I've recently been self-studying front-end development and have gone through some Vue beginner tutorials. The reactivity system feels pretty magical, but I still have a lot of questions about how it works under the hood. For example, how does Vue track data changes, and how does the dependency collection process work? In real projects, should we use Vuex, Pinia, or just pass state around via props and events? And for large applications, how should we structure our directories and code layers to keep things maintainable?
Does anyone have recommended resources, blogs, or case studies from their own learning or practice? Or maybe some common pitfalls you've encountered? Looking forward to discussing this together!
I'm looking to dive deeper into how Vue's reactivity system works under the hood and how to effectively organize components and state management in large-scale projects. Does anyone have good learning resources or practical experience to share?
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I'm particularly curious about how Vue's reactivity uses the Proxy API to track nested object changes—does Pinia rely on the same mechanism, or does it add its own layer? Also, in a medium-sized app, how do you decide when to lift state to a store versus just passing props?
Vue's reactivity core is actually based on dependency tracking implemented using `Object.defineProperty` (Vue 2) or `Proxy` (Vue 3). When a reactive property is read, it records the currently active watcher (i.e., the running computed property or component render function) into the property's Dep, and then notifies the Dep to trigger the corresponding watcher update when the property is modified. I recommend reading Evan You's own "Vue.js Source Code Analysis" series and You Yuxi's "Vue 3 Reactivity Principle" blog, which, combined with source code debugging, can help you visually see the entire dependency collection process.
In actual projects, I tend to use Pinia for medium-sized applications because its API is more concise and natively supports TypeScript. Combined with modular store partitioning, it keeps state management clear. For larger systems, I break down business modules into independent sub-projects, with each sub-project using Pinia to manage local state and injecting public state through plugins. In terms of directory structure, I follow the hierarchy of `src/pages—components—store—utils—services`, organizing components by business functions to avoid overly deep single-layer directories. Common pitfalls include: overusing global stores leading to untraceable state, excessively deep prop passing increasing maintenance costs, and forgetting to use `persist` in Pinia, causing state loss after a refresh. Combining official documentation, advanced courses from Vue Mastery, and open-source projects (such as VitePress and Element Plus) for hands-on practice can help you master these techniques faster. Have fun!