Not to blow my own horn but my background is very intimately in Web-GIS (Bachelor's and Master's in geography), my career for 7 years has been in robotics and building web-UIs for real-time robotics GIS, so I think I'm probably an expert here.
I've used Leaflet for a few years and now OpenLayers for about 5 years to author UIs for monitoring robot fleets in real-time as well as build Web-GIS applications for mapping and configuring, autogenerating, validating the spatial datasets (fiducials, SLAM data, navigable positions, "zones", "pathways", etc.)
Leaflet is what I'd say will fit most people's needs when it comes to your standard web-map use cases. It's a beautifully designed library with a good level of modularity and lots of plugins. The API is great.
OpenLayers shines when you get into a lot more complex stuff. The symbology engine is phenomenally powerful and I found that the API plugs into more complex Redux-style state management in a more easy way than Leaflet.
I also found performance when doing high-volume, high-frequency data updates and interactions to be faster with OpenLayers.
That being said, I haven't dug deeply into Leaflet in about a year and things can change quite quickly!
I suspect the overwhelming majority of developers aren't doing anything all that novel or complicated. They're not making Web-GIS applications and probably will do just fine with either.
I've used Leaflet for a few years and now OpenLayers for about 5 years to author UIs for monitoring robot fleets in real-time as well as build Web-GIS applications for mapping and configuring, autogenerating, validating the spatial datasets (fiducials, SLAM data, navigable positions, "zones", "pathways", etc.)
Leaflet is what I'd say will fit most people's needs when it comes to your standard web-map use cases. It's a beautifully designed library with a good level of modularity and lots of plugins. The API is great.
OpenLayers shines when you get into a lot more complex stuff. The symbology engine is phenomenally powerful and I found that the API plugs into more complex Redux-style state management in a more easy way than Leaflet.
I also found performance when doing high-volume, high-frequency data updates and interactions to be faster with OpenLayers.
That being said, I haven't dug deeply into Leaflet in about a year and things can change quite quickly!
I suspect the overwhelming majority of developers aren't doing anything all that novel or complicated. They're not making Web-GIS applications and probably will do just fine with either.