19 ms·

Ouch, the ratio of "would use again" to "would not use again" on AngularJS stunning, if not surprising: https://2018.stateofjs.com/front-end-frameworks/overview

by s_kilk 8y ago

Ouch, the ratio of "would use again" to "would not use again" on AngularJS stunning, if not surprising: https://2018.stateofjs.com/front-end-frameworks/overview/ https://2018.stateofjs.com/front-end-frameworks/overview/

Etheryte 8y ago
Offering my personal opinion on the matter, since I've used all three of the most popular libraries in large-scale projects. Angular takes a lot of work to get to know with no real payoff. Comparing the architecture to the other libraries, it's not as intuitive and it's not as easy to maintain; things that are easy elsewhere are often tricky or weird in Angular. I'm sure there are great developers doing good work using Angular, but in my experience it's easier to onboard people and MVP things using other tools.
drinchev 8y ago
My bet is that Angular pushes for using TypeScript too much, which makes you wonder where to start. On the other hand ReactJS & Vue work with TypeScript, but are not designed to embrace it. I've seen lots of questions about Angular on StackOverflow which should be classified as TypeScript questions, since they have nothing to do with Angular itself. I guess that's the confusing and non-attractive part of Angular. TypeScript is awesome and I love to use it, but some of my clients ( freelancing ) don't want me to write TS code, since they are afraid that it will be harder to find a substitute and will increase complexity - both are reasonable arguments.
- woutr_be 8y ago
  I've noticed this too. And I think it's a pretty big reason why people are abandoning Angular. A lot of frontend developers I work with just don't want to use Typescript (or are afraid to), I've found it incredibly hard to push for it here.
  - 52-6F-62 8y ago
    As the resident TypeScript advocate at my workplace, I sympathize.
stock_toaster 8y ago
Wasn't there some kind of huge upgrade pain between versions (v1 to v2 I think it was) for people? I vaguely remember talking with some folks at work who were trying to upgrade at one point, and they ended up changing frameworks entirely (to react) because the effort to upgrade was considered "about the same as a rewrite".
- markmark 8y ago
  v1 and v2 were completely separate frameworks with essentially no upgrade path. I don't know anyone who used angular v2+ (although I'm sure many did) but have personally been on two teams who ported to react. It burned a lot of people.
- gldalmaso 8y ago
  That is certainly the case. Google's decision for Angular have made millions of lines of code legacy over night. The real reason it ever got traction in my opinion was the built in dependency injection. It solved a real problem at the time, but ES6 modules make it a lot less appealing now.
kabes 8y ago
But we don't know if people mean AngularJS (1) or Angular (2+) here. In my opinion, while angularJS is now getting a bit outdated and very different under the hood, for a user it's pretty similar to Vue.JS, which people do seem to love. Angular 2+ on the other hand seems to have added a layer of JavaEE-like over-engineering on top. I think a framework should be written with productivity as top concern and Angular 2+ is anything but that, it constantly works against you.
- Geee 8y ago
  They're similar? Then I know to avoid Vue and stick to React.
  - markmark 8y ago
    I have plans to look more deeply into Vue when I have some time since so many people like it, but that's the impression I get from it, it does a heap of the stuff I didn't like about angular, why would I go back?
commandlinefan 8y ago
Angular reminds me of the Spring "framework". Once you peel back the GIGABYTES of framework redirection and figure out what it's actually doing, it's not a bad way to organize code - it's just that trying to wrap that up in a reusable library rather than just recommend it as a best practice is so braindead as to be incomprehensible.

by s_kilk 8y ago

Etheryte 8y ago

Offering my personal opinion on the matter, since I've used all three of the most popular libraries in large-scale projects. Angular takes a lot of work to get to know with no real payoff. Comparing the architecture to the other libraries, it's not as intuitive and it's not as easy to maintain; things that are easy elsewhere are often tricky or weird in Angular. I'm sure there are great developers doing good work using Angular, but in my experience it's easier to onboard people and MVP things using other tools.

drinchev 8y ago

My bet is that Angular pushes for using TypeScript too much, which makes you wonder where to start. On the other hand ReactJS & Vue work with TypeScript, but are not designed to embrace it. I've seen lots of questions about Angular on StackOverflow which should be classified as TypeScript questions, since they have nothing to do with Angular itself. I guess that's the confusing and non-attractive part of Angular. TypeScript is awesome and I love to use it, but some of my clients ( freelancing ) don't want me to write TS code, since they are afraid that it will be harder to find a substitute and will increase complexity - both are reasonable arguments.

woutr_be 8y ago
I've noticed this too. And I think it's a pretty big reason why people are abandoning Angular. A lot of frontend developers I work with just don't want to use Typescript (or are afraid to), I've found it incredibly hard to push for it here.
- 52-6F-62 8y ago
  As the resident TypeScript advocate at my workplace, I sympathize.

stock_toaster 8y ago

Wasn't there some kind of huge upgrade pain between versions (v1 to v2 I think it was) for people? I vaguely remember talking with some folks at work who were trying to upgrade at one point, and they ended up changing frameworks entirely (to react) because the effort to upgrade was considered "about the same as a rewrite".

markmark 8y ago
v1 and v2 were completely separate frameworks with essentially no upgrade path. I don't know anyone who used angular v2+ (although I'm sure many did) but have personally been on two teams who ported to react. It burned a lot of people.
gldalmaso 8y ago
That is certainly the case. Google's decision for Angular have made millions of lines of code legacy over night. The real reason it ever got traction in my opinion was the built in dependency injection. It solved a real problem at the time, but ES6 modules make it a lot less appealing now.

kabes 8y ago

But we don't know if people mean AngularJS (1) or Angular (2+) here. In my opinion, while angularJS is now getting a bit outdated and very different under the hood, for a user it's pretty similar to Vue.JS, which people do seem to love. Angular 2+ on the other hand seems to have added a layer of JavaEE-like over-engineering on top. I think a framework should be written with productivity as top concern and Angular 2+ is anything but that, it constantly works against you.

Geee 8y ago
They're similar? Then I know to avoid Vue and stick to React.
- markmark 8y ago
  I have plans to look more deeply into Vue when I have some time since so many people like it, but that's the impression I get from it, it does a heap of the stuff I didn't like about angular, why would I go back?

commandlinefan 8y ago

Angular reminds me of the Spring "framework". Once you peel back the GIGABYTES of framework redirection and figure out what it's actually doing, it's not a bad way to organize code - it's just that trying to wrap that up in a reusable library rather than just recommend it as a best practice is so braindead as to be incomprehensible.