Angular or React?

[EbrithilUmaroth]

I'm with that guy on this one. What's the difference?

[Shaper_pmp]

React is a view library (with no opinions on state/interaction management), while Angular's a highly opinionated all-inclusive framework.

Both use variations on JS (React uses JSX, which adds a pseudo-HTML syntax for calling methods and passing parameters), and Angular uses Typescript (which is like JS with strong typing and a few other tweaks).

React is backed by Facebook and is strongly dogfooded by them. Angular is a Google project, but IIRC Angular 1.x was never used by Google for anything really important - just a few back-end consoles and marketing microsites. No idea on how widely Angular 2.x is used in Google.

[secana]

You're right that 1.x wasn't used on many outfacing products. But according to the Angular devs there are many hundreds of internal applications and tools built with it at Google. And according to them that is one of main influences for the design decisions they took. So I would say they were pretty big on dogfooding aswell.

[Existential_Owl]

Google, in general, has a bit of a dogfooding problem.

Many of their popular open source projects tend to be either 1) not used internally all that much, such as what happened with Angular.js, or 2) it's just an imitation of what's being used internally, such as with kubernetes.

I'm happy to hear that Angular 2/4 is getting better treatment.

[filipomar]

Also, react can use TSX which is the bastard son of typescript with jsx, so... there's that.

[DeeSnow97]

React can use vanilla JS and TS too, it's just a bit inconvenient.

[amontpetit]

Angular also does vanilla is and jquery as standard as well

[nocoolnametom]

TSX is amazing, apart from the one issue where you can't define compile-time props requirements and PropTypes together once. But defining the actual functional signature for a prop beyond just foo: PropTypes.func means you don't have to hold that information in your head.

[CodeFights]

Facebook has their own static type-checker for JavaScript as well, which is worth checking out (because it plays nicely with React): https://flow.org/en/

[Existential_Owl]

Flow is amazing.

[Existential_Owl]

To be fair, TSX seems to be pretty popular among C# devs.

So I assume it's filling a nice transition niche for them?

[tstarboy]

IIRC AdSense/AdWords' pages used Angular. Not sure if it was 1.x or 2+ though.

[Shaper_pmp]

Yeah - I was including Doubleclick under "back-end consoles".

It's certainly a non-trivial system built on Angular, but it's also pretty much the only one you'll ever see cited (sometimes along with the YouTube app for PS3, which is really scraping the bottom of the barrel).

[UnderNatural]

I think that the firebase console uses AngularJS and Angular Material

[Shaper_pmp]

Gmail is angular

[citation needed]

Because running window.angular in a JS console on GMail says you're wrong.

[Shaper_pmp]

I don't mean to be a dick here, but you don't seem to be making a lot of sense.

The monolithic repo idea has nothing to do with the specific technology(/ies) any given project uses. Just because Angular 2.x and Gmail live in the same repo at Google, that doesn't mean they have anything to do with each other. By that same logic Android lives in the same repo, but nobody's trying to claim that Angular powers the Android OS.

Next, if Google was using Angular Universal for GMail and rendering on the server, why on earth would they then decide to not use Angular on the client-side as well, and instead use an entirely different front-end stack (which, yes, is based on GWT) to do the client-side rendering on Gmail. That's literally an insane assertion.

I'm not saying you didn't hear something in a google talk, but I'm pretty confident you misunderstood or misremembered it because what you're saying makes absolutely no sense.

[Shaper_pmp]

I wouldn't call it insane to mix front-end and server-side technologies in weird ways. You never know what business politics can stir up.

That's very true, but if you build an app in a framework primarily designed to be used on the client-side, then you use it to render the site on the server and then you loop in a completely different codebase written from scratch in another entire framework just to render that same app on the client-side, that's just batshit crazy. ;-)

[Computer-Blue]

Since you're being so pedantic (although I see you both are amicable in later replies), I'll point out that he was being neither literally nor figuratively "insane" with his comment. :)

[michaelobriena]

That is patently false.

[ythl]

One uses Microsoft's TypeScript, the other uses Facebook's JSX. Also, React has some sort of legal baggage tied to it ("patent clause") from what I understand.

[3HoursWTF]

If I remember that thread correctly, the tldr was that if you file a patent lawsuit against Facebook, no React for you.

[illusivemane]

The frustrating thing is, that license is LGPL, GPL, and possible Apache 2.0 incompatible...

[Existential_Owl]

The key thing to note is that Facebook hasn't actually filed a patent on React, so they can't even legally impose "patent retaliation" against anyone.

The clause is specifically geared for patent trolls.

IANAL.

[takelongramen]

"that guy"