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Why Learning Angular 2 Was Excruciating

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Re: Why Learning Angular 2 Was Excruciating

#201

Post by aikah »

shitgoose wrote: post #169

now you understand how some of us feel about Java... ironically, JS is just a natural evolution of Java, taken to a logical conclusion, so to speak.

You forgot an important difference between JS and Java : the tooling is inferior. Sure you can use Typescript which makes thing a little bit better, but good luck with out dated type definitions or libraries that do not have type definitions, good luck with templates can't be validated ( forgot some directive ? misspelled a component name ? too bad you're fucked ... ). Java is verbose but there is a fairly large number of tools and IDE that make programming painless. JS on the other hand, good luck maintaining those 1 million LOC codebases ...

Re: Why Learning Angular 2 Was Excruciating

#202

Post by ng12 »

flukus wrote: post #200
gaastonsr wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just want to hear your answer with one of those... How did you do type checking before TypeScript (or the like) in JS? give me a real answer.......

I didn't, and you didn't mention type checking above. One very common way though was to avoid the need for it altogether in javascript, by rendering html on the server.

That's a different poster, and I did mention it above.

What does server-side rendering have to do with Typescript? Are you advocating avoiding javascript all together?

Re: Why Learning Angular 2 Was Excruciating

#203

Post by flukus »

ng12 wrote: post #202
flukus wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't, and you didn't mention type checking above. One very common way though was to avoid the need for it altogether in javascript, by rendering html on the server.

That's a different poster, and I did mention it above. What does server-side rendering have to do with Typescript? Are you advocating avoiding javascript all together?

Sorry, I missed that, I was replying to the parent comment only.

But yes, I do advocate avoiding javascript altogether whenever possible (which is more often than current trends). There were a number of other transpilers too, all of which were a pain and I don't see how typescript is going to improve on that.

Re: Why Learning Angular 2 Was Excruciating

#204

Post by adamnemecek »

DigitalSea wrote: post #155
dkarapetyan wrote: post #33

I'm just gonna leave this here: http://aurelia.io/ . Aurelia is truly a professional operation.

As someone who has been using Aurelia for over 12 months now, I am happy to see someone post this. A great framework that hasn't really had any major breaking changes, even when it was alpha, then beta and release candidate. Keeping it up-to-date has been no effort at all and I have been building with it since it was basically announced. The thing I find funny about Angular 2 is all of the breaking changes they made…

What do you mean by "greentea oriented framework"?

Re: Why Learning Angular 2 Was Excruciating

#205

Post by sangnoir »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #193
ecnahc515 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, because it means all my users can install the same application and I only have to write it once for all platforms. Not every platform/OS even has a (good) package manager. So I think this alone is what makes the web great.

True. But users don't care. Not only that, such ease had only created more noise and less expertise. Piss all you want about MS and Apple back in the day but they understood quality control. Today? Ha. We just have lower expectations. We accept shite because we have no other choice. Furthermore, free isn't free when my privacy is sold and/or my eye balls are subjected to even more ads. This is progress? No fucking wa…

> Piss all you want about MS and Apple back in the day but they understood quality control

I don't know what you are on about as there weren't any app stores controlled by Apple or MS. Anyone was able to release crap software on floppy disks or BBS, and they did.

Re: Why Learning Angular 2 Was Excruciating

#206

Post by mewm »

Bahamut wrote: post #86
mewm wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you enlighten me where Google uses Angular in their own apps?

I've been told directly by multiple Angular team members that over 70% of Google apps uses Angular in some fashion. They have said the usage of Angular off of HEAD of master publicly in the past as well, but I don't recall off the top of my head where they have said this.

Well, this thread definitely shined some new light on the area for my. I was actually under the impression that Angular (at least 1.*) wasn't really used within Google. I guess I'm just that stupid and naive.

Re: Why Learning Angular 2 Was Excruciating

#207

Post by automatwon »

jkkramer wrote: post #36

It's interesting to contrast how Google and Facebook both approach open source for the web. Google tends to release code and promote it without really using it much internally first. Documentation is prolific but confusingly organized and often fragmented among several versions simultaneously (cough, Google Analytics). Facebook, on the other hand, actually seems to use their code before releasing and promoting it. Lo…

The company is not at risk. Their open source work reflects that.

Angular came out 2.5 years before React. Facebook had a predecessor to flesh out what does and doesn't work. Google started the autonomous car, and now other companies are following suit. Google starts the race, but they might not be in first place at the end. Ultimately, consumers win.

Better code -> better products -> profits.

What about Golang? Considering this conclusion is out of scope from the premise 'open source for the web', anyways.

Is it the documentation that is the essence of 'better code'? If not, then what? Left to my own devices, I will summon functional programming constructs such as Monads or Catamorphisms in personal projects. Keyword: personal projects. I think it's elegant, but someone unfamiliar with these constructs might abhor it. Analogously, what's the best programming language?

Do the arrows imply: if better code then better products, and if better products then more profits? If that's the logical structure, I can easily think of examples of companies enjoying great profits but bad code / bad products. Moreover, the direction of causality could also be profits -> better products -> better code. In reality, it's most likely to be a complex / dynamical relationship involving many other variables.

Google is largely impervious in the search and ad space, which is their cash cow. It almost doesn't matter how good or bad their other products are.

What other products from Facebook did you have in mind? I genuinely cannot think of anything other than the social network, Instagram, and Facebook messenger. Facebook is largely impervious in the social networking and ad space. Does it matter how good or bad their other products are?

Re: Why Learning Angular 2 Was Excruciating

#208

Post by gaius »

ng12 wrote: post #192
flukus wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I don't work for a bakery -- I work for a large company with a complex tech stack writing web applications that will have to be maintained by some poor sucker long after I move on. Or rewritten because the flavor of the month has changed. >Tools like React/Angular, Webpack, and npm allow me to do that in a way I couldn't as little as 3-4 years ago. What exactly couldn't you do 3-4 years ago that you can now?

The big shift has been from managing complexity to avoiding it where possible, encapsulating it when not. In my current favorite webstack, every logical view is abstracted behind an API (which happens to be a React Component). Internally, everything about that component is encapsulated -- the internal implementation, the sub-components, even the CSS thanks to CSS Modules. In fact, if I really had a reason to write a…

Writing UI code is hard, and I'm not sure why some HN folks assume web developers are ignorant.

But it really isn't and the proof is HyperCard from the 1980s. It's only hard because you have made it hard, for no reason that anyone can fathom (apart perhaps from job security).

Re: Why Learning Angular 2 Was Excruciating

#209

Post by wccrawford »

stupidcar wrote: post #112
specialp wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think OP has made a mistake calling it a framework as it is not a framework, it is a library. People have added more libraries to it. On the contrary, yes Angular is a bonafide kitchen sink framework missing the major advantage of a framework: A STABLE somewhat opinionated stack. You are correct though that making React into a "framework" is a hot mess.

While React is certainly more lightweight in many respects that something like Angular or Ember, I still think it qualifies as a framework. For me, the primary difference between a library and a framework is the the typical direction of instantiation and calls between your own code and that of the library/framework, and the ownership of the main workflow / event loop. E.g. does it feel like your code uses the 3rd par…

I agree. React is far too opinionated for me to treat it as just a library. I use it as a framework just as I would use Angular, and it fits the bill. That it can also be used as just a library is a bonus, but doesn't define its identity.

Re: Why Learning Angular 2 Was Excruciating

#210

Post by wccrawford »

codelike wrote: post #47
stevebmark wrote: post #9

To me this is still why React feels like the first front end UI framework that got it "right." It stays close to vanilla Javascript. There's a tiny API surface area to learn, and the rest is vanilla Javascript classes and functions. Angular's API, and apparently Angular 2.0's API, is still large, and strays far from vanilla Javascript

That's one of the pros often mentioned about React. In practice, I haven't found it to be true so far. Once you start using React, you'll almost certainly have to use one the Flux implementations. So let's say you use Redux. Suddenly you also have Actions, Reducers and Stores that you have to learn. If you want to use Async Actions (which is very likely in a web application), you'll probably need Redux Thunk, so that…

I've been using React for small projects in my personal time, and I haven't needed anything like Flux at all. Maybe you'll need it for complex apps, but React can be used for small ones without that added complication.
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