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Angular 2 Survey Results

149 points by bceagle 11y ago

RamenLover5 11y ago
Wow, very informative!
- gdi2290 11y ago
  thanks! :)
zkallen2010 11y ago
Awesome survey! I develop with AngularJS and I thought it was interesting that TypeScript pulled away, I've been hearing more and more about it. I hope you guys do a follow up so we can see if anything changes.
lighthawk 11y ago
Typo: "Meteor 9.7% 1967" has an extra digit, since 1967 would be far above 9.7%. I'd comment on the page, but comments are limited to team members. Also, why even show the option for comments if I can't make them?
- bceagle 11y ago
  Shoot, yeah, you are right. I am one of the authors. I just updated this, but it looks like the page is cached so will take a couple minutes for it to correctly show 196.
ebbv 11y ago
I was really hoping this was a survey to Angular 1.x developers asking how annoyed you are that Angular 2 completely changed everything. Angular 2 should have been a new framework, IMHO.
- chrisco255 11y ago
  That would be a waste of a good brand name.
  - jsprogrammer 11y ago
    A friend also asked me to think of all the recruiters and managers who just placed thousands of Angular devs over the last year. How will they look when the C-level finds out that their team consists almost entirely of people specializing in an aborted product (oh, and their product is now locked-in to some now-aborted Google product)? My friend's point was that perhaps Google is just attempting to paper over any unpleasantries by sticking the old name on a different product.
- gdi2290 11y ago
  yes but the changes allowed the framework to be the fastest out of all of ones currently right now as well as making sure it's more future proof
  - quaunaut 11y ago
    Not an Angular user, but I'm quite interested- what about it would make Angular 2 faster than Ember or React?
    - Bahamut 11y ago
      All the benchmarks seem to indicate that Angular 2 is vastly faster than the other frameworks - the Angular team has achieved O(1) change detection, which large DOM node benchmarks are remarkably consistent with in terms of Angular 2's performance. For large numbers of repeated elements, it turns out that Angular 2's performance is worlds away from even libraries like React. For more normal situations of smaller # of DOM nodes, Angular 2 still manages to outperform by around 3-5 times as fast - all the benchmarks I have saw was pre-web worker support though, so it may be even better with that enabled. I don't remember Ember's performance, but React's seems to slow down significantly in jumps at certain marks, similar to Angular 1, which seems to suggest they have some at least one place where optimization could be made. It should be noted though that Angular 2 builds on top of many rock solid principles that React introduced, and has ruthlessly optimized upon that with continuous benchmarking and careful planning.
      - Cshelton 11y ago
        What benchmarks? You say all the benchmarks but provide no links and I know for a matter of fact that your statement is simply not true. Also, be wary of benchmarks, they tend to optimize one framework while leaving the other ones not optimized. Also to note, I've used React for very complicated things, even having to optimize under the 50mb limit in one tab and the performance did not slow down as you claim. I've been using React on a production app > 1 year. I used Angular 1.x before that. And the only way I see every change detection being O(1) is using something like Immutable js or serializing the "state" and comparing strings. Just by this blog post alone, it seems the Angular community is quite split on what they want. Wouldn't it make sense to just maintain Angular 1.x and start on a new framework, which would basically be Angular's version of React and Ember, with a new name. Performance difference will be negligible.
- pbreit 11y ago
  Seems like 2.0 is the worst of both worlds: little/no continuity from 1.0 and little/no benefits of starting from scratch.
  - bceagle 11y ago
    Did you see the blog post from last week on Angular's efforts to help developers transition from 1 to 2? http://angularjs.blogspot.com/2015/08/angular-1-and-angular-2-coexistence.html http://angularjs.blogspot.com/2015/08/angular-1-and-angular-... As for little/no benefits, that is certainly not true. Angular 2 is going to be better in almost every way from Angular 1 and there are many great apps built off Angular 1. If you haven't tried Angular 2, I suggest giving it a go once the they get to beta.
    - leaveyou 11y ago
      At a first glance the link you provided promotes double insanity: angular 1 mixed with angular 2 (because angular 1 was not complex enough when angular 2 decided to simplify it with new syntax and requiring typescript which seems to require node.js). Is there some documentation for angular 2 with plain javascript (no typescript) for people who want to keep it simpler ? Can you provide some links ? Thank you.
      - calebegg 11y ago
        Each code sample here has an ES5 ("plain javascript") version that you can get to with the buttons on the top: https://angular.io/docs/js/latest/guide/setup.html https://angular.io/docs/js/latest/guide/setup.html
        deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
      - grumblestumble 11y ago
        if you consider a "node.js" requirement (read: a build step) too complex for your projects, you're probably correct in that you don't need any version of angular, react, ember, or anything else.
- lsiunsuex 11y ago
  I'll defend ebbv I have no intention of migrating V1 apps to V2 - it would be a waste of time and money. And until I see real world examples of V2 performance or adoption, I'll continue to use V1 due to the incredible amount of 3rd party code that works with it - which I'm assuming, is alllll gonna need to be re-written to work with V2. What if PHP 7 broke all backwards compatibility with PHP 5 unless hacks were used. The world would be un an uproar (if not all the Wordpress devs out there) I was late to adopt V1 - I'll be late to adopt V2.
  - gjolund 11y ago
    v2 cemented the fact that I will never willing build another angular app. I have no interest in frameworks that do not provide clear upgrade paths.
    - wylie 11y ago
      The Angular team listened to the community and has been working on an upgrade path. I found this blog post useful in convincing my team that we are not going to be wasting time as long as we continue to follow angular and JS best practices: http://angularjs.blogspot.com/2015/08/angular-1-and-angular-2-coexistence.html http://angularjs.blogspot.com/2015/08/angular-1-and-angular-...
- maaaats 11y ago
  It's a new framework, hence the major version bump.
- cheapsteak 11y ago
  Out of curiosity, what would you say your experience level is with Angular 1.x? (based on the criteria in the survey)
jessedhillon 11y ago
Who makes color-coded pie charts, but doesn't provide a color legend? http://imgur.com/gmDfw0e http://imgur.com/gmDfw0e
- bceagle 11y ago
  Do'ah. Valid criticism. We generated the pie charts from Google Forms (where we had the survey), but we didn't like they way they displayed the results (they were out of order). We should have added the color legend to our sorted results. I will add that later tonight after work. Apologies.
  - latortuga 11y ago
    Not only that but the pie charts are all inconsistent about where they start and where the largest portion is shown.
shadowmint 11y ago
There were about a half dozen responses for Dart and 1 for Closure Compiler. In other words, at least 7 Googlers submitted survey responses. ouch.
- fmsf 11y ago
  Just because someone likes dart, doesn't mean they are from google. As an example I really enjoy dart, and I am not from google
  - marknutter 11y ago
    It's a joke
    - campuscodi 11y ago
      Dartisans are sensitive. Trust me. I felt their wrath just two months ago.
VeejayRampay 11y ago
Quite the slap in the face for Dart, damn.
- bceagle 11y ago
  Hopefully we didn't come off as too harsh. We were more poking harmless fun than trying to criticize. The Googlers I know that use Dart love it and swear by it.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
joemaller1 11y ago
Blogger's mobile template has chopped off the left side of the page so the first two letters of every line are hidden, making this virtually unreadable on mobile. Thanks blogger mobile template!
- bceagle 11y ago
  Fixed now. I am not a fan of blogger.
durzagott 11y ago
In the Features analysis section, points 5 and 6 have the same heading, Dependency Injection. Should point 6 be Server Rendering or something similar?
- bceagle 11y ago
  Yes. Updated now. It should have read "6. Server Rendering"
paulhauggis 11y ago
It's funny how so many development communities feel like they need to start over and create an entire new framework. Perl 6, PHP 6 (which was never released), the disaster that is Python 2/3 (many standard libraries were renamed breaking a ton of libraries, and now Angular. PHP, which is hated by many here because it isn't hip, at least allows you to run 4 code on the 5 interpreter with no issues. When Microsoft did this with VB back in the 90s, which caused DLL hell, the community raged. Now it's a normal part of development. I feel like it's only about the money. Many open source communities make money on support only and can charge companies lots of money to make the shift. It also means tutorials, books, speaking engagements, etc.
- paulhauggis 11y ago
  haha, I guess I hurt the feelings the open source community. BOO HOO!!
  - marknutter 11y ago
    You're not really adding anything to the conversation. If you even did a cursory search as to the motivations behind why Angular 2.0 was a rewrite you'd learn that it has everything to do with compatibility with web components and ES6 and nothing to do with "money" as you say (I'll save you the two seconds of effort: http://eisenbergeffect.bluespire.com/all-about-angular-2-0/ http://eisenbergeffect.bluespire.com/all-about-angular-2-0/). In fact, it was a huge blow to Angular when they announced they would be introducing such sweeping changes to the framework. Remember that the web is a constantly moving target and assumptions you make today may no longer be relevant two years from now.
    - paulhauggis 11y ago
      Even if the underlying components changed, they could still keep angular backward compatible. They choose not to. It's the same with many other frameworks and languages. Most of these drastic changes have to do with the politics of the community I still disagree that it doesn't have anything to do with money. You can't deny the fact that the majority of these communities make money on books, speaking engagements, and consulting.
nateabele 11y ago
Hey, UI Router lead dev here. I'm interested in any & all feedback people have regarding Component Router vs. UI Router, what they like/don't like, and whether or how much they'd like to see UI Router support for Angular 2.
- rubicon33 11y ago
  By component router, are you referring to the stock router in Angular? If so... UI Router is basically what made Angular viable for 2 massive projects I've done. How it isn't a core part of Angular yet, blows my mind.
  - jbigelow76 11y ago
    By component router, are you referring to the stock router in Angular? Component Router will be the stock router in Angular 2, it is supposed to fix most of the problems with the Angular 1 router. I've personally held off refactoring my Angular 1 routing code to UI Router because I didn't want to do it again once Component Router is released for Angular 1.3, oops I meant 1.4, oops again I think I mean 1.5. But I am starting to reconsider.
    - nateabele 11y ago
      If you hold out on refactoring to UI Router until 1.0 is released, I'm pretty confident at this point that I can promise you a smooth upgrade path well into the future. (Come to think of it, I'm still pretty confident even if you start now on 0.2.x).
      - websirnik 11y ago
        When UI Router 1.0(beta/stable) will be released?
        nateabele 11y ago
        Well, we're pretty close to an alpha release. [0] After that, it's just a matter of users testing it and telling us what's broken, and us fixing it. A few weeks, maybe? [0] https://twitter.com/ChrisThielen/status/638040557718126592 https://twitter.com/ChrisThielen/status/638040557718126592
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
martin_ 11y ago
It's a shame that jQuery was included within "What frameworks other than Angular 1.x do you use regularly today? (choose multiple)". Why not throw lodash/underscore in too?
- Nemcue 11y ago
  Because they are libraries, not frameworks.
  - andrewmcwatters 11y ago
    And jQuery is... surprise! A library.
    - toupeira 11y ago
      It does have some framework properties, like the whole plugin mechanism.
      - dcherman 11y ago
        That barely qualifies imo. The plugin mechanism is just prototypical inheritance - you're just adding methods to a prototype, nothing more.
- _greim_ 11y ago
  I can kind of see how jQuery + mainstream jQuery usage patterns would get grandfathered in as a sort of ad hoc, primordial framework.
peterjmag 11y ago
OT: Is this supposed to happen on page load? [1] Not sure if it's intentional, but if it is, it's probably the most useless animation I've seen. Blogger's standard templates seem to get worse every month. [1] http://i.imgur.com/FifmyCV.gifv http://i.imgur.com/FifmyCV.gifv
- ihsw 11y ago
  That would be Blogger -- it's loading the homepage and then loading the article on top. I can't imagine why, though. The loading gear on page load is infuriating enough, and now there is a giant sliding page too. Frankly I'm leaning towards avoiding all blogspot.com domains from now on, these silly things are more annoying than anything else.
msoad 11y ago
Angular 2 can't come soon enough! The ability to move heavy diffing processes to web workers is what I need. Change detection for large number of DOM nodes is slow and inefficient in Angular 1.
hokkos 11y ago
So much fragmentation in all those answers.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
zyxley 11y ago
Unrelated to this specific survey, but as somebody unfamiliar with Angular, having both angular.io and angularjs.org with neither making the version difference clear at a glance is confusing as heck.

149 points by bceagle 11y ago

RamenLover5 11y ago

Wow, very informative!

gdi2290 11y ago
thanks! :)

zkallen2010 11y ago

Awesome survey! I develop with AngularJS and I thought it was interesting that TypeScript pulled away, I've been hearing more and more about it. I hope you guys do a follow up so we can see if anything changes.

lighthawk 11y ago

Typo: "Meteor 9.7% 1967" has an extra digit, since 1967 would be far above 9.7%. I'd comment on the page, but comments are limited to team members. Also, why even show the option for comments if I can't make them?

bceagle 11y ago
Shoot, yeah, you are right. I am one of the authors. I just updated this, but it looks like the page is cached so will take a couple minutes for it to correctly show 196.

ebbv 11y ago

I was really hoping this was a survey to Angular 1.x developers asking how annoyed you are that Angular 2 completely changed everything. Angular 2 should have been a new framework, IMHO.

chrisco255 11y ago
That would be a waste of a good brand name.
- jsprogrammer 11y ago
  A friend also asked me to think of all the recruiters and managers who just placed thousands of Angular devs over the last year. How will they look when the C-level finds out that their team consists almost entirely of people specializing in an aborted product (oh, and their product is now locked-in to some now-aborted Google product)? My friend's point was that perhaps Google is just attempting to paper over any unpleasantries by sticking the old name on a different product.
gdi2290 11y ago
yes but the changes allowed the framework to be the fastest out of all of ones currently right now as well as making sure it's more future proof
- quaunaut 11y ago
  Not an Angular user, but I'm quite interested- what about it would make Angular 2 faster than Ember or React?
  - Bahamut 11y ago
    All the benchmarks seem to indicate that Angular 2 is vastly faster than the other frameworks - the Angular team has achieved O(1) change detection, which large DOM node benchmarks are remarkably consistent with in terms of Angular 2's performance. For large numbers of repeated elements, it turns out that Angular 2's performance is worlds away from even libraries like React. For more normal situations of smaller # of DOM nodes, Angular 2 still manages to outperform by around 3-5 times as fast - all the benchmarks I have saw was pre-web worker support though, so it may be even better with that enabled. I don't remember Ember's performance, but React's seems to slow down significantly in jumps at certain marks, similar to Angular 1, which seems to suggest they have some at least one place where optimization could be made. It should be noted though that Angular 2 builds on top of many rock solid principles that React introduced, and has ruthlessly optimized upon that with continuous benchmarking and careful planning.
    - Cshelton 11y ago
      What benchmarks? You say all the benchmarks but provide no links and I know for a matter of fact that your statement is simply not true. Also, be wary of benchmarks, they tend to optimize one framework while leaving the other ones not optimized. Also to note, I've used React for very complicated things, even having to optimize under the 50mb limit in one tab and the performance did not slow down as you claim. I've been using React on a production app > 1 year. I used Angular 1.x before that. And the only way I see every change detection being O(1) is using something like Immutable js or serializing the "state" and comparing strings. Just by this blog post alone, it seems the Angular community is quite split on what they want. Wouldn't it make sense to just maintain Angular 1.x and start on a new framework, which would basically be Angular's version of React and Ember, with a new name. Performance difference will be negligible.
pbreit 11y ago
Seems like 2.0 is the worst of both worlds: little/no continuity from 1.0 and little/no benefits of starting from scratch.
- bceagle 11y ago
  Did you see the blog post from last week on Angular's efforts to help developers transition from 1 to 2? http://angularjs.blogspot.com/2015/08/angular-1-and-angular-2-coexistence.html http://angularjs.blogspot.com/2015/08/angular-1-and-angular-... As for little/no benefits, that is certainly not true. Angular 2 is going to be better in almost every way from Angular 1 and there are many great apps built off Angular 1. If you haven't tried Angular 2, I suggest giving it a go once the they get to beta.
  - leaveyou 11y ago
    At a first glance the link you provided promotes double insanity: angular 1 mixed with angular 2 (because angular 1 was not complex enough when angular 2 decided to simplify it with new syntax and requiring typescript which seems to require node.js). Is there some documentation for angular 2 with plain javascript (no typescript) for people who want to keep it simpler ? Can you provide some links ? Thank you.
    - calebegg 11y ago
      Each code sample here has an ES5 ("plain javascript") version that you can get to with the buttons on the top: https://angular.io/docs/js/latest/guide/setup.html https://angular.io/docs/js/latest/guide/setup.html
      - deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
    - grumblestumble 11y ago
      if you consider a "node.js" requirement (read: a build step) too complex for your projects, you're probably correct in that you don't need any version of angular, react, ember, or anything else.
lsiunsuex 11y ago
I'll defend ebbv I have no intention of migrating V1 apps to V2 - it would be a waste of time and money. And until I see real world examples of V2 performance or adoption, I'll continue to use V1 due to the incredible amount of 3rd party code that works with it - which I'm assuming, is alllll gonna need to be re-written to work with V2. What if PHP 7 broke all backwards compatibility with PHP 5 unless hacks were used. The world would be un an uproar (if not all the Wordpress devs out there) I was late to adopt V1 - I'll be late to adopt V2.
- gjolund 11y ago
  v2 cemented the fact that I will never willing build another angular app. I have no interest in frameworks that do not provide clear upgrade paths.
  - wylie 11y ago
    The Angular team listened to the community and has been working on an upgrade path. I found this blog post useful in convincing my team that we are not going to be wasting time as long as we continue to follow angular and JS best practices: http://angularjs.blogspot.com/2015/08/angular-1-and-angular-2-coexistence.html http://angularjs.blogspot.com/2015/08/angular-1-and-angular-...
maaaats 11y ago
It's a new framework, hence the major version bump.
cheapsteak 11y ago
Out of curiosity, what would you say your experience level is with Angular 1.x? (based on the criteria in the survey)

jessedhillon 11y ago

Who makes color-coded pie charts, but doesn't provide a color legend? http://imgur.com/gmDfw0e http://imgur.com/gmDfw0e

bceagle 11y ago
Do'ah. Valid criticism. We generated the pie charts from Google Forms (where we had the survey), but we didn't like they way they displayed the results (they were out of order). We should have added the color legend to our sorted results. I will add that later tonight after work. Apologies.
- latortuga 11y ago
  Not only that but the pie charts are all inconsistent about where they start and where the largest portion is shown.

shadowmint 11y ago

There were about a half dozen responses for Dart and 1 for Closure Compiler. In other words, at least 7 Googlers submitted survey responses. ouch.

fmsf 11y ago
Just because someone likes dart, doesn't mean they are from google. As an example I really enjoy dart, and I am not from google
- marknutter 11y ago
  It's a joke
  - campuscodi 11y ago
    Dartisans are sensitive. Trust me. I felt their wrath just two months ago.

VeejayRampay 11y ago

Quite the slap in the face for Dart, damn.

bceagle 11y ago
Hopefully we didn't come off as too harsh. We were more poking harmless fun than trying to criticize. The Googlers I know that use Dart love it and swear by it.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

joemaller1 11y ago

Blogger's mobile template has chopped off the left side of the page so the first two letters of every line are hidden, making this virtually unreadable on mobile. Thanks blogger mobile template!

bceagle 11y ago
Fixed now. I am not a fan of blogger.

durzagott 11y ago

In the Features analysis section, points 5 and 6 have the same heading, Dependency Injection. Should point 6 be Server Rendering or something similar?

bceagle 11y ago
Yes. Updated now. It should have read "6. Server Rendering"

paulhauggis 11y ago

It's funny how so many development communities feel like they need to start over and create an entire new framework. Perl 6, PHP 6 (which was never released), the disaster that is Python 2/3 (many standard libraries were renamed breaking a ton of libraries, and now Angular. PHP, which is hated by many here because it isn't hip, at least allows you to run 4 code on the 5 interpreter with no issues. When Microsoft did this with VB back in the 90s, which caused DLL hell, the community raged. Now it's a normal part of development. I feel like it's only about the money. Many open source communities make money on support only and can charge companies lots of money to make the shift. It also means tutorials, books, speaking engagements, etc.

paulhauggis 11y ago
haha, I guess I hurt the feelings the open source community. BOO HOO!!
- marknutter 11y ago
  You're not really adding anything to the conversation. If you even did a cursory search as to the motivations behind why Angular 2.0 was a rewrite you'd learn that it has everything to do with compatibility with web components and ES6 and nothing to do with "money" as you say (I'll save you the two seconds of effort: http://eisenbergeffect.bluespire.com/all-about-angular-2-0/ http://eisenbergeffect.bluespire.com/all-about-angular-2-0/). In fact, it was a huge blow to Angular when they announced they would be introducing such sweeping changes to the framework. Remember that the web is a constantly moving target and assumptions you make today may no longer be relevant two years from now.
  - paulhauggis 11y ago
    Even if the underlying components changed, they could still keep angular backward compatible. They choose not to. It's the same with many other frameworks and languages. Most of these drastic changes have to do with the politics of the community I still disagree that it doesn't have anything to do with money. You can't deny the fact that the majority of these communities make money on books, speaking engagements, and consulting.

nateabele 11y ago

Hey, UI Router lead dev here. I'm interested in any & all feedback people have regarding Component Router vs. UI Router, what they like/don't like, and whether or how much they'd like to see UI Router support for Angular 2.

rubicon33 11y ago
By component router, are you referring to the stock router in Angular? If so... UI Router is basically what made Angular viable for 2 massive projects I've done. How it isn't a core part of Angular yet, blows my mind.
- jbigelow76 11y ago
  By component router, are you referring to the stock router in Angular? Component Router will be the stock router in Angular 2, it is supposed to fix most of the problems with the Angular 1 router. I've personally held off refactoring my Angular 1 routing code to UI Router because I didn't want to do it again once Component Router is released for Angular 1.3, oops I meant 1.4, oops again I think I mean 1.5. But I am starting to reconsider.
  - nateabele 11y ago
    If you hold out on refactoring to UI Router until 1.0 is released, I'm pretty confident at this point that I can promise you a smooth upgrade path well into the future. (Come to think of it, I'm still pretty confident even if you start now on 0.2.x).
    - websirnik 11y ago
      When UI Router 1.0(beta/stable) will be released?
      - nateabele 11y ago
        Well, we're pretty close to an alpha release. [0] After that, it's just a matter of users testing it and telling us what's broken, and us fixing it. A few weeks, maybe? [0] https://twitter.com/ChrisThielen/status/638040557718126592 https://twitter.com/ChrisThielen/status/638040557718126592

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

martin_ 11y ago

It's a shame that jQuery was included within "What frameworks other than Angular 1.x do you use regularly today? (choose multiple)". Why not throw lodash/underscore in too?

Nemcue 11y ago
Because they are libraries, not frameworks.
- andrewmcwatters 11y ago
  And jQuery is... surprise! A library.
  - toupeira 11y ago
    It does have some framework properties, like the whole plugin mechanism.
    - dcherman 11y ago
      That barely qualifies imo. The plugin mechanism is just prototypical inheritance - you're just adding methods to a prototype, nothing more.
_greim_ 11y ago
I can kind of see how jQuery + mainstream jQuery usage patterns would get grandfathered in as a sort of ad hoc, primordial framework.

peterjmag 11y ago

OT: Is this supposed to happen on page load? [1] Not sure if it's intentional, but if it is, it's probably the most useless animation I've seen. Blogger's standard templates seem to get worse every month. [1] http://i.imgur.com/FifmyCV.gifv http://i.imgur.com/FifmyCV.gifv

ihsw 11y ago
That would be Blogger -- it's loading the homepage and then loading the article on top. I can't imagine why, though. The loading gear on page load is infuriating enough, and now there is a giant sliding page too. Frankly I'm leaning towards avoiding all blogspot.com domains from now on, these silly things are more annoying than anything else.

msoad 11y ago

Angular 2 can't come soon enough! The ability to move heavy diffing processes to web workers is what I need. Change detection for large number of DOM nodes is slow and inefficient in Angular 1.

hokkos 11y ago

So much fragmentation in all those answers.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

zyxley 11y ago

Unrelated to this specific survey, but as somebody unfamiliar with Angular, having both angular.io and angularjs.org with neither making the version difference clear at a glance is confusing as heck.