Exploring the Modern Front End: Our Team’s Hands-On with SolidJS and VueJS

By the TalentConsulting UK Tech Team

Every so often, you need a day to step away from the backlog and just build things for the sheer joy of discovery. That’s exactly what our team did on Tech Day, November 14th, 2025, a day dedicated to exploring two of the fastest-evolving frameworks in front-end development: SolidJS and VueJS.

What started as a “let’s see what happens” experiment quickly turned into a full-blown technical deep dive, rich with live demos, philosophical debates, and a few moments of collective “aha!” that reminded us why we love working in tech.

Setting the Scene

Our cast for the day: Ali, Mike, Tom, Liam, Pablo, James, and Richard, each bringing a different skill set and a healthy dose of curiosity.

The brief was simple:

Compare SolidJS and VueJS through real examples, see what’s delightful (and what’s not), and report back with honest takes.

By mid-morning, laptops were humming, IDEs glowing, and someone had already declared, “Blazor’s not the right home for this project.” The day was off to a strong start.

VueJS: Lightweight, Transparent, and a Joy to Debug

Tom kicked things off with a clean VueJS + Node to-do list app built straight from the default quick-start template. The functionality was straightforward, adding, marking, hiding, and deleting items, but what really grabbed everyone’s attention was the Vue DevTools inspector.

Tom showed how hovering over a UI element instantly synced to the correct line of code in VS Code. That kind of visibility turns debugging into an almost interactive experience, less “hunt and hope,” more “click and fix.”

Meanwhile, Ali demoed a Blazor Server app for contrast. It had structure, power, and the weight of Microsoft’s ecosystem, maybe a little too much. As the group put it: “Blazor feels like flying a 747 when all we need is a glider.”

By consensus, Vue earned high marks for its simplicity, clarity, and ease of iteration.

SolidJS: Familiar Yet Refreshingly Fast

Then came SolidJS, demoed by Mike and Liam, and things got interesting fast.

At first glance, Solid looked like React, but leaner and more elegant. Instead of useState, you’ve got createSignal. Instead of wrangling configuration files for routing, you just drop pages into folders and Solid automatically maps them to URL paths.

Mike summed it up neatly:

“Routing in Solid is so natural it makes you wonder why we ever tolerated the old way.”

The team explored context providers for global state and discussed how Solid’s design encourages clean separation between logic and UI. Liam noted how persistence “just works”, no boilerplate, no drama. It was React’s composability without the clutter.

Frameworks, Philosophy, and a Bit of Friendly Fire

By midday, we’d seen enough code to draw early impressions. VueJS felt intuitive and well-tooled; SolidJS was fast, predictable, and fun.

Ali and Pablo tried merging Blazor and Vue for a hybrid approach, a valiant experiment that proved more educational than practical. Meanwhile, a lively debate broke out over monoliths vs. microservices.

Richard argued for “true microservices”, clear boundaries, single responsibilities, clean APIs. Liam countered that over-segmentation can slow real delivery. The team landed on a pragmatic middle ground: architecture should serve outcomes, not ego.

Automation, Testing, and the Bigger Picture

James took the spotlight next, showing early progress on automated architecture diagramming. His pipeline transforms Terraform plans into Flowchart Maker & Online Diagram Software  diagrams, automatically documenting infrastructure with Azure-style icons.

On the front end, testing became the next frontier.

• Liam explored Vitest in SolidJS, fast, minimal, React-like.

• Ali compared it with Vue Test Utils, praising its smooth BDD-style interactions.The takeaway? Both ecosystems are mature enough to make testing a first-class citizen.

By day’s end, we’d gone from curiosity to confidence: our team could spin up either framework quickly, test it properly, and integrate it into our workflow without drama.

The Verdict

After all the demos, laughter, and caffeine, we arrived at a shared conclusion:

• SolidJS wins for speed, simplicity, and React-style logic without overhead.

• VueJS shines for readability, dev tooling, and broad industry support.

• Blazor remains powerful, but too heavy for rapid experimentation.

Or as Mike put it with a grin:

“Solid’s like React after a spa weekend, same energy, less baggage.”

Where We Go Next

The experiments didn’t stop when the meeting ended. Here’s what’s next on our list:

• Mike and Liam: refine SolidJS with dynamic routing (/item/:id) and global state providers.

• Tom: add status tracking and testing to the VueJS app.

• James: complete the infrastructure diagram automation pipeline.

• Ali and Pablo: explore unified API patterns between frameworks.

• Richard: lead a retro to reflect, refine, and plan the next Tech Day.

Because in the end, this wasn’t just about picking a framework. It was about thinking differently, learning collaboratively, and having the kind of day that reminds you why you got into tech in the first place.

Final Thoughts

Tech evolves quickly. Frameworks come and go. But days like this, where engineers explore, build, and share openly, are what really move teams forward.

The takeaway wasn’t “choose Solid” or “pick Vue.” It was:

Keep experimenting. Stay curious. And always make time to play with the tech that excites you.