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I work in technical due diligence, mostly of mid stage companies getting bought by private equity, so typically revenue of a $5-100 million. (Which, by the way,

I work in technical due diligence, mostly of mid stage companies getting bought by private equity, so typically revenue of a $5-100 million. (Which, by the way, is the most common exit for tech companies now by far.) Perhaps surprisingly to some, I see much more Angular than React, 3 to 4 times as much. I've been doing this job for 3 years now, and it has been very interesting to see the gap between what you read in the tech online blogosphere, etc, and what most companies that are quietly making lots of money do. Devs at small startups and big tech giants both write and talk about what they are doing, folks in the middle not so much. From what I see, it seems most mid-stage companies doing unglamorous enterprise software in Java or C# with regular dev teams of 5-20 people prefer NG. Obviously a biased sample, but perhaps interesting to some folks.

Alex3917 5y ago
Super interesting. This would make a really good blog post, at least if you have more thoughts/info to share.
Traubenfuchs 5y ago
For me as a Java backend dev, Angular feels extremely welcoming. I can immediately turn my fantasies into reality with it. Kind of feels like the angular developers were all spring devs once. React always felt appalling and alien do me -and I wrote a whole react native app.
- dustymcp 5y ago
  Same here c# and angular i get the same feeling its very well documented and i always find a way, i never could get along with vue/react it just seems foreign to me no offense :)
tawwwwaway 5y ago
That's some great information. May I ask what is your geography?
jm20 5y ago
This could also be a selection bias based on age of company. A company in that revenue range is probably 3-5+ years old. Angular was much more popular back then, and even though it changed drastically with 2.0 there was a much clearer upgrade path than a full rewrite in something like React.
- Alex3917 5y ago
  > even though it changed drastically with 2.0 there was a much clearer upgrade path than a full rewrite in something like React. Even though Angular2 was released in 2016, there wasn't really an easy-to-follow upgrade path until mid 2018. (ngMigration-Assistant wasn't even released until summer 2018, and people didn't really start releasing in-depth tutorials until around this time.[1]) Since React was released in 2013, it was already pretty popular by 2015 when Angular2 was announced. So a ton of startups migrated from Angular to React in between 2016 and 2019, when it wasn't clear there would ever be a good upgrade path, or that Angular2 would actually develop into a good product. Now obviously in retrospect there is now a very good upgrade path, and Angular has actually become quite good, but it wasn't at all clear that either of these things would happen for several years. But yeah, I'm sure there is a time effect here, but I think there might also be something more nuanced going on. Like no doubt most of these startups that are selling are 5+ years old, but that still puts us well into the time when React was popular. [1] E.g.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeQljCLpR04 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeQljCLpR04, https://www.upgradingangularjs.com/ https://www.upgradingangularjs.com/
  - johnnycerberus 5y ago
    > React was popular By any metric, React is by far the most popular framework in 2021. It has even surpassed jQuery. [1][2] [1] https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2021#section-most-popular-technologies-web-frameworks https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2021#section-most-... [2] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=react,angular,svelte,jquery https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=react,an...
    - Alex3917 5y ago
_hzrk 5y ago
The choice between OOP React and Angular boils down to this, as you said, people prefer the OOP nature as they come from Java, C#, some prefer even more the templating system of Angular as that reminds them of JSP, Thymeleaf and other systems that were used in enterprise systems in the past. Though, the concept of React Hooks changes everything. Functional components coupled with JSX and styledcomponents give you superior composability and encapsulation, imho. When I'm programming in Angular, I notice the familiary, it's like I'm using Spring but on the frontend, while in principle I like the rule of least power, I can say that the declarative nature of React is game changing. Look at the ecosystems that are being developed now with Hooks, like Tanstack, react-hook-form, etc. People are literally creating their own SwiftUIs and Jetcomposers in JavaScript (TypeScript).
dnissley 5y ago
This isn't saying much without distinguishing between angular 1 vs 2+ which are essentially completely different frameworks.
- Alex3917 5y ago
  FWIW AngularJS written in post-1.5 style (with components instead of controllers) is basically the same as Angular2, and the port from AngularJS straight to Angular13 is pretty straightforward and rote.

Alex3917 5y ago

Super interesting. This would make a really good blog post, at least if you have more thoughts/info to share.

Traubenfuchs 5y ago

For me as a Java backend dev, Angular feels extremely welcoming. I can immediately turn my fantasies into reality with it. Kind of feels like the angular developers were all spring devs once. React always felt appalling and alien do me -and I wrote a whole react native app.

dustymcp 5y ago
Same here c# and angular i get the same feeling its very well documented and i always find a way, i never could get along with vue/react it just seems foreign to me no offense :)

tawwwwaway 5y ago

That's some great information. May I ask what is your geography?

jm20 5y ago

This could also be a selection bias based on age of company. A company in that revenue range is probably 3-5+ years old. Angular was much more popular back then, and even though it changed drastically with 2.0 there was a much clearer upgrade path than a full rewrite in something like React.

Alex3917 5y ago
> even though it changed drastically with 2.0 there was a much clearer upgrade path than a full rewrite in something like React. Even though Angular2 was released in 2016, there wasn't really an easy-to-follow upgrade path until mid 2018. (ngMigration-Assistant wasn't even released until summer 2018, and people didn't really start releasing in-depth tutorials until around this time.[1]) Since React was released in 2013, it was already pretty popular by 2015 when Angular2 was announced. So a ton of startups migrated from Angular to React in between 2016 and 2019, when it wasn't clear there would ever be a good upgrade path, or that Angular2 would actually develop into a good product. Now obviously in retrospect there is now a very good upgrade path, and Angular has actually become quite good, but it wasn't at all clear that either of these things would happen for several years. But yeah, I'm sure there is a time effect here, but I think there might also be something more nuanced going on. Like no doubt most of these startups that are selling are 5+ years old, but that still puts us well into the time when React was popular. [1] E.g.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeQljCLpR04 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeQljCLpR04, https://www.upgradingangularjs.com/ https://www.upgradingangularjs.com/
- johnnycerberus 5y ago
  > React was popular By any metric, React is by far the most popular framework in 2021. It has even surpassed jQuery. [1][2] [1] https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2021#section-most-popular-technologies-web-frameworks https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2021#section-most-... [2] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=react,angular,svelte,jquery https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=react,an...
  - Alex3917 5y ago

_hzrk 5y ago

The choice between OOP React and Angular boils down to this, as you said, people prefer the OOP nature as they come from Java, C#, some prefer even more the templating system of Angular as that reminds them of JSP, Thymeleaf and other systems that were used in enterprise systems in the past. Though, the concept of React Hooks changes everything. Functional components coupled with JSX and styledcomponents give you superior composability and encapsulation, imho. When I'm programming in Angular, I notice the familiary, it's like I'm using Spring but on the frontend, while in principle I like the rule of least power, I can say that the declarative nature of React is game changing. Look at the ecosystems that are being developed now with Hooks, like Tanstack, react-hook-form, etc. People are literally creating their own SwiftUIs and Jetcomposers in JavaScript (TypeScript).

dnissley 5y ago

This isn't saying much without distinguishing between angular 1 vs 2+ which are essentially completely different frameworks.

Alex3917 5y ago
FWIW AngularJS written in post-1.5 style (with components instead of controllers) is basically the same as Angular2, and the port from AngularJS straight to Angular13 is pretty straightforward and rote.