We spoke with Evan You, creator of Vue.js, ahead of the Vue Amsterdam 2022, the largest conference on the framework, that took place in June.

During this fruitful conversation, Evan took us through the origins of Vue in 2014 and some highlights of Vue 3.0.

The initial version of Vue was really designed to lower the barrier to entry. We made it easy to adopt, integrate into existing systems - we still stick to this approach and value it a lot. Over time, we slowly add pieces to support more advanced projects like Single Page Applications routing, state management, and TypeScript support.

Evan You Creator o Vue.js

Evan also covered technical ground, discussing the influence of TypeScript on Vue, and gave his take on the future of development at large.

And yes, we ask him: “Looking back, would you change anything?”

The full interview is available inside the free Vue Report Amsterdam 2022, where experts join us to cover the state of Vue, update highlights, technical case studies, and more.

Download report

Below, we share some more highlights.

Changes From Vue 2.x to Vue 3.0

On why the change from Vue 2 to Vue 3 was so profound:

The situation with Vue 3 was sacrificing some things in the short-term and breaking some libraries but it was the cost we were willing to pay in order to get rid of the past baggage. Now we have a clean state and it will pay dividends down the road.

Best Choice For Businesses

On the choice businesses have to stick to Vue 2 or upgrade:

If you have a greenfield project, it’s Vue 3 all the way (…) With an existing project in Vue 2 however, businesses still need to weigh the pros and cons of the upgrading.

Vue's "Secret Sauce"

On why sustaining the core experience of using Vue across many updates has been fundamental:

At first, we had more users with simple use cases and smaller applications. Along with more features and tooling, the pool of Vue users grew but initial users stayed and can still use it the way they like. So I guess that's our secret sauce - to cover the full spectrum.

What's Next in Development

On the future of frontend and development in general:

In general, the challenge is to balance developers’ efficiency and the end performance. In most of these areas, we’ve reached a pretty good place, except for content-intensive e-commerce.

What's Next For Vue

And on the future of the particular framework:

I tend to think of Vue as an ever-evolving platform. We probably won’t do a “Vue 2 to 3” type of upgrade in the next five years because Vue 3 is a solid enough foundation to build upon for quite a while. We’ll continue experimenting with the compilation strategy as the advantage of Vue is a really flexible reactivity system.