Is Angular changing TOO much?

[@JoshuaMorony]

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[@NeroG4ming]

In germany we say "Lieber gut kopiert als schlecht erfunden" which means "It is better to copy in a good way, then invent something in a bad way". And that fits here perfectly

[@marcel5235]

I heard that in Germany you use angular pretty much as standard front end framework, and more steady and calm ( I am eatern neighbor from Pilsen near Bavaria :D, and it is quite opposite tech wise here due to start up concentration in Prague ), what is you own personal view about that

[@Simon-yf7fo]

Never heard this saying and I live in switzerland. We use Angular in a small company with 10 employees and it feels really well made and modern. Flutter and Angular are my favorite frameworks at the moment but especially Angular just works. I earlier had to work with JavaFX due to us using it in school and now I view the Frontend world completly different.

[@Martinspire]

We say that in Dutch as well :)

[@NoName-1337]

I totally agree, I love it, that angular becomes more simpler and faster. Maybe one day they switch their file/code-design to svelte and change ivy to compile angular to some lowlevel js like in svelte xD

[@adambickford8720]

Its starting to feel like java; there's 5 ways to do something but 3 are deprecated, 1 has fallen out of favor and the last is in preview.

[@TimurMishagin]

If it's as powerful as the current approach I don't see any reason to continue supporting the old way forever. Frontend changes more often than backend so it's affordable to migrate (not like 20 y.o. java backend)

[@theanswer1993]

But Angular team always makes sure that they provide an easy update from one concept to another. If a project is stuck on a really old version it's their problem not the frameworks's. New projects are started every day and we should have an option to use the latest concepts that are introduced. And Angular keeps new features in developer previews for quite some time so you always have time to get familiar with it and slowly add it to your project. Angular will slowly stop supporting older concepts as well I am sure of it. It just wont be so drastic as for example what Vue did with Vue 2.

[@LarsRyeJeppesen]

I jus did a new application from scratch at work, - using signals, no modules whatsoever. It is such an awesome experience!

[@StephenMoreira]

I'm all on board with the changes. I don't do Svelte, but when Angular mentioned to change in syntax it took me 5 mins from,hmmmm another change. Ooooo you know what that is better, and probably more readable compared to what we are doing now.

[@cab4465]

As someone who loves using Vue but is forced to use Angular for work, this is amazing.

[@stevepottz111]

Facts haha

[@_drago_uzh5146]

++

[@LarsRyeJeppesen]

Angular is becoming super super awesome to be fair. When we get signal-based components it will be amazing, we can finally remove zoneJs.

[@kylerjohnson988]

Personally, I love the changes that are coming and I think they’re necessary if Angular is going to survive. People have long lamented the limited integration of RxJS within the framework itself. Signals solve that and in future releases it will dramatically improve change detection in Angular.

[@timothydog76]

Our company was coming from ExtJS and I pushed us towards Angular a couple years ago. Now we have multiple applications with Angular and I just finished up another (with a couple tips from Josh himself!). I really love seeing these changes in Angular because, as he says, I don't want Angular to become another ExtJS situation. I love having the ability to try new exciting features.

[@dracula5752]

i personally love OOP but when i tried angular was hard but seeing this new updates gonna try it again.

[@ChrisPerko]

I agree. At first, I thought that the syntax seemed weird for angular, as we are used to HTML-like syntax. However, the benefits of cleaning up ngIfElse, ngSwitch, etc will be greatly appreciated. Also, not to mention, the mess that is ngFor trackBy. I never use it because the authoring experience is so bad 😜 (and let's face it, I forget to even use it)

[@JoshuaMorony]

Writing trackBy functions is one of the few things in Angular where I just feel like "...seriously?" ... and yes I also frequently forget :D

[@МаксимКобєлєв-у1р]

I totally agree that I’d rather have to update my codebase every once in a while to keep up with Angular improvements rather than stick to a stinky legacy framework. I’m really excited that the Angular team finally decided to improve the framework (and there’ a LOT of space for improvements there)

[@VyacheslavVyajev]

@JoshuaMorony Great video! Can you please tell me which vscode theme you are using?

[@JoshuaMorony]

Sure, I'm using using the gruvbox theme

[@fegyi001]

I also think he is not using VSCode, but Neovim :) Which is something I highly recommend.

[@andimclean]

I've been playing with Signals and Standalone components in a private project and I love it. Can't wait for input and output signals.

[@JensChristianLarsen]

As a professional. it is not possible to keep up with Angular when working on a 100k+ cloc Angular project. It seems you always get stuck on a version near your starting point. However, as a hobbyist it's cool that the framework remains fresh.

[@ytamb01]

It's possible to keep up if you stay on top of it. Our app started on Angular 8 and is now Angular 15. We update annually, which means we are usually only a version or two behind the latest during the course of the year. Even though it's quite a large app now (not sure about 100k loc though!) the migration process is really well polished and it's usually only an afternoon to update angular and other dependencies.

[@JensChristianLarsen]

@@ytamb01 Good to hear the upgrade experience has improved. I have built enterprise apps since AngularJS 1.2 and it has historically been terrible. We have started a new project on 12 and hope for the best :-) What is your policy with new Angular features such as signals and standalone components? Do you migrate existing code, ignore the new feature or let developers use whatever they want?

[@ytamb01]

@@JensChristianLarsen I started on Angular 4 so I don't have your experience. A lot of the major changes have been relatively recent as this video says :) Migrations have been relatively minor up to v15. We haven't taken on signals or standalone components yet but we are starting to use inject, which makes component inheritance a lot cleaner (see monsterlessons academy for the benefits). We are quite lucky with our product that that our management team give us time in each release to update and refactor. It's not a generous amount of time but lets us keep up to date. Why are you starting on angular 12?

[@sasagasparovic9351]

I really like new control flow syntax in template. It looks much cleaner and easier to recognize the conditional part of the code

[@mastahpiece007]

I too liked that Angular was different from svelte/next.js etc in their syntax and approach. I guess we will see how much the new changes influence the development in general

[@NeroG4ming]

I like to code, but I dont want to write a book. Less code I write, less code I have to read and understand. Both is good

[@herotyc]

I am 100% in favor of these changes, even if I don't need them, and even if it seems to be evolving into a new framework, as long as they still keep and not break the current way of working for a reasonable amount of time, so the transition is smooth and calm and the programmers can decide when to rework the codebases. I really like the transparency of the angular team, and I thing they need to have that in mind, transparency is the key for the developers to put trust in angular. Thank you for you videos.

[@LarsRyeJeppesen]

I look crazily forward to signal based components. Good times!

[@MattBodman]

Totally agree with your take on this. Nice summary!

[@PatrikHorvatic]

A lot of changes, but very welcome ones. Keeping up with web dev trends keeps Angular alive

[@nomiscph]

Love that we landed on the @ syntax its much cleaner

[@andreyyastrebtsov4367]

I am currently just learning Angular, after two years of work with React. And honestly I don't like these changes. The main reason why I left React world is that it is constantly changing and trying to find new "revolutionary" ways to solve the same problems. So instead of getting proficient with it, you always find yourself re-learning it. I hope at least, that these changes are REALLY backwards compatible. And saying that these changes make Angular easier for beginners, I can't completely agree. See, I can learn right now signals standalone components and be a cool kid, but what happens when I encounter usual components, and ngrx in place of signals? My productivity decreases drastically. So in my opinion, these new features do not exclude learning the old ones. More features and ways to work with the framework - harder to learn it.

[@johalternate]

I havent used react a lot so I cant compare the situation here, but with angular all this new changes really look like the QOL changes that are basically implementations of patterns already used by developers, so it doesnt feel like Angular is introducing new stuff to learn but rather improving how we do things that we were already doing, signal input is a very clear example of that. As for the compatibility I 100% believe thats going to be the case based on how they have handled previous updates.

[@karamuto1565]

Be assured that this "new fancy" if syntax won't replace the current directive based syntax. I actually even made my own special *ngIf's in our project. ( In our case it's a way for to "ngif" special view breakpoints for the container it's attached to )

[@LarsRyeJeppesen]

Ngrx is fully compatible with signals, in fact it embraces it. It's totally awesome!

[@LarsRyeJeppesen]

Functional based ngrx is insanely nice to work with btw.

[@MrMartin627]

I really hope that with Signals and with the new resulting standard of building components that take signals as input we also get better documentation and examples. THE major drawback for me as a full-stack dev that has to keep up with a bunch of technologies, is that whenever I wish to build something in Angular, it's too hard to find out what the current best practices are, and being able to base my solutions off of a well-thought out example is always nice to have. Currently I feel like an archelogist ploughing through 15 years of Angular history whenever I google something and the standard docs aren't too great either. So: I love the changes and they're better. I hate that when I look up examples most results are outdated Angular team should worry about making Angular easier to learn. This could really hurt the platform imo (just look at the recent stackoverflow survey publication f.e.)

[@theanswer1993]

But I think that's the thing with any framework. I wanted to try React and Vue but couldn't find best practices anywhere. Some people do it one way and the others do it the other way.

[@niccolofanton8039]

I think it's good to add cool features from other frameworks/libraries but I think that they should put a bit more effort into SSR

[@theanswer1993]

They are. There are new features added for hydration and they have even bigger plans for v17

[@GdeVseSvobodnyeNiki]

Not so sure about flow control syntax because it lacks nesting levels, but signal inputs is the feature i was waiting for.

[@danlm]

Personally I really appreciate the changes, for a long time we have seen other frameworks and libs implementing new good patterns and I was felling Angular it was not in the conversation, it's good to see efforts over performance, DX and more enhancements in mind, I think we need this.

[@LarsRyeJeppesen]

noo these changes are so awesome! It's mindblowingly cool! loving it

[@abdulnafay72]

The Signals are already out but still i didnt get a chance to use them and still alot changes are coming very awkward stage.

[@toxaq]

As someone still stuck with a large AngularJS project, this looks like the way they should've moved to Angular (2). This is basically Angular 3 but with a proper upgrade path

[@TayambaMwanza]

I prefer the term AngularNext

[@toxaq]

@@TayambaMwanza I call AngularJS RektAngular.

[@GLawSomnia]

I honestly like the changes, but i am also someone who like to learn new things, especially if it adds simplicity (ps: I am not one of those twitter influencers) and as you said the changes will most likely have migrations and you will have enough time to update.

[@prodevus]

I'm too far into my Angular project to rebuild the whole shebang in Svelte, which is what I really want to use. These changes make it less demotivating to keep using Angular

[@jaredwilliams8621]

I appreciate the changes, but as others have said, I feel these major changes are coming too fast. My coworkers and I have made it a priority to try and follow Angular best practices, but with so many recent changes, it is getting really difficult to even know what those best practices are. Trying to find current, relevant, and high quality examples and documentation with Angular is made difficult by Angular's aggressive, 6 month, release cycle. While it does get new features out quickly it also waters down the significance of major version numbers, making it difficult to determine which "era" of Angular the example is done for. For example, I still haven't found much of a consensus on whether or not we should use standalone components exclusively. There is very little documentation on signals, but soon components will be using them. Finally, the new ways of doing things concern me over the lifespan of our legacy code. How long will it be until signal components are the only components? We don't have time to go back to a project every 6 months and update it to the latest standards. Will Angular and others maintain their documentation for all these different ways of doing things?

[@tow96]

I like the changes, but I agree that they are happening to fast for their own good, signals just released and there has been very little time for people to build things with it before they added more things

[@TimurMishagin]

I think it's better this way because it's a competition. Even for frameworks

[@theanswer1993]

I don't agree. I would add new stuff even faster and deprecate old stuff faster but you can't do that without people going crazy.

[@Gigusx]

I think Angular looks scary for many new devs and that especially pushes away people who already use React or Vue, because why would they want to learn it if it's more complex and falling in popularity? These changes should make it a lot more attractive and draw new people in, and maybe breath new life into the framework as you said in the vid, and make things easier for everyone already using it.

[@shunz5677]

Angular is falling in popularity? I heard opposite :P But maybe I heard lies :)

[@Gigusx]

@@shunz5677 It might be doing better at this moment (esp. since the news and updates), I haven't checked the latest trends, but generally Angular has been decreasing in popularity for the past few years.

[@CaptainBearddd]

I'll never understand people that think angular is more complex/scary than react/svelte. It's practically plain HTML, CSS, TS files...

[@shunz5677]

@@CaptainBearddd Maybe because Angular is a framework with some "rules" to follow. So many people think that Angular will limit them, because you konow - JS is all about freedom. My friend told me that he doesn't like Angular because it force him to use TypeScript and he has to make a lot of files to even simple web site systems. Modules for example were too some kind of burden (especially when your app wasn't that big) but right know we have the Standalone Components. Just in time :)

[@Gigusx]

@@CaptainBearddd I think it makes a lot of sense. Look at this from a beginner's perspective who wants to get into their first framework - out of the box Angular code looks more complicated than its React counterpart, for example. TS is another entry barrier that you don't (necessarily) have to worry about in other frameworks, then there's also RxJS. Another thing that I remember, when I first heard of Angular, is that the documentation absolutely sucked and was unapproachable, compared to React's documentation which was much better designed. When Vue came out it had a great documentation too, while Angular's still hadn't improved. It was years ago and I don't know how much it's improved since then, but it'd stayed like that for enough time to drive many people away to other frameworks.

[@nathanalberg]

Ive been using signals and really like it... the main issue is signals inputs and forms with signals... but obviously thats coming in 17.. so far its all good.. since its additive and not really a change. you opt into it all

[@babarqb]

Hi Joshua, what is the name of the color scheme you use in this video?

[@JoshuaMorony]

Gruvbox :)

[@phennexion]

Awesome video, thanks for the great summary!!

[@deefdragon]

there are a number of changes that I think are great for angular, but there are also a few straight up odd choices they have made recently. the deprecation of class based access guards being one an example. atleast they always ship a migration tool.

[@telvinmathews7504]

I think the changes are great! I also love svelte and I can not wait for more updates. Angular is moving in a good direction IMO!

[@TheoLeChnow]

Do you actually believe angular team will provide a schematic to migrate html file based on old control flow to latest ? seems unbelievable to me ^^

[@beeman-dev]

I applaud the changes but what I don't like is that they keep adding properties to the decorator. You're writing more in the decorator than in the class. Personally, I hope Angular will support function based components at some point.

[@JoshuaMorony]

Yes, I'm indifferent to function based components (that change would be a very hot potato generally though), but I definitely think we need to see these flags out of the decorator soon. The signals/standalone flags are easy enough, it's more about the migration story. The "imports" strike me as being the most annoying thing with the current set up, but one that isn't so easily solvable. Basically I mostly just want the template in the decorator, and then why don't we just move that out too lol.

[@TayambaMwanza]

I think they should've introduced all these new changes in a new .ng format.

[@karamuto1565]

I am actually fine with the current directive based solution because it still looks more like I am using HTML. But I guess that's subjective.

[@aravindmuthu5748]

with the new changes, is it worth it to learn rxjs for Angular??

[@CodingAbroad]

Yes. Signals can’t do async stuff

[@TayambaMwanza]

Start with signals then upgrade to rxjs when ready.

[@merlinwarage]

@@TayambaMwanza No, he should do the opposite. You need rxjs for streams, like http requests, etc. Signal is only good for events.

[@TayambaMwanza]

@@merlinwarage I disagree signals are better for state rxjs is good for events, so should learn both.

[@mjerez6029]

so we going back to handlebars templates 👍

[@John69]

IMO: It is actually good that more frameworks are becoming universal in terms of writing components (html layout and its logic). They still handle other things differently and provide more (angular) or less (others) built-in opinionated features and philosophies. I think that syntax regarding dataflows between components and their basic logic should not be something that any JS framework should boil down to.

[@AntonioSantana-ll8il]

I'm agree with you, angular is giving to the developers more options and features to use

[@darrennienaber6488]

On the money Josh👍

[@rustammukhametshin484]

In my opinion, comparing all frameworks, Angular is the best 🔥

[@NoName-1337]

I love angular in it's current form, but I also like the changes that angular gets. I will looking forward to use the new changes.

[@ShaharHarshuv]

So yeah I actually do want to move to another framework but I can't because of legacy. Angular 2 WAS another framework that required rebuilding the app. THIS is the best of both worlds - I can keep using my legacy code but continue developing with better API

[@INDABRIT]

Angular is still very opinionated, they're just reducing boilerplate while also improving efficiency required to fit into its structures and opinions

[@TayambaMwanza]

Good take

[@Simon-yf7fo]

The new Syntax looks really out of place with the curly brackets but I'll probably get used to it. Other than that Angular ONLY had good improvements lately. Pretty much qvery change they made wasn't even braking anything that existed before so I don't really see how people could even criticise that.

[@o_glethorpe]

If you´re not forced to change and can pick what you want its good. Like, I like modules and also like signals.

[@shariar13877]

Angular could have used vue directives instead of svelte template.

[@TayambaMwanza]

Angular does use vue directives e.g ngClass

[@shariar13877]

Yes, I mean it could've made it simpler like vue, but switching to svelte .. don't think is a good idea

[@v.bourdeix]

I don't think there's anything complicated with these new features. If you think about it, the framework had very few changes since the beggining of Angular 2 so these changes are welcome. I've never really liked this ugly syntax of *ngIf and *ngFor, so even if I got used to it, I would happily change for this new syntax.

[@EJSulit]

I like it!

[@PauloSantos-yu1tn]

Changing things are not bad, but he angular team is changing things too fast. For those who run small projects, it's not a problem. But for large projects, may become a problem. In my opinion they are running behind react.

[@JoshuaMorony]

I think it's kind of awkward either way - I think the Angular team have a broader vision of where they want to take Angular, these aren't just a bunch of isolated changes they are throwing in all at once. If they do the changes quickly then it's a lot of updating all at once, but if they do it slowly then we remain in this awkward middle stage for a long time where the ideas aren't fully fleshed out (i.e. kind of what we have now where we have signals, but no signal components)

[@PauloSantos-yu1tn]

@@JoshuaMorony Every six months it's too fast. I mean, standalone components was not a big change in code style, signals are... Signal components are. So i like those changes, but i fell like they should give time to developers to mastering the new things. Bu still agree with you.

[@jaredwilliams8621]

​@@JoshuaMoronyI honestly feel like Angular releasing signals without signal components was a bit of a misstep, and was probably due to the aggressive 6 month release cycle. A longer release cycle likely would have meant that they would be released together. I think a slower release cycle with more well defined differences between major versions would greatly benefit Angular. It will help Angular to have more fully flushed out changes. It will help developers understand what their version of Angular does and does not have. And it will help those writing documentation and best practices with having time to produce content that will have some sort of meaningful longevity (outside of 6 months).

[@francoisguezengar6255]

I'll definitely miss the one line *ngIf compared to the if block in the new model

[@mosesnandi]

The real question is who is using Angular?

[@CodingAbroad]

I am!

[@asatorftw]

It feels like Angular is trying hard to get close to Svelte.

[@JosimarBezerra-fx8wb]

I agree with you. I've been very pleased with the updates the Angular Team has presented so far. I think we're gonna benefit quite a lot from them, and that's enough for me to get excited about the future of the framework.

[@ianokay]

Before I watch this I just want to say, yes I think so. I'm still not convinced declarative magical subscriptions, and non-magical explicit injection coded into function bodies, are the way to go. I'll add another comment after watching if I change my mind :P

[@TayambaMwanza]

Adapt or die, either Angular stays the same and eventually dies off way sooner, or they re-invent and upset some people but continue to draw in newcomers

[@chaka1530]

Too many changes... I don't like where the framework is heading.

[@i.j.5513]

The new conditional syntax will definitely offer a better alternative to the structural directives. And, coupled together with signals, as you've illustrated will make conditional rendering easier and less convoluted, as well as eliminating the nesting of ng-containers and similar approaches.

[@ronjobs2359]

Looks like Twig Templates🤔

[@ianokay]

Okay that control flow syntax is just a joke at this point. How many more random ASCII chars do they want to add as a part of it? Love it. {&for {%if {^item {*empty {@if {$$for

[@JoshuaMorony]

I agree it's jarring at first - I ran into it in Svelte before Angular but I remember it feeling weird. But the general idea is # for "start", : for "continue", and / for "end" and after thinking of it like that it seemed more natural.

[@Forshen]

2:05 Vue and React are too different in my eyes. React uses jsx.

[@TimurMishagin]

Amen

[@valikonen]

Angular change TL, they finally put a JS developer, but java... and try to make angular good for web, not just for design patterns

[@sivuyilemagutywa5286]

I personally don't like the RFC for control flow syntax, I am also not a fan of JSX, syntax is also very important to me.

[@LeungWong]

That conditional syntax looks like how it was in for instance .NET Razor. Good or bad you tell me

[@NvmThemHereIAm]

At this point I'm considering just quitting Angular. A lot of these changes are meant to simplify, but in reality, increase the complexity of the framework. I just want a syntax that I can rely on to not get deprecated within the next 6 months

[@TayambaMwanza]

Angular syntax hasn't changed for 10 years, this is the first time.

[@NvmThemHereIAm]

@@TayambaMwanza I don't only mean syntax. I recently upgraded a project from Angular 8 to Angular 15 and the amount of dependency issues was astounding

[@TayambaMwanza]

@@NvmThemHereIAm Fair enough, but I honestly think you got the worst of it v8,v9 Era was not the best

[@Gigusx]

I think people will get a lot more time to upgrade than 6 months.

[@DenisEneotescu]

I still don't know a person that went from React/Svelte/Vue to Angular. And says it all about Angular's state.

[@andreyyastrebtsov4367]

I came to Angular from React))

[@theanswer1993]

I came from React. As soon as I saw JSX and Redux I was like nope.

[@TayambaMwanza]

Now you can edit your message, you know 2 people 😂

[@ninjedi6710]

gawd thats a horrible looking syntax. they should just add jsx support at this point.

[@naranyala_dev]

less code is better

[@defenseman84]

Seriously, knowing what end result is, who the hell would write that any of those 3 ways. Just keep it simple with 3 ngIfs. Do all your computation elsewhere in service calls. Who is with me?!

[@TayambaMwanza]

Have you use the new syntax before?

[@jacky2476]

What is Angular😅 why am I suggested to watch this? is it smth like flutter

[@JoshuaMorony]

It's a general Javascript framework like Svelte/Vue/React... as for why it was suggested to you, you'll have to take that up with the algorithm ;)

[@CaptainBearddd]

Yes. I like Angular for the simple to understand, strict syntax. If I wanted this ugly @$$ control flow syntax like React and Svelte has then I'd switch to the other frameworks. Angular is good at being Angular.

[@TayambaMwanza]

They are not removing directives and services though, are you saying the only reason you use angular is for ngIf?

[@CaptainBearddd]

@@TayambaMwanza I enjoy angular for it's clean presentation and strong separation of concern. Directives such as ngIf are fine because they're inline with the HTML and represent a similar style to native html attributes. What I despise about this is that there is something other than HTML attributes, tags or directives being added into the HTML. It makes it harder to quickly and effectively read the HTML file because now you have to consider nested logic. It's one of the main reasons that I despise React because despite managing multiple React engineers over the last half decade, almost every single code base I've read is practically unreadable and removed from any concept of 'clean code' due to the monstrosity that is JSX. Obviously this is just my opinion, and I accept it being a 'hot take'.

[@TayambaMwanza]

@@CaptainBearddd fair enough, I used to think ngIf was the best, I had to do a project in Svelte, when I started using this syntax I eventually realized that I like it better, so maybe when you get to use it you might find it better, I think it's hard to say for sure until you use it if it's truly good or not. Angular team is not removing directives, the one thing I like about this is it makes it much clearer which part is your component and which part is just logic show/hide component and what will be shown if component is hidden. If thisComponent else thatComponent Is very intuitive

[@CaptainBearddd]

@@TayambaMwanza they *are* proposing removing directives altogether.

[@TayambaMwanza]

@@CaptainBearddd No they are not removing directives all together, please show me where they are removing them altogether. They want to remove control flow directives (ngIf, ngSwitch, ngSwitchCase and replace them with (#if, #switch, :case) That's why the new syntax only addresses control flow, directives do so much more than control flow.

[@mrgerbeck]

I hate angular. Only used it when forced to, hated it. Can't believe teams opt-in into this cluster fuck.

[@olduniverse9270]

Dont like this if for syntax.

[@david007x]

Lol, why don't you just support jxs :)

[@theanswer1993]

Because it's garbage.

[@david007x]

@@theanswer1993 garbage!!, can you justify compared to the control flow approach?