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I'm not sure I've seen a framework with such a drastic API change, particularly such a young API. I find that very threatening. Having spent a considerable amou

I'm not sure I've seen a framework with such a drastic API change, particularly such a young API. I find that very threatening. Having spent a considerable amount of time learning and working with Angular.js, not only does this appear to be massively breaking changes, but it would also break 3rd party directives which has been a great benefit to building the Angular community. This makes me think that Angular didn't think through their API for the 1.0 release. I would have thought Angular could have been written to improve the performance where needed without such drastic changes to the framework.

tracker1 12y ago
Angular was started 5 years ago.. Node was barely a proof of concept, and the JavaScript tooling at the time was centered around jQuery.. version 2 looks to be 1-2 years away, and the changes they make are really nice. I've chosen React + Flux for my current development, but in 2-3 years may well be looking to Angular 2. There's a lot to by critical about Angular... least of which is that it's own dependency system doesn't play well with others. The reliance of jquery is pretty heavy (since most wind up including the full version, and the light version is loaded). There's a lot of extra boilerplate that the new design will tear down. With node's tooling in current JS development, package management and modularization have become really easy to do. Testing has also gotten easier with this. Yes, browserify and traceur add some overhead to the mix, but it's still lighter than using the mega tooling stuff like jQuery. And don't get me wrong, I like jQuery a lot, and it's a really nice toolkit... but sometimes you only need a screwdriver, and an adjustable wrench for a job, not the whole huge craftsman toolbox. Another issue is simply that the current angular would be unlikely to have a story around server-side rendering, and I think that's especially important for any next generation tools.
- Cthulhu_ 12y ago
  > Angular was started 5 years ago.. quoted just to remind people that Angular as we know it is older than most other single-page app frameworks - even if it only became popular a year or two ago.
  - boucher 12y ago
    Cappuccino has been around since 2008 :) And although at this point it has not much in common, Ember is the direct ancestor of a project from the same time.
  - chubot 12y ago
    Yeah I heard of Angular a long time ago, but then everyone started using it in the last year. What happened? Did they change something that all of the sudden made it popular?
    - zghst 12y ago
      Data binding, directives, MVC front end + the adoption of Node is what made it popular IMHO.
    - tracker1 12y ago
      It takes a while for concepts to actually catch on. .Net and C# for example (iirc) were started in late 1999, with .Net 1.0 released in 2001, 1.1 in 2002, but it wasn't until 2003 that people really started using it. I think Java got some use pretty quickly, because of some of its' niches. Node was a proof of concept in 2009, and only in the past two years is seeing some broader use. I think it really comes down to more developers actually embracing JavaScript and the tools that the system offers. I think the JS renaissance is upon us, and that's what has people looking to Angular, Flux/React, Meteor and other new frameworks and tooling.
Nitramp 12y ago
Angular 1.0 was released on Jun 13, 2012, and was built on the API developed much longer ago (and was compatible with it). So this is the first massive API change in probable well over five years, with lots of technology changes happening around (most importantly ES6).
Bahamut 12y ago
It has been talked about for almost a year that Angular 2.0 is going to be bringing such breaking changes. 2.0 is going to require complete app rebuilds if you want to migrate to 2.0. The good news is that if your code is clean, a migration shouldn't be too painful. The danger comes when you have unmodular code that sticks everything on $rootScope (for example).
- cmdkeen 12y ago
  I was at ng-europe last week and couldn't help thinking that the way Angular 2.0 was being talked about was rather reminiscent of the chat around Python 3 back in the day.
- pedalpete 12y ago
  Except in a modular app, I should be able to upgrade module-x to Angular2 without having it break the entire app. With this change I have to re-write every module in my app. We've been looking at React at work over the last week, and were considering moving some of our angular directives to react. Now there is a larger case for building a complete app in Flux.
omarelamri 12y ago
I agree. There is virtually no way you can smoothly upgrade an Angular 1 project to this. You'd have to redo most of it from scratch. There are a lot of huge projects that are built on Angular 1 -- many enterprise products too. And this is a huge blow to maintenance. It might be a reason for a lot of people dropping Angular and going for something that makes more business sense. Maybe it's React's time to shine.
- zghst 12y ago
  The thing with React is that either Facebook's engineers are incredibly prescient or lucky. React very is really well designed and feels natural with ES6. It's so incredibly designed, even without the ES6 optimizations of 0.12.0 (coming soon) you can code today in ES6 (I use 6to5 with JSX transformer harmony just in case).
  - rdtsc 12y ago
    Yeah I am betting on React. I am not a Web GUI developer and learned about Angular and now React just out of curiosity. Well I tried to learn Angular and got stuck at the termology soup of "directives", "digest cycles", "factories", "services", "dipendencies", "scopes". I understand all those English words but I still don't quite have an idea of how they are helping me. With React somehow the whole data flow and how components work and even JSX make a lot more sense.
  - masterj 12y ago
    Facebook uses React in production (a lot) and has to migrate any code just like you would as a user of the library. Facebook is effectively always running React master. Facebook also has members on TC39 and is quite involved with evolving the language.
fetbaffe 12y ago
They have do it otherwise Angular will end up the elephants' graveyard like yui, dojo, extjs, javascriptmvc, cappuccino etc. The problem is of course that this will lead to a big divide between 1.x and 2.x that eventually will undermine the entire project like what happened in python and Volapück.

tracker1 12y ago

Angular was started 5 years ago.. Node was barely a proof of concept, and the JavaScript tooling at the time was centered around jQuery.. version 2 looks to be 1-2 years away, and the changes they make are really nice. I've chosen React + Flux for my current development, but in 2-3 years may well be looking to Angular 2. There's a lot to by critical about Angular... least of which is that it's own dependency system doesn't play well with others. The reliance of jquery is pretty heavy (since most wind up including the full version, and the light version is loaded). There's a lot of extra boilerplate that the new design will tear down. With node's tooling in current JS development, package management and modularization have become really easy to do. Testing has also gotten easier with this. Yes, browserify and traceur add some overhead to the mix, but it's still lighter than using the mega tooling stuff like jQuery. And don't get me wrong, I like jQuery a lot, and it's a really nice toolkit... but sometimes you only need a screwdriver, and an adjustable wrench for a job, not the whole huge craftsman toolbox. Another issue is simply that the current angular would be unlikely to have a story around server-side rendering, and I think that's especially important for any next generation tools.

Cthulhu_ 12y ago
> Angular was started 5 years ago.. quoted just to remind people that Angular as we know it is older than most other single-page app frameworks - even if it only became popular a year or two ago.
- boucher 12y ago
  Cappuccino has been around since 2008 :) And although at this point it has not much in common, Ember is the direct ancestor of a project from the same time.
- chubot 12y ago
  Yeah I heard of Angular a long time ago, but then everyone started using it in the last year. What happened? Did they change something that all of the sudden made it popular?
  - zghst 12y ago
    Data binding, directives, MVC front end + the adoption of Node is what made it popular IMHO.
  - tracker1 12y ago
    It takes a while for concepts to actually catch on. .Net and C# for example (iirc) were started in late 1999, with .Net 1.0 released in 2001, 1.1 in 2002, but it wasn't until 2003 that people really started using it. I think Java got some use pretty quickly, because of some of its' niches. Node was a proof of concept in 2009, and only in the past two years is seeing some broader use. I think it really comes down to more developers actually embracing JavaScript and the tools that the system offers. I think the JS renaissance is upon us, and that's what has people looking to Angular, Flux/React, Meteor and other new frameworks and tooling.

Nitramp 12y ago

Angular 1.0 was released on Jun 13, 2012, and was built on the API developed much longer ago (and was compatible with it). So this is the first massive API change in probable well over five years, with lots of technology changes happening around (most importantly ES6).

Bahamut 12y ago

It has been talked about for almost a year that Angular 2.0 is going to be bringing such breaking changes. 2.0 is going to require complete app rebuilds if you want to migrate to 2.0. The good news is that if your code is clean, a migration shouldn't be too painful. The danger comes when you have unmodular code that sticks everything on $rootScope (for example).

cmdkeen 12y ago
I was at ng-europe last week and couldn't help thinking that the way Angular 2.0 was being talked about was rather reminiscent of the chat around Python 3 back in the day.
pedalpete 12y ago
Except in a modular app, I should be able to upgrade module-x to Angular2 without having it break the entire app. With this change I have to re-write every module in my app. We've been looking at React at work over the last week, and were considering moving some of our angular directives to react. Now there is a larger case for building a complete app in Flux.

omarelamri 12y ago

I agree. There is virtually no way you can smoothly upgrade an Angular 1 project to this. You'd have to redo most of it from scratch. There are a lot of huge projects that are built on Angular 1 -- many enterprise products too. And this is a huge blow to maintenance. It might be a reason for a lot of people dropping Angular and going for something that makes more business sense. Maybe it's React's time to shine.

zghst 12y ago
The thing with React is that either Facebook's engineers are incredibly prescient or lucky. React very is really well designed and feels natural with ES6. It's so incredibly designed, even without the ES6 optimizations of 0.12.0 (coming soon) you can code today in ES6 (I use 6to5 with JSX transformer harmony just in case).
- rdtsc 12y ago
  Yeah I am betting on React. I am not a Web GUI developer and learned about Angular and now React just out of curiosity. Well I tried to learn Angular and got stuck at the termology soup of "directives", "digest cycles", "factories", "services", "dipendencies", "scopes". I understand all those English words but I still don't quite have an idea of how they are helping me. With React somehow the whole data flow and how components work and even JSX make a lot more sense.
- masterj 12y ago
  Facebook uses React in production (a lot) and has to migrate any code just like you would as a user of the library. Facebook is effectively always running React master. Facebook also has members on TC39 and is quite involved with evolving the language.

fetbaffe 12y ago

They have do it otherwise Angular will end up the elephants' graveyard like yui, dojo, extjs, javascriptmvc, cappuccino etc. The problem is of course that this will lead to a big divide between 1.x and 2.x that eventually will undermine the entire project like what happened in python and Volapück.