Top 4 Reasons Why You Should Prefer Vite Over Create-React-App (CRA)

CRA vs Vite

Hey There, Welcome to my blog on Top 4 Reasons Why You Should Prefer Vite Over Create-React-App (CRA). I’m gonna share today The Top 4 Reasons behind using Vite Over CRA.

Create React App (CRA) has long been the go-to tool for most developers to scaffold React projects and set up a dev server. It provides a modern build setup without any configuration.

But, when the size of the project increases we see increased development and construction times. This slow feedback loop affects the productivity and happiness of developers.

Create React App (CRA) and Vite are both tools used to bootstrap and develop modern JavaScript applications. However, there are some differences between the two:

1. Tool Purpose: Create React App (CRA) is a tool that helps you set up a new React project with a preconfigured development environment, including a development server, build scripts, and configuration files. Vite is a tool that helps you build fast and efficient modern web applications by providing a development server with hot module replacement and a build tool that leverages the native ES modules feature.
2. Build System: Create React App (CRA) uses Webpack as its build system, which is a powerful and configurable tool for building web applications. Vite, on the other hand, uses Rollup as its build system, which is a faster and more efficient alternative to Webpack.
3. Development Experience: Create React App(CRA) provides a standard development experience with features like live reloading, hot module replacement, and a development server with an auto-refresh feature. Vite takes this experience to the next level by providing instant feedback and lightning-fast startup times, making the development experience smoother and more productive.
4. Configuration: Create React App(CRA) is preconfigured with sensible defaults, which makes it easy to get started with a new project quickly. However, if you need to customize the configuration, you have to eject the app, which can be a complicated process. Vite, on the other hand, provides a simple and intuitive configuration file that is easy to customize and understand.

Why is CRA Slow?

CRA uses a webpack under the hood. Webpack bundles the entire application code before serving it. With a large codebase, the development server takes longer to spin up and changes made take longer to reflect.

In summary, both Create React App (CRA) and Vite are excellent tools for building modern JavaScript applications. Create React App is more focused on providing a standard development experience with powerful build tools, while Vite focuses on speed and efficiency to provide a smoother and more productive development experience.