Why Angular Made Me Quit Web Dev
medium.com
medium.com
I tried React but it felt very incomplete and to get things done beyond the basic tutorial I had to go all over blogs, articles and forums to find instructions (often incomplete or out-of-date). Still it required a complicated process to get data from a SpringBoot server (I was told I need to add Redux, then some other http library for the actual calls. Then try to tie everything together... well, I gave up.)
That was a year ago and I'm sure it's better now, but Angular at that time was very mature compared to the hackish React.
That said, I’d be interested in hearing what kind of “first-time encounter” experience the author is looking for, and whether he’s found it in another tool. Barring that, at least some more specifics on the troublesome areas, something like bug reports, e.g.
“I expected one thing, but I actually got another. Here’s why that’s bad.”
For example, I agree that the angularjs to 'angular' transition was a bit wonky, but I don't understand having resentment or anger build up because I have to be a little more careful about how I craft search queries.
It feels like he's frustrated with a lot of things, and once you get in that mindset, each irritant takes on huge significance.
You don't start doing web dev because you really want to work with Angular, and I think that's the problem. You choose Angular because you think it will help you achieve an end-goal.
I suspect that he started working on a codebase that had already chosen Angular and he had no buy-in. In that case, problems become frustrations, rather than just 'things to learn'. For example, the documentation on the module system is pretty good. It covers the reasoning, shows a basic example, and then delves in for when you need more information: https://angular.io/guide/ngmodules.
Anyway, I enjoy working with Angular, but if something else works better for him, more power to him.
I really prefer Vue, because it gets out of my way when declaring services or making modules etc.
(upgrading isn't why I like it)
I agree that ng build --prod finds different errors then ng serve -o does but we build once a day and fix them when we find them, before deploying to QA. We've also learned pretty well when a bug in build might be caused (usually not declaring a property properly or wrong type or whatever)
Actual development is pretty easy once you learn the concepts. Documentation, training, tutorials are good IMO also.
The only complaints I have are PrimeNG (our CSS framework) has a LOT of bugs, is sometimes poorly documented and the built in components are often lacking; when they are, we extend them and add what functionality we need ourselves.
I don't want to cause a React vs Angular thread - but compared to React and the 100s of ways to get a project built, I prefer to use Angular - here is the MVC and go type approach.
Biggest pain point is doing stuff outside of the angular framework. Interacting with the browser’s History API is annoying, angular splits this functionality over a few disparate modules and it’s heavily suggested you do not call the raw APIs directly, but instead deal with the tangled mess angular provides.
I had some pains when I first got started, but that was because I wasn’t doing it the “angular way”. If you find you’re writing too much code and it feels like “low-level” code, you’re probably doing it wrong. I spent a lot of time wrangling Observables and async pipes before I found patterns that were simple and met my needs.
I'm unimpressed with essentially the entire framework. It feels over engineered and overly complex with little benefit. Note that I'm saying it feels that way, maybe at some kind of scale this is very helpful, the codebase I'm working in is about 150k sloc.
The biggest gripe for me is how unintuitive it is to compose and reuse bits of UI. Having written almost no React, and absolutely no React professionally, I understand how to compose react components and the basic patterns for communicating between them. It's just not as easy in Angular, so for the most part it just doesn't happen (at least with the devs I'm working with). Patterns such as render props, HOC, stuff like that is not straight forward in Angular. I'm probably not thinking in the "Angular" way or something.
The dependency injection patterns that Angular is so fond of is something I'm not enthralled with as well. It made more sense in angularjs since es2015 modules weren't prevalent at the time, it really solved a problem there. I don't think it's as helpful in Angular now, and is yet another framework specific thing you're going to have to grasp at a decently deep level.
I work right next to another dev that was hired about a month before me. He's coming from writing React for the last couple of years, and angularjs was the first SPA framework he ever learned. He is constantly cursing how Angular does just about everything, he's not a happy camper.
If I was calling the shots today I would not use Angular for my SPA framework.
The DI framework in Angular is not concept novel to Angular. It's essentially an implementation of the DI.
He also described the experience of writing simple apps that resulted in very poor performance. From my experience, you'd have to really hard to re-create non performance scenarios. Especially if he is only creating simple use cases
In summary he is ranting about fairly superficial points that does not cancel out the benefits angular framework provides for certain types of organizations, when compared to vue or react..
If you like light, fast, opinion free UI tools, maybe give my module fastn a go: https://GitHub.com/korynunn/fastn
I've used both for years, feel free to critique fastn when you've tried it for a week.
Child: "What's a computer...."
Additionally, he must've missed the last 20+ years after Apple moved away from the ppc chip.
Subsequent editions of os x after were always removing great tools, then rebranding and repackaging them to sell as a new feature. Up until you had to pay for the dev tools..
The best has been iDevices though. Premium price through artificial resource scarcity.
Ask that being said, the author and like the type who instead of looking for a better product, would look to govt and regulations for Apple, and the web dev sphere. In the name of fairness I'm sure.