5 ms·

I wish there was more discussion of the core concepts in Angular instead of just the implementation. Custom Elements + Two-way Data Binding + Services seems to

I wish there was more discussion of the core concepts in Angular instead of just the implementation. Custom Elements + Two-way Data Binding + Services seems to be a pretty powerful combination.

numbsafari 13y ago
That's what I was looking for when I found Angular. There are definitely two questions worth asking: 1) Is that combination really what we want? (I think it is) and 2) Is Angular's approach the only right way to do it? So far, they've got the mindshare and a serious head start.
- sehr 13y ago
  So far, they've got the mindshare and a serious head start. I keep on hearing this, but I really haven't heard of it being in any large projects other than DoubleClick. I don't know if I'd consider being used in a bunch of small hobby projects a 'head start'.
  - JeremyMorgan 13y ago
    Being used all over the place in the Silicon Forest (Portland/Hillsboro Oregon). Everything from startups to places like Nike and Intel are building out tons of Angular stuff. OSS and .Net shops both using it extensively here. Not saying that represents the market, but just saying it's taken off in my corner of the world significantly.
  - flylib 13y ago
    http://www.localytics.com http://www.localytics.com Youtube App for PS3 there is a lot more, it's being used in a lot of startups and major companies throughout the world today, pretty sure the stats show it is far ahead of ember in real world adoption so far
    - sehr 13y ago
      I'm rooting for Angular, but it just seems so far behind. Ember has more recognized names, Angular has tiny companies and hobbyists. Square, Vine, Yahoo, NBC News, Groupon, Twitch, Urbanspoon, Discourse, Ghost, TravisCI, and now Netflix?
- novagenesis 13y ago
  #2 is the killer. Databinding is a lock-in feature. Annoying as hell, but true. There's no databinding library that I've seen that does not reduce your ability to use other libraries. I've never seen one that jives at ALL with third-party client templates (like dustjs).
ssmoot 13y ago
Two-way Data Binding is really oversold IMO. There are few cases where I want such a thing (like say updating the count on a shopping cart when an item is added). I don't ever want an item you're adding in a form to be showing up as you type it in a list in the background. That adds nothing and on the whole it's probably a UX negative effect. I think it's brought up so much mostly because it's cool tech. But I don't see it actually solving problems. MS had the same tech, with an arguably simpler implementation, years ago in ASP.NET. And while I've been out of MS development for awhile I feel like it's been largely deprecated. And it was never a "best practice" in the first place. It was mostly just a demo tool for MS sponsored "conferences" (read sales demonstrations by MS employees who went on to found Telligent).
- kmkemp 13y ago
  That is only one use case for two-way data binding. A better example is that choosing an option in a select list instantly modifies your model, which triggers changes in some other computed properties on your model, which instantly binds back to the UI to populate that second drop down list with the filtered options.
  - ssmoot 13y ago
    Sure. But most if not all of that logic is on the server anyways. So to actually make it work that way would be (IME) a duplication of effort. Then you have to deal with the fact that some of these second-order effects may be dealing with thousands of options. Do you really want to be calculating cartesian products on the client in JS? Ignoring the performance concerns, you could be talking about preloading a ton of data. And then you're addressing complexities on the client side, coming up with potentially inconsistent solutions for because you're evaluating these on a case by case basis, and you've already solved these problems on the server. While there might be some UX cost to round-tripping to the server, the client solution to approaching such problems is then consistent, and arguably far simpler. And you generally have much much better tooling to tackle these problems on the server, and more flexibility in applying your logic across web, mobile, batch processing scenarios, etc. I mean, you could make your same argument for WebControls in ASP.NET. And it's my impression everyone mostly agrees it was a bad idea (at least I haven't noticed any competitors thinking it was an idea worth stealing). Except now it's on the client, with much weaker tooling, multiple runtimes it has to work with, etc. We could go back and forth all day I'm sure. It's just a POV I felt like putting out there as someone who survived the two-way-data-binding wars of the early 2000's and isn't eager to see that idea rise to prominence again.

I wish there was more discussion of the core concepts in Angular instead of just the implementation. Custom Elements + Two-way Data Binding + Services seems to be a pretty powerful combination.

numbsafari 13y ago

That's what I was looking for when I found Angular. There are definitely two questions worth asking: 1) Is that combination really what we want? (I think it is) and 2) Is Angular's approach the only right way to do it? So far, they've got the mindshare and a serious head start.

sehr 13y ago
So far, they've got the mindshare and a serious head start. I keep on hearing this, but I really haven't heard of it being in any large projects other than DoubleClick. I don't know if I'd consider being used in a bunch of small hobby projects a 'head start'.
- JeremyMorgan 13y ago
  Being used all over the place in the Silicon Forest (Portland/Hillsboro Oregon). Everything from startups to places like Nike and Intel are building out tons of Angular stuff. OSS and .Net shops both using it extensively here. Not saying that represents the market, but just saying it's taken off in my corner of the world significantly.
- flylib 13y ago
  http://www.localytics.com http://www.localytics.com Youtube App for PS3 there is a lot more, it's being used in a lot of startups and major companies throughout the world today, pretty sure the stats show it is far ahead of ember in real world adoption so far
  - sehr 13y ago
    I'm rooting for Angular, but it just seems so far behind. Ember has more recognized names, Angular has tiny companies and hobbyists. Square, Vine, Yahoo, NBC News, Groupon, Twitch, Urbanspoon, Discourse, Ghost, TravisCI, and now Netflix?
novagenesis 13y ago
#2 is the killer. Databinding is a lock-in feature. Annoying as hell, but true. There's no databinding library that I've seen that does not reduce your ability to use other libraries. I've never seen one that jives at ALL with third-party client templates (like dustjs).

ssmoot 13y ago

Two-way Data Binding is really oversold IMO. There are few cases where I want such a thing (like say updating the count on a shopping cart when an item is added). I don't ever want an item you're adding in a form to be showing up as you type it in a list in the background. That adds nothing and on the whole it's probably a UX negative effect. I think it's brought up so much mostly because it's cool tech. But I don't see it actually solving problems. MS had the same tech, with an arguably simpler implementation, years ago in ASP.NET. And while I've been out of MS development for awhile I feel like it's been largely deprecated. And it was never a "best practice" in the first place. It was mostly just a demo tool for MS sponsored "conferences" (read sales demonstrations by MS employees who went on to found Telligent).

kmkemp 13y ago
That is only one use case for two-way data binding. A better example is that choosing an option in a select list instantly modifies your model, which triggers changes in some other computed properties on your model, which instantly binds back to the UI to populate that second drop down list with the filtered options.
- ssmoot 13y ago
  Sure. But most if not all of that logic is on the server anyways. So to actually make it work that way would be (IME) a duplication of effort. Then you have to deal with the fact that some of these second-order effects may be dealing with thousands of options. Do you really want to be calculating cartesian products on the client in JS? Ignoring the performance concerns, you could be talking about preloading a ton of data. And then you're addressing complexities on the client side, coming up with potentially inconsistent solutions for because you're evaluating these on a case by case basis, and you've already solved these problems on the server. While there might be some UX cost to round-tripping to the server, the client solution to approaching such problems is then consistent, and arguably far simpler. And you generally have much much better tooling to tackle these problems on the server, and more flexibility in applying your logic across web, mobile, batch processing scenarios, etc. I mean, you could make your same argument for WebControls in ASP.NET. And it's my impression everyone mostly agrees it was a bad idea (at least I haven't noticed any competitors thinking it was an idea worth stealing). Except now it's on the client, with much weaker tooling, multiple runtimes it has to work with, etc. We could go back and forth all day I'm sure. It's just a POV I felt like putting out there as someone who survived the two-way-data-binding wars of the early 2000's and isn't eager to see that idea rise to prominence again.