I've been loving using React. Building in components is fantastic, and it just feels like writing Javascript. That's a win in my books.
If Google was as invested in Angular as Facebook was in React, they would probably have gone with a more gradual, methodical approach to improving the framework (like the Ember team did). And until that changes, there is very little stopping them from doing another mostly incompatible rewrite in a few years.
As it stands, Angular 2 is closer to a completely new framework roughly inspired by Angular 1.x than a new version of Angular.
Google has said they have something like 10k Angular 1.x apps, so they will keep on working on Angular 1. Angular 2 happening along this support is showing that they're willing to invest in the conservative route and the "burn down the libraries" route at the same time.
The so called upgrade path they offer for Angular 1.x is a complete joke. That you can "mix Angular 2 into your existing Angular 1 application" would be a true statement with any component-oriented framework in place of Angular 2, like React, and Ember. And this was not true for Ember just a few months ago, which is living proof that gradual improvement can in fact be accomplished with any framework, but of course, throwing everything away is much easier, so the framework developers need to have strong incentives to not do so.
The point is that - despite the common misconception - Angular isn't Google's Anointed JS Framework. There's a whole bunch of Polymer and a whole bunch of GWT inside Google.
Maybe let's withhold judgement until we actually use it. Just a thought.
[0]: https://www.polymer-project.org/1.0/ [1]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Web_Components
react.c : Activity/Fragment :: web component : View :: web : Android
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So I think Google will do it. Google Fiber is ng2 already :)
I'd argue Adwords is one of the most important Google products.
What exactly is your point here?
No one is saying "oh I love writing view layers. It's way better than actually building things".
If I am trying to compare the pros and cons of flying vs sea travel, a distinction between the fact that a ship is not an airplane isn't really important.
Two vastly different approaches can attempt to solve the same problem, and they're worth considering on equal ground.
On a side note, when people mention working with React, it's safe to assume (if they're building real software) that they are using React with a framework, whether that be some implementation of Flux or Relay or something else entirely. When comparing Angular to React / Flux you've got yourself an apples to apples comparison.
Angular is the airline flight(s), React is the boat. It won't get you all the way there on its own.