Angular 1.x has been around since 2009 - 7 years - that predates pretty much every framework in use today, before modules (commonJS, let alone ES6) were widely in use, etc. At some point, we had to make a decision to be forward looking towards the future of the language. Support for 1.x won't disappear for some time. Angular 1.5 had a number of big upgrades - a focus will be easing the transition to 2.x over time ( .component(), lifecycle hooks, etc...)