5 ms·

IMO angular provides such a great experience developing. They had minimal API changes in the last 10 years, and every project looks almost the same since it’s s

by halflife 10mo ago

IMO angular provides such a great experience developing. They had minimal API changes in the last 10 years, and every project looks almost the same since it’s so opinionated. And what they DO add? Only things that improve dev exp

azangru 10mo ago
> They had minimal API changes in the last 10 years The 1 to 2 transition was one hell of a burn though; people are probably still smarting...
- halflife 10mo ago
  Well, the official statement is that 1 and 2 are 2 different frameworks. That’s why they were later named to angular JS and angular, to avoid confusion. The migration path between angular 1 and 2 is the same as react and angular, it’s just glue holding 2 frameworks together And that change happened 10 years ago
  - yearolinuxdsktp 10mo ago
    Easy migration was promised but never delivered. Angular 2 was still full of boilerplate. “Migrating” an AngularJS project to Angular 2 is as much work as porting it to React or anything else. So yes, people got burnt (when we were told that there will be a migration path), and I will never rely on another Google-backed UI framework.
    - azangru 10mo ago
      > I will never rely on another Google-backed UI framework. Lit is pretty good :-) Though it was never positioned as a framework. And it recently was liberated from google.
  - azangru 10mo ago
    > That’s why they were later named to angular JS and angular, to avoid confusion. Angular.js and angular. That's not confusing at all :-)
    - sysguest 10mo ago
      this -- even google search results were mixed up should be more different: eg "rect-angular vs angular"
- altbdoor 10mo ago
  It was one hell of a ride, but I would say the Angular team did one hell of a job too, supporting the glue code until v18 (not sure if the latest version still does). Having both old and new Angular running in one project is super weird, but everything worked out in the end.
- bartread 10mo ago
  You aren’t wrong. I basically stopped using any OSS code backed by Google as a result. I’d pushed Angular over React[0] for a massive project, and it worked well, but the migration to Angular 2 when it came created a huge amount of non-value-adding work. Never again. I don’t even really want to build anything against Gemini, despite how good it is, because I don’t trust Google not to do another rug pull. [0] I’ve never enjoyed JSX/TSX syntax, nor appreciated the mix of markup with code, but I’ve subsequently learned to live with it.
  - pas 10mo ago
    No one forced you to migrate immediately. (Also, non-value-adding work? You don't think the rewrite to TS did not bring any value? And thanks to that rewrite that app can be upgraded even today to Angular v21. And likely it'll be the case for many years.) React also went through a lot of churn. (Still does.) There's no magic optimal duration for keeping API stability. Not in general and not for specific projects. Ecosystems sometimes undergo a phase-shift. Sometimes they take a long time, based on the size. Python 3 was released in 2008, just a year before Angular 1. And the last Py2 release was in 2020, about 2-3 years before the last AngularJS version. (And of course there are many businesses running on py2 still. I know at least one.) These things take plenty of time. Angular1 was pretty opinionated, willing to break with the tradition of just add one more jQuery plugin. Miško was working at Google, he persuaded some people to take a look at the framework that he and Adam Abrons were tinkering with. Angular 2 was announced in 2014 January. And then v1 still got years of support, even the component architecture was "backported" around 1.5 (in 2016?) You can run old v1 code side-by-side in a v2+ app up until v17. (At least the v17 docs describe the process in full and later docs link to this page. https://v17.angular.io/guide/upgrade https://v17.angular.io/guide/upgrade ) ... Google did a pretty good job IMHO. Google throws products under the bus, but not so much OSS projects. (Though the sate of AOSP comes to mind.)
    - bartread 10mo ago
      > You don't think the rewrite to TS did not bring any value? I mean, I don't really like TypeScript, and I never have. It's ugly, boilerplatey, and inelegant. I am not a fan. So... no. But, again, some battles you have to accept you've lost. TS is everywhere and there's not much getting away from it.
symaxian 10mo ago
I'll second that Angular provides a great experience these days, but they have definitely had substantial API changes within the last few years: standalone components, swapping WebPack for esbuild, the new control-flow syntax, the new unit-test runner, etc...
- morshu9001 10mo ago
  Was going to say, I only vaguely look at Angular code from adjacent projects at work, and noticed all of a sudden the entire structure changed with the ngModule deprecation thing. Glad I'm not knee-deep in that.
morshu9001 10mo ago
I tried it once, and it was like, you have to edit 5 files to add 1 button.
- bdangubic 10mo ago
  same 5 files in every project at every company on earth
  - morshu9001 10mo ago
    Not the ones that changed to the non-ngModule way

azangru 10mo ago

> They had minimal API changes in the last 10 years The 1 to 2 transition was one hell of a burn though; people are probably still smarting...

halflife 10mo ago
Well, the official statement is that 1 and 2 are 2 different frameworks. That’s why they were later named to angular JS and angular, to avoid confusion. The migration path between angular 1 and 2 is the same as react and angular, it’s just glue holding 2 frameworks together And that change happened 10 years ago
- yearolinuxdsktp 10mo ago
  Easy migration was promised but never delivered. Angular 2 was still full of boilerplate. “Migrating” an AngularJS project to Angular 2 is as much work as porting it to React or anything else. So yes, people got burnt (when we were told that there will be a migration path), and I will never rely on another Google-backed UI framework.
  - azangru 10mo ago
    > I will never rely on another Google-backed UI framework. Lit is pretty good :-) Though it was never positioned as a framework. And it recently was liberated from google.
- azangru 10mo ago
  > That’s why they were later named to angular JS and angular, to avoid confusion. Angular.js and angular. That's not confusing at all :-)
  - sysguest 10mo ago
    this -- even google search results were mixed up should be more different: eg "rect-angular vs angular"
altbdoor 10mo ago
It was one hell of a ride, but I would say the Angular team did one hell of a job too, supporting the glue code until v18 (not sure if the latest version still does). Having both old and new Angular running in one project is super weird, but everything worked out in the end.
bartread 10mo ago
You aren’t wrong. I basically stopped using any OSS code backed by Google as a result. I’d pushed Angular over React[0] for a massive project, and it worked well, but the migration to Angular 2 when it came created a huge amount of non-value-adding work. Never again. I don’t even really want to build anything against Gemini, despite how good it is, because I don’t trust Google not to do another rug pull. [0] I’ve never enjoyed JSX/TSX syntax, nor appreciated the mix of markup with code, but I’ve subsequently learned to live with it.
- pas 10mo ago
  No one forced you to migrate immediately. (Also, non-value-adding work? You don't think the rewrite to TS did not bring any value? And thanks to that rewrite that app can be upgraded even today to Angular v21. And likely it'll be the case for many years.) React also went through a lot of churn. (Still does.) There's no magic optimal duration for keeping API stability. Not in general and not for specific projects. Ecosystems sometimes undergo a phase-shift. Sometimes they take a long time, based on the size. Python 3 was released in 2008, just a year before Angular 1. And the last Py2 release was in 2020, about 2-3 years before the last AngularJS version. (And of course there are many businesses running on py2 still. I know at least one.) These things take plenty of time. Angular1 was pretty opinionated, willing to break with the tradition of just add one more jQuery plugin. Miško was working at Google, he persuaded some people to take a look at the framework that he and Adam Abrons were tinkering with. Angular 2 was announced in 2014 January. And then v1 still got years of support, even the component architecture was "backported" around 1.5 (in 2016?) You can run old v1 code side-by-side in a v2+ app up until v17. (At least the v17 docs describe the process in full and later docs link to this page. https://v17.angular.io/guide/upgrade https://v17.angular.io/guide/upgrade ) ... Google did a pretty good job IMHO. Google throws products under the bus, but not so much OSS projects. (Though the sate of AOSP comes to mind.)
  - bartread 10mo ago
    > You don't think the rewrite to TS did not bring any value? I mean, I don't really like TypeScript, and I never have. It's ugly, boilerplatey, and inelegant. I am not a fan. So... no. But, again, some battles you have to accept you've lost. TS is everywhere and there's not much getting away from it.

symaxian 10mo ago

I'll second that Angular provides a great experience these days, but they have definitely had substantial API changes within the last few years: standalone components, swapping WebPack for esbuild, the new control-flow syntax, the new unit-test runner, etc...

morshu9001 10mo ago
Was going to say, I only vaguely look at Angular code from adjacent projects at work, and noticed all of a sudden the entire structure changed with the ngModule deprecation thing. Glad I'm not knee-deep in that.

morshu9001 10mo ago

I tried it once, and it was like, you have to edit 5 files to add 1 button.

bdangubic 10mo ago
same 5 files in every project at every company on earth
- morshu9001 10mo ago
  Not the ones that changed to the non-ngModule way