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Comment by nkkollaw | Hacker News Reader

I have a question.

Who thought it was a good idea to make Angular 2 incompatible with Angular 1?

You had it, and you blew it. Most people aren't going to use any version of Angular, now, and have switched to React and Vue.

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"Who thought it was a good idea to make Angular 2 incompatible with Angular 1?"

This is so much discussed that I am not going to answer that. Google it.

But according to the latest StackOverflow survey [1] Angular is still bigger than you think: AngularJS 44.3%, React 19.5%

[1] http://stackoverflow.com/insights/survey/2017/

Because Angular was the only real choice for awhile. That's like saying PHP is still bigger than you think because half the web runs on PHP but that is old legacy shit. Almost othing new and serious is using it.

There was Ember.

Emphasis on the past tense -- "was" :)

What does this actually mean?

Discourse uses Ember. It's pretty successful. http://www.discourse.org/

Ember has bad performance on Android[0]. The Discourse team had to write their own Virtual DOM renderer to work around this[1].

[0] https://discuss.emberjs.com/t/why-is-ember-3x-5x-slower-on-a...

[1]https://eviltrout.com/2016/02/25/fixing-android-performance....

That was over 2 years ago.

What do you consider "serious"? Plenty of large applications are being built right now in PHP 7.

"Serious" means it was started by a person who regularly blogs or tweets about how to choose a technology.

No answer is better than arrogant answer.

I didn't want to sound arrogant. But when Angular 2 was released the whole web broke down in anger and had questions like this. So there are a lot of good answers on StackOverflow and other sites.

So my answer to the question was something like: "You can find a lot of info by Googling it".

But I am not able to change my comment anymore.

Most companies don't switch quickly.

We have a huge Angular 1.x app, but after hiring some new developers for our team we found the pool of React devs was huge compared to Angular devs. So much developer goodwill and mindshare has been lost.

After carefully evaluating the technical aspects of Angular and React and externalities like the above, we decided to start building new software with React.

Angular won't go away overnight, it will see a very steady and slow attrition, with developers themselves leading the way.

I also skipped Angular 2 and moved to VueJS. Never been happier.

But I was responding to "You had it, and you blew it. Most people aren't going to use any version of Angular, now, and have switched to React and Vue."

When you look at the stats and look at other places online there are still very much people liking and using Angular. So it's not going away soon.

Also take a look at Google trends: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=angular,react Both Angular and React are growing at an equal pace.

So the claim that developing new versions of Angular is a waste of time is nonsense.

Better trend comparison (the other one the first example query for react was "Youtubers react")

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=%2Fm%2F0j45p7w,%2...

These fad shifts are inherent because there is little point in competing with 0 years experience in an established tech if the market will allow breaking changes.

Angular is actually better off with the break as new graduates may use it to replace vue as the new fad once vue has replaced react.

Similar to what happened with backbone when angular gained traction.

If you are not going to answer it, don't add noise to the discussion.

That's legacy projects I bet. Of course, big projects have to stay with a technology for at least 2 years, can't keep rewriting things every time a new framework comes out. In this case, they unfortunately picked a framework that was discontinued.

I talked to many devs who didn't accept a job because it was Angular instead of React.

That is purely anecdotal. There are a lot of companies and devs outside your circles that don't jump on the new shiny, and will continue to use Angular going forward.

It was a rhetorical question...

Angular 2 is a different framework, plain and simple. You can continue to use AngularJS 1.x if you were on that framework.

I understand the frustration of someone who has used AngularJS 1.x. There is not really a straightforward and low risk path to upgrading a production app.

But that is like saying there is not really a straightforward risk to switching from AngularJS 1.x to React. They're different frameworks. AngularJS is different from Angular.

In my opinion the Angular team has created something really special with this new framework. I think it falls into a category of its own, very difficult to compare it to something like Vue.

> Angular 2 is a different framework, plain and simple.

I wonder if, strategically, it would have been a better idea to give it a new name rather than a subsequent version number?

I always figured it was to give the illusion of stability and continuity (ironically). Like "Angular has been out since 2010, before React and Ember" especially since a common criticism of Google is that they frequently abandon their projects.

> Angular 2 is a different framework, plain and simple.

Yes. Retaining the Angular name is just a way to slightly disguise that they've dropped a framework altogether and left its user high and dry.

This is ridiculous.

Give it another name, then.

You can't get people to adopt your framework, stop developing it leaving millions of projects in shit, and then expect people to do it all over again.

I'm glad that Google paid this strategic error dearly, having a huge percentage of people switching to React. Perhaps next time they'll think about it more deeply.

Good to read this comment because I definitely feel this way too. Angular 2 just made things weird and confusing for everyone, experts and newbies.

Even though there are some things common but the differences are just too many. It would have been better if it was just release under a different banner altogether.

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