So Vue 2.0 dropped a few weeks ago and I finally got some time to play with it this weekend. I’ve been using Vue 1.x for about 6 months now on a side project, and I have to say, the upgrade was smoother than I expected.

What’s New?

The big thing everyone’s talking about is the virtual DOM. Evan You basically rewrote the rendering layer from scratch, and the performance improvements are noticeable. My component-heavy dashboard that used to lag a bit when updating large lists now feels snappy.

Here’s a simple component I migrated:

// Vue 1.x way
Vue.component('user-card', {
  template: '<div>{{ user.name }}</div>',
  props: ['user']
});

// Vue 2.0 - mostly the same!
Vue.component('user-card', {
  template: '<div>{{ user.name }}</div>',
  props: ['user']
});

Yeah, not much changed for simple components. But the devil’s in the details.

The Migration Gotchas

The $dispatch and $broadcast methods are gone. This one bit me hard. I had a bunch of components communicating through events, and now I need to either use a global event bus or Vuex. Honestly, it’s probably for the better - my event chains were getting messy anyway.

Also, v-for now requires a key attribute. The migration helper tool caught most of these, but I still had to manually fix a few edge cases.

Performance Gains

I ran some quick benchmarks on my list rendering:

  • Vue 1.x: ~45ms for 1000 items
  • Vue 2.0: ~18ms for 1000 items

That’s more than 2x faster! And this is without any optimization on my part.

Should You Upgrade?

If you’re starting a new project, definitely use Vue 2.0. The ecosystem is catching up fast - vue-router 2.0 is already out, and Vuex 2.0 is in RC.

For existing projects, it depends. The migration tool helps a lot, but you’ll still need to test thoroughly. I spent about 4 hours migrating my side project (around 20 components), and most of that was fixing the event communication stuff.

What’s Next?

I’m planning to dive deeper into the render functions and JSX support. Coming from a React background, I’m curious to see how Vue’s approach compares. Also want to try out the new server-side rendering capabilities.

Overall, I’m impressed. Vue 2.0 feels like a solid evolution rather than a breaking rewrite. The core team did a great job maintaining the simplicity that makes Vue appealing while adding the performance improvements we needed.

If you’re on the fence, give it a shot. The learning curve from 1.x to 2.0 is pretty gentle.