Hacker News Reader

Comment by pjmlp | Hacker News Reader

> Angular is dead? Most don't even want to touch it again ( Great ).

Yet what I see around me is enterprise customers on our projects adopting Angular as the official internal Framework, as React is seem as too advanced.

View on HN

Since I mostly work in the enterprise (in Europe) I see Angular all around me as the de facto framework. It's definitely not dead. With TypeScript it's a pleasure to work with.

I think a lot is due to the unfortunate naming, people still confuse AngularJS (v1) with Angular (v2-v7). I totally believe a lot of folks will say "Used AngularJS (v1) won't use it again".

Yes, it is quite a fact that enterprise businesses tend to adopt Angular as it has more sort of an enterprise appeal due to its popularity and being backed by Google.

I had a friend (F) interview for a FE developer position. He was more of a React adopter and he spoke with the architect (A) of the team. The company was heavily invested into MS technologies (think a lot of WCF Services)

F: So, what technology stack are you moving into? A: We wanted to retain as much of our backend WCF stuff, while we move our front-end into Angular. F: So has there been a project that was started? A: Yes, we have started to move 8 of our enterprise apps to Angular. F: Any challenges so far? A: Well, the code seems to become a little too complicated for our developers to work on. We'd like to get it to a cleaner and more maintainable state. F: Have you considered other frameworks? A: Sadly, no. Company has invested more than 2 years in re-designing the app. And besides, Angular is backed by Google, hence, we seem to think that it will be the right tool for the business. We've invested a lot of time as well with it. F: But you are saying that productivity overall is low because the complexities of your Angular code base is taking a toll on your developers? A: Yes, in some sort of ways. There are Angular constructs which just does not make sense. And nipping the warnings and errors in the console is just a task that's too heavy and tedious. Although we like the fact that Angular can play nicely with our backend stuff with very minimal changes required on that side.

Practically, the architect was saying that the enterprise adopted Angular due to its immense popularity way back then and being heralded as an Enterprise framework.

Although my friend was offered a very good salary (by Canadian standards), he politely declined the offer, after inspection of some of the code base and the challenges that he would be facing.

That sounds more like a quality problem of the particular dev shop than an indictment on Angular.

The survey results this year is misguided as it now mixes AngularJS with Angular. Was surprised they made such remarks in the conclusion knowing this change. Most AngularJS users will not use it again for sure.

When having a few conversations a few years ago with enterprise devs, the React license was seen as a problem[0][1], and Angular wasn't, so the default path was from the top-down to go with Angular, for those I spoke to. This was also when Angular 2.0 was new and the comment was also "This is moving too fast".

Once enterprise chooses a tool, that tends to stay the tool for that project, then all of the team is competent in the tool after a couple of years working with it. There's a critical time-frame when new competing tools win a geographical majority [2].

[0] Link to facebook announcing Reach license changes: https://code.fb.com/web/relicensing-react-jest-flow-and-immu...

[1] Link to short article on MIT-Patents license in reack. Takeaway: This has never been litigated before https://hackernoon.com/4-lessons-from-the-react-patent-licen...

[2] Geographical majority http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/geographic-mono... replace 'place' with 'technology tool'

While 2+ is definitely better, I would still prefer to never use it again. To me, React + JSX is the most natural abstraction for component development. Vue is probably second, but tends to introduce complexities that make things harder for mid-large apps imho.

I think the conclusion chart shows it clearly: Angular has very high usage (nearly as much as React) and very low satisfaction in using it.

(Which is often what you would expect of enterprise development: go with the solution "everybody else uses", whether or not everybody else enjoys using it. ;)

Most of HackerNews isn't enterprise hackers. At least the active commentators.

Is that the assumption or for fact? I see people with very diverse background here.

I don't have stats to back it up, talk to pg for that :)

But it's not that hard to figure out based on comments, upvotes, stories on the front page, etc.

Consider it an educated guess from a relatively active HN member who's been here for 5 years :)

as someone who tried Angular and was so relieved with the simplicity of React, I have no idea how they can come to that conclusion. But then again, I'm not very well know with the field of enterprise customers

React requires too much FP concepts for the typical average enterprise developer.

It feels like doing Haskell with JavaScript.

You can write haskell style in any language. but you don’t have to.

function MyComponent(props) { return <p>Hello {props.name}</p> }

    import React from 'react';

    export default ({name}) => <p>Hello {name}</p>;

So much nicer than Angular.

> You can write haskell style in any language.

It would be great if that was true. The fact is that you can not copy Haskell in any mainstream language (Lisp gets the closest), and that hurts.

I dunno--most of what I end up doing has state, if not context. Not super Haskell-ish.

I've got the same feeling but with bad connotation.

React is easy the same way jQuery is. Easy, unstructured, foggy, too much permissive tool.

Far too easy to end-up with spaghetti-code.

I prefer not using it, Angular is far more organized.

Like another reply.

    // MyHello.jsx
    import React from 'react';

    export default ({name}) => <p>Hello {name}</p>;

Now do the same in Angular.

I cannot speak for GP but for me the complexity comes from stitching dozens of libraries to get similar "base" to build the app on. Ember/Angular have way more stuff baked in or standardized, while in React you have to handle ball of ever changing dependencies ... For seniors it's ok(-ish) tradeoff (you get much more choice / control), for juniors it is hell on earth.

But that is more of an issue for projects maintained for a long time. If you want to crank out small apps fast, your "example" is relevant, and React definitely is the better option.

What do you need that isn't in the box with React? Aside from fetch, which is in all modern browsers? The new Context component interface pretty much flushes out the last of what you are likely to need. As much so as what you get in the box with Angular. Even then, with Angular you'll usually need at least a visual component library, and with React, disparate components tend to work together with less friction comparatively.

Well if you focus on components only in your app then sure, not much needed. But complex apps need much more, like testing infrastructure, routing, data layer, service layer, tons of utility functions (last time I toyed with React it did not even have debounce ... Library for UI w/o it seems weird for me) and likely something else.

But hey, most apps are simple, so no need for all the above. I would say Ng/Ember are more specialized / niche.

"Hello world!" programs or their slightly more sophisticated variation, the to-do list app, aren't a realistic measure when it comes to actual real-world software that has to solve real-world problems.

Same. I don’t think this survey is representative of the enterprise at all. In fact, it seems like responses are down this year from last year from what I can tell. 20,000 is not a huge sample size in this market.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com