Libraries vs. Frameworks — What’s the Difference?

What category does React fall into?

Photo by Dayne Topkin on Unsplash

As I lurk on all my various social platforms, I often see people discussing React. Some developers refer to it as a framework and others as a library. While some new developers use the terms library and framework interchangeably, they are very different.

Here, I will explain the main differences between a framework and a library, which category React falls into, and why there even is a debate regarding React.

Before, however, we should take a quick look at the definition of the two.

Library vs. Framework

The Wikipedia page for a code library defines it as:

“In computer science, a library is a collection of non-volatile resources used by computer programs, often for software development. These may include configuration data, documentation, help data, message templates, pre-written code and subroutines, classes, values or type specifications.”

Compared that to the definition of a framework:

“In computer programming, a software framework is an abstraction in which software providing generic functionality can be selectively changed by additional user-written code, thus providing application-specific software.