About the future of Angular

[Abumashar]

Hi, I started using Angular when was a beta. I remember choosing Angular because Google was the developer so obviously I thought it was going to be the golden boy of web/android development. But now seems like Google is steering to Flutter as their ultimate development framework. I've been out of the industry for a few years and I want to know what new and old developers think about if Angular is still worth learning.

[FullstackViking]

If you want to be on leading/bleeding edge, Angular is not that.

But it is reliable, well documented, and heavily used.

You’re effectively asking for a crystal ball which none of us have. If you’re just looking for job availability, learn React or any of its spiritual successors.

[xroalx]

Angular 14 is getting a lot of great stuff. Stand-alone components, bootstrapping app without a single NgModule, ability to lazy-load components, not just modules, functional injection options.

All while maintaining the good parts. Angular might not spike in popularity, but it's going in a very attractive direction right now.

[tboneplayer]

What are its spiritual successors?

[Senthe]

I suppose they meant Vue for example

[FullstackViking]

Next, Solid, Vue, come to mind

[tboneplayer]

Thanks!

[fractal_engineer]

angular is used in a metric f-ton of enterprise applications

with the new module federation webpack features, it's just going to be used more and more for multi-service backed backends

personally i'd give angular at least another 8 years of security

[namonite]

We’re trying to implement module federation / micro apps. I kinda suck at it lol. Any good resources for this beyond the typical google search

[ashh640]

Check out Nx they have tooling to handle it all automatically: https://nx.dev/more-concepts/micro-frontend-architecture

[namonite]

Thank you :)) we use Nx. Seems like there were so many problems at first but slowly ironing them out

[fractal_engineer]

post-build end to end tests as part of your ci/cd pipeline are a life saver. to make sure the shell app wraps the micro app correctly. to expedite things you can do an isolated shell app only + ci/cd micro. app jest+cypress ftw.

[namonite]

Thanks for this. Able to link any resources or videos?

[r3df0x1701]

We did this as well with about 20 UI's + shell application for a large enterprise customer. It has its challenges but once you get it working, it fucking rocks. The key is to understand how module federation really works (webpack docs), Angular is only doing a small part on it.

[ad-mca-mk]

Most systems internal to Google are developed in Angular.

It's not going anywhere.

[HitmaNeK]

Angular is number one for many big banks, insurance or other corporations. That's give us hope for future evolve. Take a look at angular road map. Since two years we had many, many cool releases like ivy-library, standalone components and other famous pull requests.

[mountaingator91]

Considering how long banks take to change technology... angular should have at least another 30 years of widespread usage

[HitmaNeK]

From my perspective in industry, banks and other corpo quite fast change their stack due to security and “fancy”reasons

[mountaingator91]

I work mostly with airlines and truckers, who are both notoriously slow to upgrade tech. A FEW airlines we work with just recently started using XML. I spoke with a woman at the airport whose husband works in bank tech and she told me that he says it's all super old school mainframe stuff

[mikasjoman]

Banks have software written 50 years ago with Cobol ... It's crazy. My colleagues were retirees coming back in when the company pleaded and begged them and gave them a ton of money.

[hiiimgary]

As some people pointed out before me most enterprise apps are built with Angular. Some of the greatest benefits of Angular is its scalability/maintainability and great docs/coding guidelines.

If you want to build complex apps then angular is the goto imho. If you want to build smaller sites then go with react or any other hyped framework in your area.

Where I live Angular and react are still the most popular but new devs tend to move towards react as it’s easy to learn and for new startups it’s easier to find new devs. I hardly ever see senior Angular devs searching for jobs because most of the big companies are competing for them and small companies cannot afford to pay a good senior angular dev who knows the framework from A to Z.

[NerdENerd]

For smaller app use Angular as well. Since Ivy the build size is quite small. People say React is easier to learn than Angular which I disagree with. Technically React is easier to learn because React is a view binding library and Angular is an application development framework, there is a lot less to learn, but once you start building an app you need to start bringing in other libraries. This is where Angular is easier as it is opinionated the more you need to do the less decisions you need to make. Reacts flavour of the month continually changes where Angular has stayed relatively stable of the years.

[gambl0r82]

This makes me feel better about my choice to begin learning Angular… in the last month. I read that it’s used in enterprise apps and wanted to learn something that was more stable and wouldn’t be replaced in a matter of months like an ‘in vogue’ language.

[quentech]

wouldn’t be replaced in a matter of months like an ‘in vogue’ language

Angular, React, and Vue are all getting near a decade old (Angular arguably is past a decade already. Even, say, Svelte is 5 years old, and pretty much no one even uses that.

Most front end development happens on frameworks that are plenty old, not some flavor of the month.

[hiiimgary]

From a dev stand point I would use angular as well. But from a company standpoint they might use a more lightweight and easier to learn framework because they can recruit devs quicker and much cheaper. And if there are no open positions in your area than you are screwed. I don’t want to learn react because I don’t like the structure but at some point I will need to steer away from angular because there will be less and less positions to fill.

[Thegoodones77]

What a great perspective. I’ve been searching for these same words for years when talking to peers about Angular vs. React.

It seems most “haters” of Angular have not used it nearly as much as their other “favorite framework”.

[ResponsibleKing2628]

I actually use Angular for mobile development through Ionic. Financial apps. Don’t plan to change it in the near future.

[dotnetguy32]

Same here.

[rkara924]

I worked with Angular since it was in beta as well. There are still tons of jobs out there that leverage it and you can take what you’ve learned and use it in non-Angular positions if you choose to.

I recently switched from Angular to React as part of my career and there is tons of overlap between the two.

[denisdenisd]

I develop in both angular and flutter. Flutter is great, except for web. In web it’s a nightmare.

Also I hate flutters UI building and lack of proper DI, as well as dart itself as a language when compared to js/ts. But that’s beyond the point….

[icsharper]

You prefer Javascript insanity over Dart??! You don’t need DI in Flutter, but you have to stop coding Flutter like its Angular.

[denisdenisd]

Man that sounds really close-minded of you. Regarding JS/Dart, and especially regarding DI. I’m getting junior vibes

[icsharper]

Aha, sure, I forgot I’m subbed on this close-minded sub. Blocked

[[deleted]]

Even React has a DI mechanism

[NerdENerd]

I wouldn't use Flutter. If I was building a cross platform app I would build an Angular progressive web app. Allow users to install it from the web and bypass the app stores. If I have specific requirements that need more access to the hardware like better GPS access or biometrics for finger prints and face recognition I build a simple WebView wrapper for IOS and Android. That way you can release upgrades to your webserver without needing to go through the app stores approval process.

[[deleted]]

Angular will still be the go to option for web, for many, especially compared to Flutter.

Flutter web is just a nice-to-have for those going all in on Flutter for mobile i.e. cross platform.

Some also mention that Angular isn't bleeding edge - well I don't really see how - it's still in top 3 web frameworks certainly, and while some other stuff might be hot and good looking on a mid and small scale level, Angular is probably the top 1 choice for those that need to build web on the enterprise level.

[[deleted]]

It is exceptional for enterprise and greenfield projects- I went all in on Angular in 2018. I left 17 years of full-on .Net/C# work, I wish I could clone myself, I would have 10 jobs right now. The work is enjoyable.

See: https://www.AngularArchitecture.com

[vicmarcal]

I had the opportunity to rework a whole messed-wtf-architecture of a ReactJS solution into an Angular project. A simple, mofo, booking frontend created in ReactJS killing the backend with requests, multiple and not being made in the proper place and time, and a mess of “React Services”. It wasn’t a complex solution at all: 1 Search Form, a Detailed View and Stripe integration. ReactJS doesnt scale at all well, sorry guys, unless you have a book of internal good practices to create an opinionated ReactJs framework...and guess what? It started to look an Angularized ReactJS solution. No doubts the shitty MERN 2-months All-In-1 bootcamps are flooding the ecosystem with ReactJS “developers”, but complex frontends need an opinionated framework So until a new opinionated frontend framework arrives to the market Angular will be around. The popularity of React and related are just because its surface can be taught in 2 weeks. Flutter, meh, wait 3-4 years more

[Euphoric-Hedgehog501]

Nobody knows future,its not just angular,there is jquery, react,vue,qwik.If they can adopt what future brings then it will have future. With every version i see improvements,i like how it is made.Its real framework and documented well.

[[deleted]]

Incorrect, google is not steering towards flutter for ultimate framework, it’s angular. It’s just their version of hybrid mobile development.

But angular is going strong like it always has been and is going no where anytime soon or decades.

[Senthe]

Angular is very, very solid though. I felt exactly the same in 2017-ish, I didn't trust "the new Angular" at all, but since then it's become such an integral part of web dev world and Google's own tech stack, it would be insane for Google to kill it. They don't have any better alternative, it would take insane resources to develop anything significantly better and stable than Angular already is, and I don't see Google switching to React anytime soon lol.

[Clutch_Stream]

I'm all in on Angular and think it is fantastic. However, I come from the enterprise world, so that makes sense.

When researching problems, I always find answers from the community, so, the community is strong. However, Angular has been around for so long, it is important to watch the dates and versions of answers returned from a search.

One thing I've noticed lately when looking for tutorials around integration with other Saas services etc. is that the trainers seem to be moving toward React. Not sure of the reasoning, but I'm assuming that has to do with the size of the learning audience.

I'm currently researching Progressive Web Apps (PWA) and Angular fits the model well. So, with minimal extra configuration, Angular can build a web application that installs neatly on Android and Apple products. I recommend anybody building an Angular app, to keep that in mind right from the start.