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> Whatever the reason is for Angulars popularity, it isn’t that it’s a great framework.

Anything that makes programmers productive is a great tool. Angular 1.x definitely makes teams productive. It's one of the first web framework that comes with a specific testing framework. The clear separation between the DOM and the business logic makes apps more testable. And I could go for hours. Angular helps developers write complex apps faster and better.

Sure it isn't perfect, but show me something better with all the features AngularJs has.

AngularJS didn't became popular because it was from Google, a simple proof is the closure widget library nobody uses outside google. AngularJS became popular because it was obviously superior in term of developer experience.

Now your point about ng-model and scopes is valid.But it's not a angular problem, it's a javascript issue.Ultimately to understand angular you need to understand how javascript works, which many develpers don't.

Instead of saying "this thing is bad", Educate them. But I guess sensationalism drives more clicks.

I got tons of both hate and love for that blog post. One of the few criticisms that I can accept is the "The problems are real, but don't matter that much." view. I don't agree, but I suppose people can have different experiences there.

Any 'sensationalism' comes from legitimate anger with the framework, after having spent over a year working with it on a large project.

> Now your point about ng-model and scopes is valid.But it's not a angular problem, it's a javascript issue.

This I don't agree with. Yes, JavaScript has prototypical inheritance between objects, but certainly not between scopes. It has lexical scoping like everyone else. The decision to have scopes be objects that (sometimes, not always) inherit from one another, is entirely on Angular. So is the decision to have ng-model silently create objects on this scope.

> after having spent over a year working with it on a large project

What issues are you running into? I always hear people complain about angular but rarely hear why.

Most people don't understand directives, so they resort to a pub/sub communication model that makes the web page unable to scale when you have too much items that are binded/coupled on a page.

No optimizations are possible for an exponentially resource greedy problem.

I just linked my multi page blog post describing the problems I ran into.

> The decision to have scopes be objects that (sometimes, not always) inherit from one another, is entirely on Angular

It's almost as if they try to shoehorn a custom adhoc programming language straight into your dom-nodes, but they couldn't be that stupid, right?

> It's one of the first web framework that comes with a specific testing framework.

Where on earth did you get that idea?

> AngularJS didn't became popular because it was from Google

But it was definitely helped that it was so heavily promoted by Google

> your point about ng-model and scopes is valid. But it's not a angular problem, it's a javascript issue

Again...what? JavaScript doesn't have `ng-model`...Angular does. It's an Angular problem through and through.

> Where on earth did you get that idea?

Well you didn't disprove my assertion (I was obviously talking about front end frameworks) by citing a front end framework that came with an extensive testing framework. So why on earth are you saying something without backing it with facts?

> But it was definitely helped that it was so heavily promoted by Google

I started using AngularJS in 2011 it had 0 promotion from Google. It wasn't even a Google product at that time.

> Again...what? JavaScript doesn't have `ng-model`...Angular does. It's an Angular problem through and through.

No the problem is that Javascript doesn't have pointer variables,therefore when using variables in a scope you need to use object properties and not objects directly if you want to refer to it in the outer scope. It has nothing to do with angular but everything to do with the way Javascript works.

>Well you didn't disprove my assertion (I was obviously talking about front end frameworks) by citing a front end framework that came with an extensive testing framework. So why on earth are you saying something without backing it with facts?

Let me help settle which of you two is the liar then.

Ember comes with tooling for unit-tests and so does Qooxdoo (which also includes Selinium support out of the box). And that's just two of three i'm familiar with.

>No the problem is that Javascript doesn't have pointer variables

There you go: pass-by-reference semantics (i.e. pointer variable)

    var flow = function( init ){ 
      return function( v ){ 
        if( v !== undefined ) init = v; 
        return init; 
      } 
    }

> It has nothing to do with angular but everything to do with the way Javascript works.

No, it has to do with the ad-hoc programming language shoehorned into dom-nodes. Javascript has lexical scoping, Angular does not, because its control-flow lives in your dom. It also doesn't have encapsulation or proper step-debugging this way. But none of that has anything to do with Javascript. If all that logic lived in a .js file lexical scoping would be possible and recommended.

>Anything that makes programmers productive is a great tool. Angular 1.x definitely makes teams productive.

Definately? Based on what? The teams i've seen and projects i've been on that use Angular take much longer and end up with slow, buggier code.

>Sure it isn't perfect, but show me something better with all the features AngularJs has.

Meteor, Ember, React, Qooxdoo, Extjs, Backbone, etc... pretty much every other framework. Most of them don't specify a half-baked programming language hiding in data attributes in your dom-nodes.

>AngularJS became popular because it was obviously superior in term of developer experience

That is a lie. Angular seems to attract back-end programmers who have been moved to the front-end because it uses design patterns that are more common to back-end development. Find me a single Angular fan, that has actual job experience with at least two other SPA frameworks.

>Instead of saying "this thing is bad", Educate them. But I guess sensationalism drives more clicks.

You are misrepresenting his blog post, mostly out of spite.

Here's a more generic complaint: doing control-flow by annotating dom-nodes dom just means you lose proper debugging, refactoring, scoping and not to forget: hurts performance (since dom reads are much too expensive).

Angular is one of the worst executions of a fundamentally flawed approach. The only people defending it are those who are not familiar with _any other alternative_.

Some feedback; your article on angular is awful.

It's got some good information on some pieces of angular that more people should have a better understanding of, yes. However, trying to absorb that information through the shouting and sensational ranting is almost impossible.

This same article could have been written by a level-headed coder who understands the complexity of making a widely distributed browser frameworks and it would have been called "5 Angular Idiosyncrasies" or "Tricky Angular Patterns".

But no, sensationalism sells and loud, strident claims win the day. Why have humility and get less clicks when you can write a scathing takedown using strawman arguments and style yourself the next Crockford?

Your points are entirely valid criticisms, but your language and attitude make you sound like a blowhard trying to prove something or a shill promoting a competing framework with negative press.

FWIW, my tone in that article is exactly the tone I would have if you got me started on this in a real life conversation. If I sound like a blowhard, at least I'm an authentic blowhard, it's not some act I put on for the clicks.

The tone comes from being legitimately angry at these flaws in Angular, but also from having to discover them myself, instead of reading about them on someone else's blog. The various JavaScript frameworks affect hundreds of thousands of developers every day, and choosing the wrong one can cost companies a lot of money. I really think that as a profession we'd make progress faster if more people wrote angry blog posts about things that are bad.

Your article is solid and I am grateful that you wrote it.

And I understand your tone completely.

When a framework is oversold in a major way those who try to use it on real life projects get very frustrated.

I appreciate a human, conversational approach to technical information and applaud you for your blog's tone. If you were writing for a professional news site it might be inappropriate but as a post on your own blog, you're entitled to whatever writing style you want.

Then lets be sure not to have any real-life conversations, though I do appreciate you being authentic about it.

I agree 100% with the idea that it's better when people know about potential pitfalls before making big decisions and I hate how much marketing is involved in promoting frameworks. Read any of my comments on a Meteor post and you'll see similar anger and points to those you made about Angular.

However, anger is over-rated as a communication tool and is automatically limiting your receptive audience. I use is without thinking and shoot myself in the foot all the time, like in my comments about Meteor. But comments are comments and easy to publish without re-reading to consider how the intended recipient will take your words.

Not so with blog posts, when considering your audience you should consider whether people who are turned off by blowhard advice are going to respond how you want. Or do you only care about reaching those people who like to be yelled at, or are already angry with you (and thus a part of a choir you are preaching to)?

I see there are others willing to express appreciation for your tone, I will not. The question is, because I don't agree with your tone, am I the one who misses out on what you (and other blowhards) have to say, or are you the one who misses out on the positive responses of everyone who feels the same as me?

Also, consider how much of what you opine on regarding patterns and standards or whatever isn't naively influencing those new coders you're trying to save with your bluster. Here is a relevant article from the homepage today, does it resonate at all?

http://jamisondance.com/03-29-2015/cynicism-and-experience/

Sheesh, I never got into angular because the "DI by parameter name" thing seriously bugged me but had no idea that the variable scoping in models could depend on the order that the inputs are used! How can people live with that?

Interesting article, although I feel that some of your time may have been better spent submitting the changes you felt (like for documentation) as pull requests to help make it better, rather than just ripping on it.