How to get started (AngularJS - from beginner to expert in 7 steps series) | Hacker News Reader

How to get started (AngularJS - from beginner to expert in 7 steps series)

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49 pointsbauser14 comments

I really wish that more tutorials took the Rails tutorial approach where they build something and explain things as they go as opposed to the 'encyclopedia of features' approach.

I totally agree. We work hard to make these tutorials approachable. In this series, we're doing both: discussing core features as well as building an app alongside it. The "tough" part of it is that AngularJS has a bit of a learning curve, so some concepts "need" to be explained, while others (later in this series) will be more "hands on."

The only real way of learning is by doing. I took the wrong approach for two years, read everything and anything. I learned a lot, but when I found myself sitting down and coding I realized that it's impossible to remember everything you've read in relation to a particular piece of code. I'm never going to remember that snippet on page 741 or 1400 as it relates to my program because I've only ever glanced at it.

Pick up something you are unfamiliar with, pick a small project (make a calendar, contact form, something small), find a language you want to learn, and get to googling/hacking away.

I mean that's what I do, and I actually know angular reasonably well, so I'm not complaining about this particular case. I do agree that you learn by doing, at the same time though, any technology will have some specifics as to how you put things together and you can either (a) learn those by trying things out and see what sticks (b) learn from people who had the same issues and study how they solved it. A combined approach is probably the best since if you do only (a) you might miss some details that might be important for really leveraging the power of the platform.

And what you are arguing is exactly the approach that Rails tutorial takes. You are building something and the book serves as your guide to reduce guesswork.

Agreed. I teach at a "hacker" school in SF and we strongly encourage our students to learn through engaging. Thanks for the comment.

Exactly. It's why I dropped out of school. Too much theory. I realized after two years I knew a bit, but not REMOTELY as much as I would learn had I spent those two years absolutely learning and implementing things I wanted to do. Not learning some deprecated language over the course of 6 months from a "professor" who only really wants a paycheck.

I'm confused how she set up the data binding? Shouldn't she have to specify where it binds to on the back end? A database perhaps? Otherwise how to do other users see that I've added something to the name field?

If you want AngularJS mixed in with a backend storage framework, I'd recommend AngularFire

https://github.com/firebase/angularFire

We use AngularFire currently and it is fantastic. We can't recommend it enough.

In terms of discussing AngularJS, there is the client-side front-end and back-end view and the server-side view. We address talking to a backend later in the series, stay tuned.

I still don't get the data binding in your example though. What is it binding to?

Thanks for the question. I'll update the article to explain that more indepth later today. It's 'binding' the value to the model of that DOM element in the view.

We go in-depth into the model component on the next article.

How do you handle user authentication, and management in AngularJS?

We'll address these in our next article (we get a lot of requests for handling user auth). This series is specifically intended on introducing AngularJS to beginner and intermediate users.

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