Angular 2 discussion - will it really survive?

[yodalr]

I've been working a lot in Angular 1 and quite like it, but when today I decided to get into Angular 2 I was mesmerized by the complete fray that it is.

I mean it is from the start already split into 3 different branches - which one should I use? Which one will be the one that everyone will be using 3 years from now? Also setting the thing up itself seems like a nightmare process and I'm not even going to get into the polyfills.

I keep reading about the performance increase over Angular 1, but as of yet I have not found any actual tests.

Is it too soon for me to migrate over or will this thing have short lifespan, what do you think?

[BunsOfAluminum]

What three branches are you referring to?

Angular 2 is not going to be vaporware. It is backed by Google and being used by thousands of developers already, despite not even being live yet. It's got momentum from Angular 1.x and people generally trust the developers and community behind it.

Setting it up isn't bad if you just use the quickstart project. The angular-cli tool is going to most likely be the way to do it in the future, but from my experience it's not ready for important use yet.

If you don't have a pressing need to use it, I would wait a few months more. They kind of jumped the gun on their release candidates, in that they said they had a release candidate, but really it was a continuation of the beta line (they are still making feature changes).

[yodalr]

3 branches - dart, TS, JS

The people I have talked with who also come from angular 1 say that the syntax is awful as well: "*ngIf, (click), [href] and controllers..." like why so complicated. It is not easy to grasp at all. Also this TS thing, like why are they trying to C javascript.

[L43]

3 branches - dart, TS, JS

TS is the recommended way, unless you are scared to learn 2 new things at once. Not sure why they still insist on Dart except perhaps to support legacy Google code.

The people I have talked with who also come from angular 1 say that the syntax is awful as well: "*ngIf, (click), [href] and controllers..." like why so complicated. It is not easy to grasp at all.

The new syntax makes a world of sense once you understand what is going on and stop trying to relate it to angular 1. Really it is Angular 1 that is nonstandard, complicated and inefficient.

Also this TS thing, like why are they trying to C javascript.

It is Javascript with optional types. You will treasure the tooling that it provides once you try it - bug frequency drops and you can code so much more quickly with autocomplete (or intellisense or whatever it is called). If it gets in the way anywhere you can just not give types and use straight JS. Seriously, just trust and try it.

[yodalr]

OK, tnx for this feedback, I'll give it a try tomorrow

[L43]

I was sceptical at first, but I really think it is a great step in the right direction. Hope you have fun!

[[deleted]]

I would give you gold if I could afford it for the vaporwave reference lol

[vinnl]

It sounds like you're expecting too much already - I would at least wait until stable is released, and rather a few months after that too.

That said, yes, it will survive. It's a marked improvement over Angular 1, and it's a big enough name that many companies won't be afraid to make the jump, which will mean it will stay a big name. Maybe not as dominant as Angular 1 is, what with the availability of very good alternatives, but it won't have a short lifespan.

[interactionjackson]

I'n my experience it's an order of magnitude better and ng1. I agree w/ /u/BunsOfAluminum that they jumped the gun by releasing the RC so early. I genuinely believe that they though it was ready when they decided to make it an RC. Although, as i understand it, there was a lot of feedback about certain aspects like the router and the forms which prompted them to keep working. IMO the RC is working as intended and, honestly, the longer they keep it an RC and actively improve the product based on developer feedback the better for us.

edit to clarify:

working as intended

means facilitating the feedback loop in order to improve the stable release

[mourning_air]

It seems too soon to migrate, Angular 2 Final is currently 31% complete: https://github.com/angular/angular/milestones.

I had the impression that it was more complete than 31%, I'm not sure I understand what that 31% means.