Vue & Nuxt

Why Vue

Vue approaches web development differently. The framework adapts to you, not the other way around. Start with a single component embedded in an existing page. Grow into a full single-page application. The path from simple to complex is gradual, not a cliff.

The template syntax feels natural. HTML with a few directives. You don’t need to learn a new paradigm to be productive. Junior developers contribute meaningful code within days, not weeks. Senior developers appreciate the clear conventions and predictable patterns.

Vue’s reactivity system is elegant. Change a value, the UI updates. No manual subscriptions. No action dispatching. No selector functions. The simplicity isn’t hiding complexity — the implementation is genuinely straightforward. This makes debugging easier and mental overhead lower.

What We Build

Content-driven marketing sites are a natural fit for Vue and Nuxt. The Nuxt Content module handles markdown with frontmatter, code highlighting, and full-text search out of the box. We’ve built documentation sites that load instantly and feel native.

Admin dashboards benefit from Vue’s component model. Tables with sorting, filtering, and pagination. Forms with complex validation rules. Charts that update in real-time. We compose these from smaller primitives rather than fighting monolithic component libraries.

E-commerce platforms require careful architecture. Product catalogs with thousands of items. Shopping carts that persist across sessions. Checkout flows with multiple steps and payment integrations. Vue’s reactivity makes these interactions feel instant while Nuxt handles SEO-critical server rendering.

Data visualization projects leverage Vue’s reactivity for live updates. Connect to a WebSocket, update the reactive state, watch the charts redraw. No manual DOM manipulation. No render scheduling. The reactive system handles coordination automatically.

Legacy migration is where Vue truly shines. We’ve helped teams escape jQuery spaghetti by introducing Vue components incrementally. One widget at a time. No big-bang rewrite. The existing application keeps working while new features get Vue treatment.

Our Experience Level

We’ve worked with Vue since version 2.0. We’ve migrated codebases to Vue 3. We understand the Composition API deeply — not just the syntax, but the patterns that make code maintainable.

Our Nuxt experience spans both Nuxt 2 and Nuxt 3. The migration path between them isn’t trivial. We know the gotchas, the breaking changes, and the new capabilities. Server routes, middleware, plugins, composables — we’ve built with all of them.

Patterns we use regularly: composables for shared logic, provide/inject for dependency injection, Pinia stores for global state, render functions when templates aren’t enough. We’ve built design systems in Vue. We’ve integrated Vue into Rails applications. We’ve shipped Vue applications to millions of users.

State management in Vue has evolved. We started with Vuex. We’ve moved to Pinia for new projects. The difference is dramatic — less boilerplate, better TypeScript support, simpler mental model. For smaller applications, reactive composables often eliminate the need for global stores entirely.

When to Use Vue

Choose Vue when you’re introducing modern frontend tooling to an existing team. The learning curve is genuinely easier than alternatives. Developers with jQuery backgrounds find Vue intuitive. The single-file component format — template, script, styles in one file — matches how developers think about UI.

Choose Vue when you need to integrate with existing systems gradually. Drop Vue components into a Rails view. Add Vue widgets to a WordPress site. The progressive adoption path is real, not marketing speak.

Choose Vue when your team values explicitness over magic. Vue’s patterns are visible in the code. There’s less implicit behavior to remember. New team members can read a component and understand what it does without consulting documentation.

Don’t choose Vue if your hiring pipeline depends on finding React developers. The React talent pool is larger. Don’t choose Vue if you need maximum ecosystem breadth — React has more third-party options for niche requirements. Don’t choose Vue for projects where the team already has deep React or Svelte expertise. Framework switches have real productivity costs.

Common Challenges and How We Solve Them

Reactivity gotchas catch beginners. Adding properties to reactive objects requires specific syntax. Array mutation has edge cases. We address this through code review and team education. We establish patterns early: always use reactive() or ref(), understand the difference, don’t mix paradigms.

TypeScript integration requires attention. Vue 3 improved dramatically, but template type checking needs editor plugins configured correctly. We standardize on VS Code with Volar. We use strict TypeScript settings. We type props and emits explicitly rather than relying on inference.

Large application architecture needs planning. Vue doesn’t prescribe folder structure. This freedom becomes a problem if every developer organizes code differently. We establish conventions early: features in folders, composables colocated with components, global stores in a dedicated directory. Consistency matters more than the specific choices.

Performance optimization follows predictable patterns. Computed properties instead of methods for cached calculations. v-once for static content. Virtual scrolling for long lists. Component lazy loading with defineAsyncComponent. Most Vue applications are fast by default; these techniques handle the edge cases.

Testing Vue components requires the right tools. Vue Test Utils provides the primitives. Testing Library offers a user-centric approach. We test behavior, not implementation. Click a button, verify the result. Fill a form, check the submission. Tests that mirror user interaction remain stable through refactors.