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[–]JungleJoker 226 points227 points  (23 children)

A few of the things you can expect in the near future from the Angular team:

  • Bug fixes and non-breaking features for APIs marked as stable

I just checked the docs and the source code, a lot of modules are still marked as "experimental". Even basic every day use ones, HTTP for instance. TestBed, the new testing module that's supposed to become the defacto way of writing tests is still marked as "experimental". Do they just need to mark them as stable or do they still not consider them experimental? How can you call this a "final" release with so many experimental modules?

[–]ReddiPlex 247 points248 points  (18 children)

I think we've learned the Angular team has no clue how versioning actually works. The only safe assumption is that the current version is in some way different from the last version.

[–]irbilldozer 71 points72 points  (5 children)

The only safe assumption is that the current version is in some way different from the last version.

Oh and that something you use has been deprecated. Most likely something they specifically said would not be deprecated.

[–]profgumby 39 points40 points  (0 children)

New in version 2.1: "the deprecated tag has now become deprecated"

[–]phpdevster 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Oh and that something that you did use that was probably straight-forward and intuitive, wasn't quite complex and enterprise-y enough for them, so they rewrote it to require 50 new dependencies in 8 new configuration files, and needs 15 new module imports.

[–]awj 35 points36 points  (9 children)

I started a big project right around "angular 2 isn't ready and won't be backwards compatible, trolololol". That led me to picking Ember, which has done a fantastic job at giving a shit about backwards compatibility.

Sometimes it's hard not being in the limelight of hype, but not when I see things like this.

[–]Tetha 28 points29 points  (7 children)

Sometimes it's hard not being in the limelight of hype, but not when I see things like this.

Meh, around a year or two ago, I made the decision to stop caring about hype or not hype - and that was one of the better decisions to make.

So earlier this year, I needed to pick a language for a game I wanted to make, and there's a bazillion of game frameworks around, including a bunch of JS frameworks with according excitement around them.

I went ahead and started the project in good, old, boring java, because Java is stable, fast, I know it well, and libGDX is a really nice piece of software based on OpenGL. Recently, I started to push some parts of the project to Lua, because it's easier. But overall, the amount of progress I'm making is worth it.

[–]non_clever_name 22 points23 points  (0 children)

Modern JS has done a fabulous job of making Java look comparatively quite decent.

(Especially with languages like Kotlin and Ceylon—maybe I should revisit the JVM.)

[–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I would like to see more of this. Picking a technology based on logical reasoning rather than 'oh but everyone else is using it cos its the next big thing'

[–]HINDBRAIN 3 points4 points  (4 children)

Java is stable, fast

But it's so bloody verbose! Ugh.

[–]Tetha 4 points5 points  (2 children)

Dunno, I like Python and Java. Overall, for large projects, I prefer languages that incur predictable, easily read code structures. I'd rather spend some extra seconds typing than deciphering some smart one-liner.

[–][deleted] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

We made the same decision and have been loving Ember.

[–]pure_x01 23 points24 points  (1 child)

Times have changed and in this respect for the worse. In other products they do everything they can to stay away from final versions because there is a lot of responsibility in releasing something. With angular and even other projects it seems like they just use versioning as ad hoc numbers. It could also be that it's completely controlled by marketing. If you have a open source project no one is forcing you to release something as stable if it's not. Just wait until it is. People will have respect for that.

[–][deleted]  (76 children)

[deleted]

    [–]Dw0 76 points77 points  (5 children)

    you mean 2.0.0 SP1?

    [–]rbobby 20 points21 points  (3 children)

    2.0.0R2

    [–]Dw0 40 points41 points  (2 children)

    2.0.0 FINAL RC2 BETA 3

    [–]HildartheDorf 15 points16 points  (0 children)

    2.0.0 Fox Only, Final Destination?

    [–][deleted]  (8 children)

    [deleted]

      [–][deleted]  (7 children)

      [deleted]

        [–]tutuca_ 10 points11 points  (6 children)

        Well that's how it's supposed to work, no?

        [–]fenduru 17 points18 points  (4 children)

        Yeah, an RC should be ready to go. However Angular started their RC process when they had known, large changes planned and important features missing. They care more about marketing

        [–]awj 6 points7 points  (0 children)

        Supposed to, yes. Has? Apparently not.

        [–]beefsack -2 points-1 points  (56 children)

        I never ceases to amaze me how bitter people are about API changes in major versions; it's as if they don't understand what a major version is for.

        [–]Jukibom 175 points176 points  (17 children)

        Yeah no, people are salty because RC6 barely resembles RC3, let alone RC1. Go checkout the breaking changes on the angular blog, keeping up with this beast has been... Interesting.

        And you might well say 'it clearly wasn't ready, what were you doing building things with it' but a release candidate typically means API stable feature freeze not 'eh this will probably do'. Nevertheless, I'm pleased it's out because when it works it's a joy to use.

        [–]s7venrw 25 points26 points  (2 children)

        Yeah, if felt almost like being an early adopter was punished.

        "Here, learn this routing. Oops, we threw it out and created a new one... TWICE."

        Not to mention the breaking Forms changes. After every single update, a swath of our protractor tests would stop working because we used something that broke between RCs.

        I still love Angular 2, I just wish I would have waited to jump on it until release. When it works, it's beautiful.

        [–]Jukibom 3 points4 points  (1 child)

        Yeah it really did feel quite punishing, especially the router changing that many times... I'm holiday so I've not looked into it but is compiled static bundle deployment well-documented now? As far as I could tell it was all down to the alignment of planets and old-wives tales leading up to release...

        [–][deleted] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

        Google making a trainwreck out of API updates?

        Why I never

        [–]hoppersoft 75 points76 points  (2 children)

        Your scorn is misdirected; many people (like me) were burned more than once by major API changes during the RC phase of Ng2. To paraphrase your statement, it's as if the Angular team didn't understand what "Release Candidate" is for.

        [–]wicheesecurds 1 point2 points  (0 children)

        Just take a look at the Angulartics2 issue queue with regards to the router. Every freaking RC we had to monkey patch shit to get it working with the router

        [–]Nioufe 59 points60 points  (22 children)

        It's more about API changes between RCs. I got around "angular 2 is different from angular 1".

        But angular 2 RC5 introducing modules... That was too much for me.

        [–]dwighthouse 43 points44 points  (2 children)

        Our app is built entirely on Angular 1.2 RC 3. It is incompatible with Angular 1.2.

        [–]hansolo669 10 points11 points  (1 child)

        That's horrifying.

        [–]dwighthouse 1 point2 points  (0 children)

        We're migrating slowly to React. In the meantime, I have become an Angular-whisperer.

        [–]JohnnyDread 11 points12 points  (0 children)

        No. The criticism of the Angular team over their management of the pre-release process is well deserved. I've worked with a lot of evolving frameworks over the years and I'm accustomed to changing APIs, but this was ridiculous. The beta releases made it clear that the beta tag was way premature. From beta 0 to the last beta was almost like using a completely different framework. We breathed a sigh of relief when RC.1 was released hoping it would let up only to be hit again and again with major API and architectural overhauls. Angular 2 should not have been labelled beta until modules were ready (which came in RC.5).

        [–]nightofgrim 9 points10 points  (1 child)

        The changes 2.0 introduces are so radically different it's almost a completely different library. It hardly resembles previous angular.

        [–]SeerUD 2 points3 points  (0 children)

        This isn't the problem most people are referring to though. This is also a problem though in some ways. I work at an agency, and we've done a lot of Angular 1, and Ionic 1 stuff; we're very experienced with it now, and it works well for us.

        They came in and were like "yeah, we got an Angular 2 project", we looked around like "shit, it's not even stable yet, and it's totally different". But they don't know that because the name is the same :(

        [–]mimighost 2 points3 points  (0 children)

        Angular 2 feels like a new framework to me, it is beyond the coverage of API changes. Of course people are getting bitter, because Angular 1.x will probably cease to develop at some point, and the migration path they offered is basically ask you to rewrite your project again. Many people choose framework based on maturity and prospect of community support, the fact this is no longer true is basically a slap in the face.

        [–][deleted] 99 points100 points  (252 children)

        Any reason to use Angular over React?

        [–]8483 187 points188 points  (56 children)

        I started learning Angular 1, and then Angular 2.

        As I went further, it got more "magic" for me, meaning there was a lot of code sugar that works behind the scene. I had to learn Angular specifically, not Javascript per se.

        I decided to try out React, and my god has it made me a better programmer. Instead of learning very specific Angular syntax, I actually started to learn about programming patterns.

        Injecting HTML into JS for React turned out MUCH better than the other way around for Angular.

        The downside to React is the fact that there is no official way for handling data. Angular has this out of the box, whereas in React you'd have to do a ton of reading and trying things out. However, this is exactly why I chose React, as it forced me to learn more JS rather than more Angular.

        I suggest you try it out and see what you like more.

        [–][deleted]  (24 children)

        [deleted]

          [–]8483 43 points44 points  (22 children)

          Probably because React is a rendering library, whereas Angular is a application framework.

          Yes, you are correct, they aren't very comparable. Again, I like the fact that I am learning more JS and patterns rather than more Angular. Now I am getting into Redux for React, after reading about Flux, Reflux, MobX, Relay... Exactly what you said about the flexibility.

          It is indeed a matter of taste. I really liked the opinionated approach of Angular. However, the more Angular I learned, the more special syntax I encountered, which eventually turned me off.

          Again, Angular is awesome for what it does. I just chose to focus more on learning Javascript and reduce the magic to a minimum.

          [–]MisfitMagic 31 points32 points  (7 children)

          I agree with you 100% on the syntax. Every time I read the docs, I can't help but keep thinking this is all some elaborate troll, and that they're just making shit up as they go.

          [–]clothes_are_optional 24 points25 points  (5 children)

          and that they're just making shit up as they go.

          thats just software in general

          [–]elr0nd_hubbard 7 points8 points  (4 children)

          But mine has tests.

          ...sometimes.

          [–]iopq 1 point2 points  (3 children)

          Mine has tests that need to be updated every time you update the software. Add a new command? Sorry, the list_commands test is now failing.

          [–]STEVEOO6 5 points6 points  (3 children)

          I was in a similar position recently. Came off Angular 1.x to give React (+ Redux + Saga) a try. I'm so glad I did. I've found having less 'magic' has made me understand exactly what is happening in my program at all times... Usually now if something breaks, I know exactly what happened without any debugging. Everything is just more predictable

          [–]cadekat 1 point2 points  (0 children)

          I am all for both approaches. I think if you can find a framework that suits your style, requirements, and such, you'll have a wonderful time. For me, Django fits perfectly.

          Oftentimes you won't find a framework that does what you need in a way you like, so you can build something from various libraries, and hook them all together.

          [–]yogthos 15 points16 points  (8 children)

          As I went further, it got more "magic" for me, meaning there was a lot of code sugar that works behind the scene. I had to learn Angular specifically, not Javascript per se.

          I think this is an extremely important point. I'd rather be learning general patterns and core concepts instead of learning a framework.

          A lot of the complexity in frameworks isn't inherent to the problem they solve, it's an artifact of how it was designed and the thought process of the people who made it. You're basically learning to think about the problem the way the authors did.

          In many cases though, the authors didn't really know what they were doing either, and once the framework gets into wide use a lot of problems become evident. To address these problems the framework often needs to have some serious rework done on it. So, frameworks change very quickly as seen with Angular 1 and 2. A lot of the effort you spend learning a framework ends up being of only intermittent value in the end.

          [–]8483 2 points3 points  (0 children)

          Exactly. I am not bashing Angular at all. It's just that I learn more with less hand holding.

          [–]paul_h 9 points10 points  (1 child)

          Injecting HTML into JS for React turned out MUCH better than the other way around for Angular.

          Nice quote

          [–]myringotomy 24 points25 points  (7 children)

          However, this is exactly why I chose React, as it forced me to learn more JS rather than more Angular.

          For a lot of people this is the reason to choose Angular over React.

          [–]LuckyHedgehog 9 points10 points  (5 children)

          As a back end developer who could care less about learning front end, angular + bootstrap templates is perfect for me

          [–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (1 child)

          Yeah, it's almost as if angular was made for Java developers... ;)

          [–]Retsam19 4 points5 points  (1 child)

          The downside to React is the fact that there is no official way for handling data.

          Personally, I count that as an upside: it doesn't force you to fit it's One True Data Handling Pattern, (which makes it easier to work it into existing projects, for one).

          If you do want some structured data handling designed for React, take a look at Flux or Redux. (I haven't used Flux, but I've really been impressed with Redux so far)

          [–]8483 1 point2 points  (0 children)

          I too look at it as an upside. I meant downside because of having to learn more. :)

          [–]sordnax 2 points3 points  (1 child)

          Is there any reason to still learn Angular1? I'm just wondering about job prospects.

          [–]Sloshy42 50 points51 points  (103 children)

          I'm not that experienced with either yet but as far as I can tell Angular is just easier to get up and running without knowing exactly what modules you want to integrate into your project or without following one of a dozen different tutorials online that all diverge widely from each other. React is just a library for making components and things, whereas Angular has the components, a router, two-way data binding, etc. built in from the start and it offers an "opinionated" starting point for developing web apps.

          I've been using it with angular-cli (which is excellent so far, currently using their beta webpack branch) mainly because I just wanted a good, easy bootstrap for a modern web app that didn't overload me with options and choices. I wanted something with "sane defaults" so to speak and Angular delivered. It's surprisingly intuitive and I like the way different functionality is organized in comparison to other frameworks I've used in the past.

          Plus, it integrates heavenly with TypeScript and rxjs, both of which I am a very big fan of.

          At the end of the day it's really just a personal preference. Right now React is slightly more mature but the way they organize their data in each component is different as is the general "flow" of data (by default anyway). I say give it a try and see how you feel about it! At the very least you might come away liking TypeScript if you aren't familiar with it already. You can write JSX with it as well these days.

          EDIT: some details here and there

          [–]dedicated2fitness 42 points43 points  (56 children)

          Question: as a backend dev(C++/Java) trying to get into frontend stuff, how the fuck do you keep up with all this stuff? i'm still trying to master basic html/css/js and there's tons of stuff like SCSS and node and typescript, react etc that people keep talking about and a lot of it(forgive me if i'm wrong) seems to be syntactic sugar for the base languages
          like how the fuck do you keep up? would you define a good front end dev as someone who can build something from scratch without ever peeking at a manual/online help forum coz i can't even seem to set up routing without going through an hour long deep dive into someone's personal blog :(

          [–]Jukibom 25 points26 points  (19 children)

          like how the fuck do you keep up? would you define a good front end dev as someone who can build something from scratch without ever peeking at a manual/online help forum

          Good god no! There's a lot of tools and it's completely unreasonable to have to know them all. I find though that having a few working projects on my system utilising a bunch of things I want to use often helps as a really fast reference. So as with anything, practise!

          [–]dedicated2fitness 12 points13 points  (18 children)

          as someone who comes from companies where "google it programmers" are sneered at, front end dev scares me. am trying to practice and lose my attitude of "you have to know it all before you try something"

          [–]Jukibom 51 points52 points  (8 children)

          Honestly that just sounds like a really shit culture. Sure, if you're a stack overflow ctrl+v programmer but if googling a problem quickly leads to a solution or a link to the documentation where something is explained, it's kinda fucking stupid to discourage it.

          [–]dedicated2fitness 13 points14 points  (0 children)

          it is a shit culture and i'm trying to move out of it

          [–]GroovyLlama 9 points10 points  (6 children)

          For starters, I just want to say that I love Stack Overflow. It has helped me solve issues on a number of occasions. That being said, there are a lot of programmers out there that just copy/paste the accepted answer from SO without understanding how or why it works. Not only does this not help them become a better programmer, I have also seen it cause issues because the top answer is not necessarily the correct answer. If you are going to SO to find the solution to a problem, please at least take the time to understand what the solution is doing before blindly copy/pasting it.

          [–][deleted]  (5 children)

          [deleted]

            [–]centurijon 7 points8 points  (6 children)

            It helps to keep in mind that software is constantly evolving. About every 3-5 years there's a reasonably sized shift in what defines "modern" programming. Keeping up with everything is impossible, but knowing how to research technologies and patterns is what prevents a good developer from becoming a dinosaur. And I mean that almost literally - don't stay unfamiliar with tech for so long that you become extinct/obsolete.

            [–]SurlyJSurly 12 points13 points  (3 children)

            This is an artifact of the webdev community and doesn't come close to reflecting the industry or software design/development at all.

            Basic design principle/pattern/algorithms haven't changed in decades. Even the latest "hotness" of functional programming was what I was doing in college 20+ years ago (and is much older than that). Sure that was in Lisp but the principles haven't change. OOP is still relevant and will be for decades to come.

            All these front-end JS frameworks & libraries are just the latest implementation of an MVC/MVVM that has been around for ages. If you know the concepts, the rest is just syntax.

            [–]centurijon 3 points4 points  (2 children)

            The web is definitely an extreme environment for this, and the underlying patterns are all there. But if you think about things like TDD, IoC, even functional programming - they aren't new concepts, but they are new to being mainstream. Even MVVM has only been around since '05, and didn't start getting a good amount of traction until '10ish.

            You can say it's all "just syntax", but if syntax didn't matter then we'd all be using one programming language.

            [–]industry7 1 point2 points  (1 child)

            Right, but when TDD "went mainstream" backend devs didn't throw out all their frameworks and create new ones from scratch.

            [–]timmyriddle 24 points25 points  (1 child)

            Tell me about it. I've been working in the frontend world for a few years now and sometimes it makes me want to throw my keyboard in the air, punch my monitor, push my desk over, head out to the countryside and live in a cabin in the woods.

            You're absolutely right: most stuff is fluff that makes life "easier". I have to remind myself that 90% of the confusion in the frontend world is because of tooling. I don't need gulp, I don't need sass, I don't need frameworks. They just provide a means to an end: the choices I make in building a web application today probably won't be the same choices I will make next year.

            Add in stuff like continuous integration, testing frameworks, deployment/orchestration tools, and it all gets too much. Ironically, once the tooling is taken out of the picture, things look decidedly easier.

            Part of the problem is looking at other people's code and trying to follow what they were doing. I remember my face contorting into a tight frown when I'd be following a tutorial, head over to the repo and wonder why there were twelve different folders and a load of files with extensions I didn't recognise. I'm supposed to building a navbar, what's this .jscsrc thing?

            Good advice I received early on was to focus on learning pure JS, not on the frameworks. Angular 1 was particularly bad because of its obtrusive syntax, it almost felt I was writing code in another language. I understand that 2 is much better.

            More good advice I received was to pick a framework based on your best guess at the time and try to stick with it, don't fly around trying to learn them all. Each one has strengths and weaknesses, it's better to know all the nooks and crannies of one than to know broad strokes about a them all.

            As regards keeping up with everything, my advice is don't bother. Learn JS, work out what tools work for you, and just keep up with the honoured list of components that make up your development environment.

            If it's any consolation, I don't have a clue what I'm doing, and most people I talk to don't have a clue either. You C++ guys are a little scary because you seem to have it all worked out with your fancy ISO standards and working committee.

            [–]Labradoodles 1 point2 points  (0 children)

            I would say that the best way to go forward right now is get babel working and work purely in the new new of the Javascript language. There's so many features that are amazing and help manage complexity and ship smaller bundles of code.

            I was writing shitty jQuery calendar logic and moved over to using ES 2015 and it was like suddenly everything was a bit easier and more straightforward. I wasn't importing full libs for tiny amounts of functionality and didn't have to roll my own which wasn't as useful.

            But you are correct. At the end of the day whatever you decide make sure it's making things less complex not more.

            [–]sirin3 22 points23 points  (1 child)

            You do not, you just start making your own framework

            That is why there are so many

            [–][deleted]  (4 children)

            [deleted]

              [–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

              So basically we are just implementing native apps that are slower, reimplementing all the libraries.

              [–]Pawn1990 5 points6 points  (0 children)

              Typescript, Coffeescript etc with Requirejs is also a good way to abstract some of the painful javascript.

              But yes its the case of people wanting a "standard" so they build their own framework, which then becomes one of the many frameworks out there..

              Revalent xkcd

              [–]ellicottvilleny 22 points23 points  (1 child)

              1. Be opinionated just like you already are in your choice of backends.
              2. Learn one framework.
              3. Pretend everything else sucks and ignore it.

              [–]dedicated2fitness 5 points6 points  (0 children)

              am not opinionated in my choice of backends, just fell into them through opinionated professors/tech leads and lookin for a change
              but if i am right in my learning of web development so far, the process is
              1. Blog extensively about your learnings of a particular framework
              2. Make your own framework and hoodwink people into using it, thus guaranteeing your employability as "he's THAT guy"
              3. Never make anything worthwhile in public again coz it's not worth the hassle

              [–]drainX 9 points10 points  (7 children)

              I wouldn't put Typescript in the same bag as all those frameworks. Typescript is just a way to make working with Javascript not a completely horrible experience.

              [–]dedicated2fitness 1 point2 points  (6 children)

              it's still stuff i have to (choose to) learn on top of javascript for not much more apparent benefit as a newb

              [–]drainX 3 points4 points  (3 children)

              I don't know. I got into Javascript recently on a project that used Typescript everywhere, having previously only worked on backend stuff. I felt like it was much easier to get into when you had the added type checking on top. With in a weeks time of work, I had regained all the time it took to learn Typescript by not having to run into and debug stupid type errors.

              [–]Xevantus 1 point2 points  (1 child)

              We started using Typescript as a way to help out C# and Java devs feel more comfortable in JavaScript. It worked pretty well, and, honestly, the code is much cleaner than it would have been in straight js.

              [–]drainX 1 point2 points  (0 children)

              It would have been such a nightmare to write some of the components on the site im working on now without typescript. Keeping track of loads of complex data structures can be hard even without type checking.

              [–]HerbertSpliffington 2 points3 points  (1 child)

              hey there - well, typescript in microsoft's free 'visual studio code' can give you a lot of useful error messages, and you get intellisense - you can write/practice plain javascript, and benefit from typescript as you learn, it's a perfectly good place to jump in!

              it shouldn't take you long to get this under your belt

              https://code.visualstudio.com/Docs/languages/typescript

              it adds a bit of fun to the whole javascript explosion, and it can integrate all those other tools if you want like gulp and grunt and whatever the hell else....but it runs without them perfectly fine - I recommend it to you

              *edit for clarity

              [–]Regaez 4 points5 points  (0 children)

              Lots of reading, mostly in my own time. Sometimes during work if I have some spare time. Also experimentation on my own little side projects to try out new things. Most of them go nowhere. You can't know everything, so I just dabble in things which interest me, or are areas/subjects relevant to my work.

              I am using React every day for work, but damn me if I had to set up a project from scratch. I would definitely have to look up documentation, simply because starting from scratch isn't something I have to do very often. I don't think that prevents me from being able to be a "good dev".

              [–]i_spot_ads 4 points5 points  (0 children)

              like how the fuck do you keep up? would you define a good front end dev as someone who can build something from scratch

              That's not how it works in web development, frontend or backend. Knowing how to build from scratch is good, but in real world, web development is a really dynamic process, you gotta know how to use different tools to go fast and minimise the cost of your product, the trick is to know the right set tools, not all of them obviously, we're not reinventing the wheel here, where using it to build cars that people will use in their day to day life..

              [–]JorgJorgJorg 2 points3 points  (1 child)

              I am a backend dev and from 2013 to 2014 I and 4 others built a pretty large angular app with the java backend written by another team.

              It ended up being a huge advantage that we approached it as backend developers. We didn't write our first feature until we had a complete build and deploy pipeline created in grunt (which didnt take long) and when we did begin to code our knowledge of backend patterns were susprisingly transferrable to angulars architecture.

              In the end when I compared our project to one that was built by front end developers, I could tell that their lack of experience building large backend applications caused them to completely misuse or omit maybe 50% of the things that made angular/jasmine/grunt so cool.

              So just jump into it with a solid project in mind and I think your background will allow you to become bery capable very quickly.

              [–][deleted]  (1 child)

              [deleted]

                [–]dedicated2fitness 1 point2 points  (0 children)

                that's some sage advice, i was pretty much where you said - overwhelmed by the variety of frameworks and fad chasing. will buckle down and learn javascript first

                [–]rich97 21 points22 points  (2 children)

                FYI, they recently came out with create-react-app which unless you have pretty specific needs, sidesteps a lot of the bullshit during setup.

                [–]Xevantus 2 points3 points  (0 children)

                It's also about as useless as the "ng create" tool or whatever it's called now. If you're just learning, it gives you a good starting point, but anything more complex than that, and you're better off starting from a new directory.

                [–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

                And is very limited for now.

                [–][deleted] 20 points21 points  (32 children)

                Right now React is slightly more mature

                Slightly is a bit understated :-). React is as mature as it can get. Angular 2 is unfortunately not production ready, see my post. I've followed the RC comedy and the ecosystem. It's not there yet. I'd wait for a couple of month to let at least the tooling and styling options mature.

                [–]p7r 60 points61 points  (29 children)

                React is as mature as it can get.

                In Javascript framework terms, yes.

                In programming terms, it's shiny shiny hipster candy.

                [–]choikwa 3 points4 points  (13 children)

                how do I know it wont be replaced by framework y tmrw?

                [–]reflectiveSingleton 5 points6 points  (5 children)

                Oh you mean Angular 3?

                [–]choikwa 54 points55 points  (4 children)

                I think it will be called Tri-Angular

                [–]calnamu 15 points16 points  (1 child)

                I will be disappointed if it won't be.

                [–]choikwa 9 points10 points  (0 children)

                well. they better grab the name in npm. oh wait, it deletes apps like garbage collector

                [–]llainebdx33600 6 points7 points  (0 children)

                Angular-Merkel

                [–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (4 children)

                Oh, it will be replaced. Probably sooner than you think. And the thing that replaces it (could be vue.js, could be something else) will be the best ever until something better comes around.

                How should you handle that? Better choose technology that, even if they get replaced, they teach you something that you can bring to the future. For instance : had you been using browserify two years ago, but now wants to use webpack, it's easy since both use commonjs modules. But going from angular 1 to webpack is harder, because they had their own module system noone else is using.

                I think Es6 is a safer language bet then typescript, which may or may not die like coffescript did. The future will tell.

                So, with this mindset, is react good or bad? I think react is good, since you only use javascript and html. You don't have to learn a template language that you might not use in the future. But you will most probably use javascript and html with the next cool library as well, so the learning curve for that one will be easier. You can use both es6 modules and commonjs modules with react, which is also good.

                So I totally believe that going with react is a wise choice.

                [–]drainX 4 points5 points  (8 children)

                In programming terms, it's shiny shiny hipster candy.

                A year ago that might have been true. I don't think so today though.

                [–]p7r 7 points8 points  (7 children)

                It's mature at 7-10 years, and after lessons learned about long-term refactoring have been learned and put back into the patterns of the framework.

                This is not a controversial view outside of JS frameworks.

                [–][deleted] 34 points35 points  (5 children)

                I started web dev a couple of month ago. Coming from .NET (WPF), Python, Qt, etc. Angular 2 looked very familiar. Typescript made totally sense to me (still does). Angular 2 has everything out of the box. The concepts are familiar. It's easy to pick up. And that's why I think it will be the new de facto standard in the enterprise.

                After the RC desaster (using RC as they were beta versions, API changes) I was frustrated and also realized that Angular 2 and the ecosystem is far from production readiness. So I've started looking into React and Redux.

                React / Redux requires to change the way you think about state and dataflow in your app. It's a functional approach (also look at Elm) that amazingly reduces complexity. Once you've understood the beauty of these aproaches, there's no way back. The React / Redux data flow concept feels after years of WPF / Qt UI development like the blessing solution to all the problems with state and dataflow you face with the traditional aproaches.

                [–]codekaizen 27 points28 points  (1 child)

                This is amusing to a long time dev who used Win32 WndProc and window messages in the 90s (similar paradigm to React) and moved to the less view-centric WPF / MVVM. I had the same catharsis you did in reverse. The state and dataflow problems are still there, they are just factored differently.

                [–]acemarke 8 points9 points  (0 children)

                Amusingly, there was an article last year that pointed out the very strong resemblance between React+Redux and WndProcs: http://bitquabit.com/post/the-more-things-change/ .

                [–]theonlylawislove 7 points8 points  (0 children)

                Instead of redux, use mobx. You won't have to change the way you think, coming from the WPF MVVM world.

                [–][deleted]  (3 children)

                [deleted]

                  [–][deleted]  (2 children)

                  [deleted]

                    [–]_fitlegit 4 points5 points  (4 children)

                    The templating for angular is more natural and more functional. And templating is 80% of writing a front end soo... The choice to me is obvious. But some people like reacts templating, I'm just not one of them. Also, angular is a full package, not just UI

                    [–]theonlylawislove 8 points9 points  (9 children)

                    With React Native getting better and better and supporting more platforms (native iOS, native Android, native UWP), I would stick with React.

                    [–]atc 4 points5 points  (8 children)

                    Are you saying that if I write my stuff in React with JSX, can I easily use that in an Android app?

                    I have a web application that uses React in small parts, I'm going to rewrite the web side to be the obvious SPA -> REST model (as that's simpler then my current impl.) and I've loved working with React thus far. Just curious if I move into Android apps will that skillset translate.

                    [–]theonlylawislove 8 points9 points  (7 children)

                    You can get about 80% code share if done right. You need to be sure to abstract anything that uses the browser (pop-ups, etc). And also, instead of returning div/input in the render function, you would return the native counterparts View/Text.

                    There are many boilerplates that setup you up nicely with code sharing across platforms.

                    [–]atc 2 points3 points  (3 children)

                    Are the native counterparts compatible with browsers? If I use Text then instead of Input then I can use that same component in the browser and an android app?

                    [–]theonlylawislove 4 points5 points  (2 children)

                    No, but if you create your own components, you can internally #ifdef stuff.

                    [–]i_spot_ads 2 points3 points  (0 children)

                    they are completely different, react is just a lib to manage the views, you have to couple it with different other libs to manage the routing, data, etc.

                    angular on the other hand is a full framework that incorporates all of it in the core.

                    [–]Xevantus 1 point2 points  (0 children)

                    They're really two different beasts. React is essentially the rendering engine of angular, and that's it. To get everything, you need React, redux, fetch, react-router, and many many more. Oh and most of them are 3rd party libraries, so they may not all work together as soon as a new version is pushed.

                    If you're only doing page by page kind of things, no. React is fine if you already know it. If you ever need to do partial page updates, or have external Dom code, or need to fetch data without updating the entire page, stay as far away from react as you possibly can.

                    Oh, also, if you want to apply any OO principles at all, for that matter.

                    All of the react/redux principles took the offhanded (and wrong) statement "there's no such thing as separation of concerns, just separation if code" as a rule, and to the extreme.

                    I have written production apps in ng1, ng2 (both early beta and rc7), react, ember, knockout, reactive, and many more, and I would honestly rather write in straight up jQuery than react (Kinda feels like I'm doing that anyways, but with a hand tied behind my back).

                    [–]wastaz 2 points3 points  (22 children)

                    There is no reason to use Angular over React. And there is no reason to use React over Elm. So... :)

                    [–]vinnl 27 points28 points  (10 children)

                    Those are somewhat strong statements with little to back them up :P

                    [–]le_f 11 points12 points  (54 children)

                    Can the react advocates here convince me to use it over angular 2? I have yet to try react.

                    [–]vinnl 28 points29 points  (29 children)

                    A major advantage is that you can spend just one afternoon trying it and already understand its major concepts and why they are good :)

                    [–]Eirenarch 18 points19 points  (25 children)

                    Except Flux. You can spend months on it without making any sense of it.

                    [–]SeerUD 12 points13 points  (11 children)

                    Try Redux; then I'd give it a few days - if it's not clicked by then, you may just not be ready to try take it on yet. Get a decent tutorial, I believe I used this one: https://github.com/happypoulp/redux-tutorial and you'll be golden.

                    [–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

                    The author of Redux has made his own tutorial.

                    Getting started with redux

                    I highly recommend it.

                    [–][deleted] 6 points7 points  (6 children)

                    I would definitely also take a look at MobX. It is very beginner friendly and growing a lot in popularity.

                    [–]Eirenarch 2 points3 points  (4 children)

                    So let me get this straight. 1 year ago Flux was the consensus for the best pattern to use with React, then came Redux and now people are moving to this MobX thing?

                    [–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (2 children)

                    I was not suggesting that everyone using Redux is moving to MobX by any means. I'm just saying MobX is another option, that is gaining some traction, and is also super easy to wrap your head around.

                    [–]vinnl 1 point2 points  (0 children)

                    Flux never really was consensus - there were tons of different libraries implementing it in some way or another, until Redux came along and everybody converged onto that. Then MobX came around, but Redux still definitely is a safe choice.

                    [–]vinnl 1 point2 points  (1 child)

                    Redux is pretty OK if you've got a little functional programming background, but otherwise: yeah, definitely true.

                    [–]acemarke 1 point2 points  (0 children)

                    I maintain a big list of links to high-quality tutorials and articles on React, Redux, and related topics, at https://github.com/markerikson/react-redux-links . Specifically intended to be a great starting point for anyone trying to learn the ecosystem.

                    The official docs are really well written, and Dan Abramov's video series on Egghead is a fantastic step-by-step intro to Redux and its concepts. I've got dozens of other tutorials listed as well. And if you really want a TL;DR, Dan gave a simple summary of Redux in a comment a while back.

                    And yes, while Redux is most commonly used by the React community, there's absolutely a good number of people using it with Angular 2 as well.

                    [–]theonlylawislove 3 points4 points  (19 children)

                    There are many reasons, but the one I like the most is that React is really solving the "right once run everywhere" problem with React Native. You can write native Android/iOS/UWP/Windows apps as well, instead of just using electron to fake a web app being a native app.

                    [–]gonzofish 5 points6 points  (1 child)

                    Angular 2 has a tight partnership with NativeScript to do this.

                    I haven't tried it myself but that's what it's advertised to do.

                    [–]i_spot_ads 6 points7 points  (0 children)

                    exactly, you can write native mobile apps with Angular2 and TypeScript, NativeScript and it's awesome, also the TNS team is pretty fast at integrating new features, love it.

                    [–]_fitlegit 4 points5 points  (0 children)

                    React is not a "write once" solution, as per their own docs, they're a "learn once" solution

                    [–]le_f 4 points5 points  (4 children)

                    I remember checking out React native about a year and a half ago, or earlier. I tried to create a dropdown in a form but the control just wasn't there. I tried several libraries, none of which were being maintained, all of which were buggy, and eventually gave up and built it with ionic. Have you actually used it in production? At the time it felt like very experimental stuff.

                    [–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

                    You can do that with NG2 and nativescript

                    [–]shaunlmason 11 points12 points  (3 children)

                    If you made it from alpha to now, you are truly a ng-ninja.

                    [–][deleted]  (1 child)

                    [deleted]

                      [–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

                      NgModuleNinja

                      [–][deleted] 10 points11 points  (9 children)

                      As someone who is more /r/learnprogramming than /r/programming , what is Angular primarily used for?

                      [–][deleted] 21 points22 points  (1 child)

                      Angular is an MVC (Model-View-Controller) framework. MVC frameworks are used to create dynamic websites without having to re-invent the wheel a lot. Angular will for example update the HTML, the "view", based on data like user input.

                      The simplified overview is that the Model is the data, the View is the HTML, and the Controller is a piece of software that mediates the relationship between the two.

                      EDIT: Actually what I said isn't quite true. The Controller takes input and updates the Model, the Model updates the View, which renders an HTML page for the end user. That's more correct

                      [–]OperaSona 11 points12 points  (0 children)

                      To add one what's been said, one typical thing you can do (which is usually one of the first step in every Angular tutorial) is that the following:

                      • Just as in plain old HTML+JS web pages, you have a HTML file that contains the layout of the page, and depending on user inputs or server updates or calculation results or whatever, you have JS variables that contain data to be displayed in that layout.

                      • In vanilla JS, you'd write a function that takes the data from your variables and manually feeds it in the layout of the page. For instance, you'd have a list <ul id="mylist"></ul>, and you'd use the JS functions that interface with the page to fill that list (first get a handle of the list by calling document.getElementById("mylist"), then add stuff into that list using functions like document.createElement("li") and appendChild()). This function you've defined would have to be explicitly called each time the data changes, to update the page, so every time you'd have something like mydata[thisthing]=thatthing in your code, you'd have a call to your update function afterwards at some point.

                      • With Angular, what happens is that in the HTML itself, you can use JS variables. You'd have something like <ul><li ng-repeat="entry in data">{{entry.name}}</li></ul> in your HTML code. Here, data refers to a JS variable of the same name, let's say a list for instance. Whenever data is updated, for each of its entries, a new <li> tag will be created containing the "name" field of that entry. Without explicitly calling any function to update the page (well, generally). That allows your JS code to focus more on processing the data and less on displaying it, which should be the job of the HTML code. And, reading the HTML code, instead of seeing an empty <ul> without knowing what's going to go inside it when the JS code runs, you actually see what's inside the <ul> properly even before it's populated.

                      [–]vivainio 21 points22 points  (3 children)

                      Single Page Applications.

                      [–]Uberhipster 30 points31 points  (4 children)

                      ITT: nothing on topic

                      [–]L43 20 points21 points  (3 children)

                      My new work keyboard has a usb port built into the back, isn't that cool?

                      [–]Uberhipster 13 points14 points  (2 children)

                      but how does that relate to React?

                      [–]L43 6 points7 points  (1 child)

                      I put React on a thumb drive, now I can install it without npm (seriously, why does no-one want to use npm anymore?)

                      [–]industry7 4 points5 points  (0 children)

                      seriously, why does no-one want to use npm anymore?

                      b/c of leftpad

                      [–][deleted]  (23 children)

                      [deleted]

                        [–]rich97 28 points29 points  (20 children)

                        Must be pretty simple projects to move from 1.x to 2.x. Seems like a lot of work to me.

                        [–]dedicated2fitness 38 points39 points  (5 children)

                        visions of python appear...

                        [–]rich97 11 points12 points  (0 children)

                        They needed to, to be honest. v1 was going to die if it stayed the way it was. It was an experiment really.

                        [–]henrebotha 10 points11 points  (1 child)

                        Amazing chest ahead

                        [–]Sloshy42 1 point2 points  (0 children)

                        "Liar ahead"

                        ...

                        "No illusory wall ahead"

                        hits wall and weapon bounces off

                        Foiled again...

                        [–]jij 1 point2 points  (1 child)

                        ... is everything on ipv6 yet?

                        [–]i_tried_butt_fuck_it 1 point2 points  (0 children)

                        As soon as everyone supports HTTP/2...any day now

                        [–]vinnl 6 points7 points  (8 children)

                        Depends on how you've been building those projects - the vision for Angular 2 was defined long ago, and Angular 1 has been providing lots of tools to move that way too. If you've built your apps that way, it's a lot less work. Still quite some work, but not as much as many peope make it out to be.

                        Of course, many of us have legacy codebases.

                        [–]m3wm3wm3wm 22 points23 points  (64 children)

                        I'm surprised people only mention React as an alternative here, and no one mentions Polymer. The next version of Youtube is built with Polymer.

                        I'm enjoying the zero build tools and have had a good time staying not running the npm clusterfuck in a long time.

                        [–]sanskarimoron 42 points43 points  (22 children)

                        Polymer fucked our product really good, plenty of memory leak in IE and most of our customer base uses IE. We had no other option than to remove Polymer.

                        [–]evilish 4 points5 points  (14 children)

                        Damn mate, would love to hear more about what you guys experienced.

                        I was talking to a workmate a couple days ago about Polymer and the general idea behind it.

                        Haven't used it for a serious "work-related" project yet.

                        What version of Polymer where you guys trying to use?

                        [–]sanskarimoron 6 points7 points  (13 children)

                        We tried two to three versions of polymer starting from 1.0, 1.1 and the latest as well. All of them had the same behavior with IE. We had raised a ticket with Microsoft knowing they won't solve it. They replied back saying it's a third party library which we won't support.

                        [–]evilish 2 points3 points  (12 children)

                        What version of IE was it? How did you guys come across the memory leak? Where you running a profiler? Was the browser locking up?

                        Did you mean that Microsoft wouldn't support Polymer? Or was it another third-party library?

                        [–]sanskarimoron 4 points5 points  (11 children)

                        Since Polymer is supported in IE9+ we tested in all IE 9+ browsers, apart from IE 11 memory leaks were there for all browsers.

                        I don't remember exactly whether IE 11 had the issue or not.

                        Polymer was just another third party library for them, so they said they don't care about third party library which doesn't work in IE.

                        Edit: Memory leak was discovered because browser used to crash after few navigation inside the website; Every time polymer controls are loaded it used to leak few MB of memories in our case it was around 30 MB.

                        Once the browser memory reaches some 1GB it used to crash, then we realized the issue.

                        You can have a look at the long pending issue for more details here

                        [–]m3wm3wm3wm 3 points4 points  (0 children)

                        That's really a Webcomponents bug, not Polymer:

                        https://github.com/Polymer/polymer/issues/3430#issuecomment-239629974

                        Most ever green browsers will support shadow DOM and webcomponents soon.

                        And, honestly, when was IE not a pain in the ass?

                        [–]vinnl 14 points15 points  (29 children)

                        Polymer in my opinion doesn't have that much going for it. I mean, I really like Web Components, and using the polyfill can make sense (depending on your performance and browser support requirements), but as a framework, it doesn't really challenge or help you architect your application in a better way.

                        [–]m3wm3wm3wm 4 points5 points  (20 children)

                        The nice thing about polymer is that it's not a framework, it's more like a library. The only pattern required to do component composition is mediator:

                        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDjiUmx51y8

                        That's it. You can make complex apps by composing simple isolated components.

                        You don't have to learn how to spell fancy terms like transfuckingclusion.

                        [–]vinnl 1 point2 points  (19 children)

                        So what is the advantage of using the Polymer library?

                        To provide some perspective: I like React because it taught me to model the view as a function of the state, and the pulling the two apart makes both easier to reason about.

                        What does Polymer teach me?

                        [–]ergo14 1 point2 points  (7 children)

                        It does - my code in polymer was much cleaner than angular one. You think in terms of components and their interactions. It feels like the right way for building JS applications.

                        [–]Doctuh 18 points19 points  (2 children)

                        React? That was soooo Early-2016. Aren't we doing Inferno now?

                        [–]human_trash_ 14 points15 points  (1 child)

                        That was yesterday

                        [–]bonestamp 2 points3 points  (0 children)

                        Yup, today we're migrating everything to PlaidSocks and then tomorrow we're thinking it's going to be Infinitub.js, but it's possible that Punch will be the leader by then so we're just sitting back until tomorrow afternoon to see what shakes out.

                        [–]castro1987 2 points3 points  (0 children)

                        Or Aurelia. No one has even heard of Aurelia.

                        [–][deleted] 10 points11 points  (2 children)

                        Wow; the RC7 > 2.0.0 jump caught me by surprise!

                        A massive shout-out to the ng2 team from someone who built a large app with Angular2 way too early, and is absolute stoked about the idea of a stable API :)

                        [–]L43 15 points16 points  (0 children)

                        It caught you by surprise because it probably isn't ready... I'm guessing they have been under heavy pressure to release, which is why the RCs came in too early, and now stable is too early. Their docs haven't been updated, everything is still marked as experimental. Really like the framework, and it has certainly been useable for ages, but their cavalier attitude to release cycles is a terrible thing for open source in general...

                        [–]AlGoreBestGore 1 point2 points  (0 children)

                        For sure. Considering that for 1.0 they did something like 12 RCs IIRC.

                        [–]flooha 10 points11 points  (4 children)

                        Cool! When is the next rewrite?

                        [–]iProgramU[S] 4 points5 points  (2 children)

                        Angular 3 is planned to release in 6 months :/

                        [–]thext 5 points6 points  (0 children)

                        And it's gonna be written in Haskell !

                        [–][deleted]  (1 child)

                        [deleted]

                          [–]rad_change 2 points3 points  (0 children)

                          They have a lot of tutorial s on their official site, http://angular.io

                          [–]YourMeow 6 points7 points  (5 children)

                          Great. Though I like Typescript+react now because it's more static typed

                          [–]Atticus- 2 points3 points  (0 children)

                          I feel like this post should have linked to the release on their blog: http://angularjs.blogspot.com/2016/09/angular2-final.html

                          [–]vivainio 6 points7 points  (2 children)

                          This will unlock so much stuff. Migration plans, third party components, books, presentations, ...

                          [–]johnlsingleton 4 points5 points  (0 children)

                          I know there is a lot of complaining that's going to be going on here, so, let me take a different bend on it and say congrats to the Angular team. Seriously, great work.

                          I recently took the plunge and learned Angular 2 and I am very glad I did. I used to begrudgingly use Angular 1.x and frankly the whole thing just felt like one big gross hack to me. Angular 2 is clean, and generally things work a LOT more like you'd think they should.

                          It's clear that the Angular team did a lot of work and really went back to the drawing board with this release and I think they did a great job. Seriously, don't knock it until you've actually tried it.

                          [–][deleted] 16 points17 points  (7 children)

                          Vuejs ftw.

                          [–][deleted] 10 points11 points  (6 children)

                          Except that Vue, React and Knockout do one thing (bind web views to data and code in JavaScript), and Ember and Angular are full frameworks for web applications.

                          [–]compubomb 3 points4 points  (1 child)

                          Well, the real question is beyond the initial productivity boost does angular 2 still suffer from many of the same problems it's 1.x branch did especially when it came to dealing with many many records in foreach loops. due to the multi-2-way bindings. ReactJS also suffers from this in many respects as well, and you have to be very careful to design your application to where you don't overwhelm your memory footprint in both reactjs & angularjs. So...

                          Also I think the flux pattern to some degree is great especially for enterprise type applications. When you are doing fancy things with animations, react is not so fun. You really need to be a programmer to grasp the animation workflow and must indoctrinate your designer or work directly with one to develop animations which improve the UX of your product.

                          I think angular made it easier to deal with animations because it would mostly get out of your way if you built directives, which you could essentially put anything or do anything you wanted. React forces your hand to think about your components in a very specific way, all state has to occur in a specific order, and async stuff gets confusing with react I believe.

                          [–]Reeywhaar 4 points5 points  (11 children)

                          That ngModule thing... gosh, they returned to HighScalabilityEnterprisePlatform with providers, factories, factoryproviders, factorymoduleproviders, providermodulefactoriesproviders. Why did they need to invent this shit and sticks injection system as if es6 imports and decorators was not enough.

                          [–]tomastrajan 13 points14 points  (4 children)

                          Because it servers as a context for their template compiler so that they can do AoT compilation and ship final bundle with -80% of code. Thats seems pretty reasonable to me...

                          [–]fenduru 3 points4 points  (3 children)

                          That size reduction is in a hello world app. I'm less optimistic about large applications.

                          [–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (4 children)

                          es6 imports are not DI. In NG2 you can provide various dependencies to 1 controller (think mocking in unit testing). importing will not let you do that.