instead forces you to use their API, which does not necessarily evolve as fast as the JavaScript ecosystem. Therefore you may end up in case when you are stuck using an API which is just not the best in terms of performance
Pro Can be used without build systems
It's plain old JavaScript, can be used without webpack, gulp or grunt, just include it into your HTML and start writing your app.
Pro Does not force you into a predefined structure
Mithril's API is pretty small compared to other frameworks. It forces developers to solve problems in JavaScript rather than in Mithril. Other frameworks with massive APIs force you to think in a way that suits the framework. Mithril doesn't do that.
Cons
Con Heavy on memory
React's virtual DOM is fast, but it requires storing elements in the virtual and real DOM increasing memory usage for the page. This can be a real problem for single-page webapps designed to be left running in the background.
Con Template(view) mixed into code
Con Verbose
React gets a little verbose as applications get more complicated with more components. It's simply not as straightforward as simply writing HTML and JavaScript would be.
Con You have to learn a new syntax
Requires learning a custom syntax, JSX, that has some gotchas and introduce complexity, a steeper learning curve, and incompatibility with other tools.
Though you can opt out from JSX and use vanilla JS instead. But that is not recommended since it adds a lot of unneeded complexity which JSX tries to avoid.
Con Not a complete solution
React does not do everything for the developer, it's merely a tool for building the UI of a web app. It does not have support for routing or models, at least not out of the box. While some missing features can be added through libraries, to start using React and use it in production, you still would need to have experience, or at least a good grasp on what the best libraries to use would be.
Con Large file size
React's react.min.js
is 145.5KB in size. It's much larger than some other libraries that offer roughly the same features and it's almost the same size as some MV* frameworks such as Angular or Ember that offer more features out of the box.
Although, it should be mentioned that sometimes having a smaller library may force developers to reinvent the wheel and write inefficient implementations on features that React already has. Ending up with a larger application that's harder to maintain and/or that has bad performance.
Con Renders too frequently
Con No support for legacy browsers
React has recently dropped support for Internet Explorer 8. While the library may still work on IE8, issues that affect only IE8 will not be prioritized and/or solved.
Con Small API can make it unsuitable for larger more complex projects
Mithril's small API and small number of functions while helpful for small projects and applications where speed is needed, can add another layer of complexity in larger more complex applications where a more extensive API is needed out of the box.