As I feel that from a conceptual/architectural point of view Angular is simply on a loosing path.
https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=angular%20tutorial%2...
The only thing really missing from Angular 2 compared to the React ecosystem is jsx. Angular 2 and RxJS (and if you want throw in ngrx/store) allows a heavy focus on immutability, unidirectional data flow, centralized state, etc. that ends up very similar to the React ecosystem conceptually.
Both allow native cross-platform mobile with React Native (react) and NativeScript (angular2), and Angular 2 also gives you a nice hybrid/webview option with Ionic 2. Angular 2 also gives you a bit tighter integration with TypeScript, if that is your preference (which it is mine).
Personally, for me, I like both a lot but the full-framework and tight TypeScript integration fit my use cases and personality better.
You mentioned TS but I feel like you understated it - it's the selling point for me. I have used TS + React but it's not the same thing - Angular was written with/for TS and it uses it to leverage all the advantages. React migrated from ES5 to incrementally add ES6 support and it shows. Also nobody uses flow outside of React unlike TS which has a decent community even outside of Angular and plenty of 3rd party type definitions.
We've converted all our node backends to typescript. It's been a game-changer in productivity.
anyway, does typescript support some kind of template-string validation for angular2? If so, I'm going to really re-consider angular2 for my next project
See https://github.com/microsoft/typescript/issues/6508 (and the GIF!)
No, and that's the reason I mention jsx as a missing feature from Angular 2. There is no compile time or refactoring support for templates, whereas with TypeScript and jsx you get that.
The general tooling process is pretty simple, no need to convince people of the merits of JSX.
Architecturally speaking many people still like separating presentation from business logic.
Angular has a lot of mature tooling and wrappings around current libraries. Angular also offers a lot more tooling on the side, React is much smaller.
On an architectural side, while React keeps states in components, the state update mechanism is a bit obtuse compared to Angular's "scopes are just objects" philosophy.
It's dependent on how you view things, but if you're working on things where strict component decomposition is hard, and you "like global state in your views", then Angular's state mechanism (controllers) could work better for you.
Some would also declare that the non-turing-complete-ness of the template language in Angular is a feature, not a bug.
I would argue that a distinction that you make yourself, based on your application's architecture is more meaningful and useful than one made by some arbitrary separation of source file formats.
"Angular 2 continues to put “JS” into HTML. React puts “HTML” into JS."
See: https://medium.freecodecamp.com/angular-2-versus-react-there...
This influences to some extent what you can do with the frameworks and how your code is organized. I like the fact that since my rendering is essentially JS in React, then I can structure my code better with OO to solve problems (inheritance where appropriate, helper classes, patterns etc). In Angular, its just a awful mess of ng-* statements for flow of control. All you can really do to tame it is to use composition or to mix-in behavior via directives.
For a number of reasons:
- In general Java and C# programmers like it.
- It is made by Google (perceived as more "mature", business like) rather than Facebook (young kids).
- It takes a lot of inspiration from server side development with its dependency injection and general terminology.
- And TypeScript is very similar to Java and C#.
(The list is a slight caricature but I hope the general point is clear.)
React has been around for a while, but it is still only a library. Angular 1 and 2 are frameworks. Also Angular 2 is a complete rewrite and not even in final release. I'm not sure how that is boring or old.
As with Angular 1, Angular 2 aims to be opinionated, so it should be clearer how to do things than with React. Especially now with the move to components, Angular should be easier do more with, without as much confusion. And Angular 2 is much faster, if you do it right, which was one of the reasons Angular 1 was left for React.
React is fine for what it is. It's somewhat "matured" for a few years and is not a bad decision if you go with it.
I don't think that you should just jump on the latest JS bandwagon, but Angular 2 is more than just "for mature companies" and "similar to Java and C#".
Really, the only frustration we've had with Angular 2 so far has been that it has been changing so quickly, but it's starting to settle down now.
Where the sound is the promise of a better tomorrow without actually looking at alternatives.
You probably knew this already, but worth to point out that React never intended to be a framework.
This is a really interesting talk: http://2014.jsconf.eu/speakers/sebastian-markbage-minimal-ap...
react and typescript go hand in hand, now that typescript has .jsx support (as .tsx files)
React offers ability to use same code on server side and client side. Easier to test a Vdom library. It's a lot less complex, it's perf is a lot better, you can live edit. The biggest selling point is you can create native apps using native ui with a lot of code re-use.
React + ts definitely give you a bigger bang for buck. I spent 2.5 years of my life writing angular code. It definitely has some good ideas but I won't be investing so much of my time in angular 2 anymore.
So I can re-use code from my front end website on my native mobile apps for the new startup I'm launching. Much less code = quicker time to MVP, and lower cost of development.
Just to be clear, Ionic is _not_ native.
The performance difference and development experience (no silly css hacks) is very noticeable.
At least with Angular/Ionic you can directly share UI code between the two as its all HTML and CSS.
Still, I really enjoy working with React and React Native because I it's one API and mental model to learn.
IMO there is one main reason to choose Angular 2 over React currently - perf. Angular 2 has significant perf improvements over the other libraries/frameworks out there, and supports incremental rendering as opposed to React's render all at once model. Angular 2 also will have the best built-in animation support of the various libraries/frameworks out there, in part due to the Angular team's collaboration with the Chrome team (this is true with Angular 1 as well).
Otherwise, React is more mature than Angular 2 & has a simpler API. Conceptually, Angular 2 and React share much in common, and architectures should look similar between well written apps in both.
I've despised angular since pre-1.0, mainly for performance reasons. Once the number of watchers hits 1000 or so, a browser will noticeably lag. A compete rerender will cause a noticeable freeze up.
I'm not currently using react either, but it's possible to do an incremental render through code, only rendering what needs rendering. React-dom will be needed to plug the result in the right spot.
Not arguing that you are wrong, I just haven't kept up with any of Angular 2 and am genuinely curios.
It also supports the shadow DOM through its style engine with the component decorator. One can either use native shadow DOM (and use a polyfill for the functionality), or use Angular 2's built-in virtual shadow DOM where it randomly generates unique attributes to style off of with the component decorator.
Single Page Apps (SPAs) are more app-like than webpage-like and if you're really going for reusability then your components need to have a say in how they are rendered. That means they need to provide /some/ HTML.
You can still create components without including CSS but you'll likely need to provide structure (HTML) in order to bind behavior/callbacks/events to it. It's still good practice to separate rendering (HTML/JSX/NG) and behavior.
https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=angular%20tutorial%2...
I made a conscious switch from Angular to React because React (and the flux pattern) really did reinvent how web components are built and it's incredibly intuitive. I simply don't see the same innovation in Angular 2 apart from 'we made Angular more modern'
Please stop wars "a vs r" - it's counterproductive. Knowledge sharing is much better. If you don't trust me - read Twitter of Dan Abramov.
And there is first class support for component-scoped css, aka emulated shadow dom, which is great for large codebases.
It's written in TypeScript, so you can write your frontend in TypeScript. Many bugs averted.
You can use a real reactive model (http://victorsavkin.com/post/137821436516/managing-state-in-...)
Or simply put. If they named "Angular 2" by its real name "Some other cool framework name" - you would not use it. (e.g. Polymer 2)
Both ecosystems are vibrant enough to stay for the foreseeable future.