OT: After building a couple of large applications in Angular I've come to realize that I seldom need two-way bindings. The school example where you enter something in an input box and it shows up somewhere else in real-time is not really used in the real world. Or is it? Why do we need two-way data binding?
But I do sometimes need databinding from view to model (when I want users to enter data, and it just fills in my object), and I sometimes want databinding from model to view (where my data is nicely displayed).
So rather than doing something fiddly and different for each way, it makes more sense to just have 2-way databinding in the first place.
And that then makes it easier for when I _do_ want 2-way databinding - for instance allowing users to enter a filter to narrow down a list.
Wouldn't it be enough to add a keydown event to the field?
Possibilities are endless and you're more likely to implement them when it is so painless.
That being said, could an implementation be done without jQuery? Probably. I'm sure the author is open to pull requests if you want to give it a go.
How does the way.js version look like? Im sceptical it makes it more elegant.
I'm using Angular's databinding and recently it felt as if it was just convenient enough to implement a nice-to-have feature that I might have postponed otherwise.
I'm also careful with adding too many dependencies for simple things. But since I've committed to learning and using Angular anyways, I don't mind the weight and like using what it has to offer.
Collaboration applications need it.