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Why does Angular.js rock?

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Re: Why does Angular.js rock?

#111

Post by reedlaw »

overgard wrote: post #102
forkhammer wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the brief answer, as I understand it: they're frameworks that provide model-view data binding, ease data/presentational decoupling, and (in some cases) provide single-page app (SPA) infrastructure in the mode of MV*. In short, they're designed to tackle some of the common complexities that arise when writing feature-rich multi-part SPAs. You can do it all on your own, for sure, and I actually think that writin…

That's just more buzzwords though. I mean, why do I even need model view data binding? I'm not saying it's not nice to have, but I've written some pretty complicated applications and I never really found data binding to be some sort of killer feature. It's generally struck me as a great demo feature that in reality I'll pretty much never use. I guess I'd find these things more convincing if they showed me some sort o…

It's like Rails vs. a custom web app. If you asked me to maintain an existing Rails app, I would feel pretty comfortable just knowing that it's Rails. If you asked me to maintain your web app that you build from scratch that doesn't necessary follow standard patterns like MVC, I'd have a much harder time.

Re: Why does Angular.js rock?

#112

Post by hamburglar »

bsaul wrote: post #41
caioariede wrote: post #17

What are the alternatives to Angular.js that does not use this Dependency Injection magic?

Dependency Injection can really be done in a dark magic way (the java / spring way), but after reading the source code, i can tell you angular.js way of doing it is really not that dark. More importantly, is extremely easy to use. No .xml file, no configuration file, just put the service in that function signature, done (unless you want to minifiy, which means you'll also have to add it as a string right next to it).

As far as I can tell, the DI is "magic" in most of the examples in that it's using your controller function's parameter names to decide which services to pass in. The Angular docs I've read seem to indicate that this is not actually the recommended way to do it, but rather you should use the controller.$inject array to indicate which services you want. The annoying part to me is that this other, more magical behavior is used in just about every example I've encountered and IT IS NEVER EXPLAINED ANYWHERE. I was glancing through the code and I saw reference to gleaning the dependencies automatically by calling .toString() on the controller function and then parsing the arg list, which is ick ick ick. Who in the hell expects their arbitrarily-named anon function args to actually have meaning outside their own scope? This is a total misfeature, IMO.

Re: Why does Angular.js rock?

#113

Post by IsaacL »

jacques_chester wrote: post #32
api wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"They say that great athletes make bad coaches. Why? Because they can't explain what came instinctively." Thank you for finally explaining to me why mathematicians are such famously bad teachers of math. They just start scribbling symbols without explaining what they mean because of course you know what they mean...

I first heard it from one of the world's most experienced weightlifting coaches, Lyn Jones. It explained a lot to me too. The corollary is that people who love something, but can't do it easily, tend to be good coaches. Because they've had to really make an effort and have diligently sought out ways to improve themselves. Put another way: "those who can't do, teach" isn't an insult to teachers. It's praise .

Great quote from George Leonard's Mastery:

"In his book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, Zen master Shunryu Suzuki approaches the question of fast and slow learners in terms of horses. “In our scriptures, it is said that there are four kinds of horses: excellent ones, good ones, poor ones, and bad ones. The best horse will run slow and fast, right and left, at the driver’s will, before it sees the shadow of the whip; the second will run as well as the first one, just before the whip reaches its skin; the third one will run when it feels pain on its body; the fourth will run after the pain penetrates to the marrow of its bones. You can imagine how difficult it is for the fourth one to learn to run.

When we hear this story, almost all of us want to be the best horse. If it is impossible to be the best one, we want to be the second best.” But this is a mistake, Master Suzuki says. When you learn too easily, you’re tempted not to work hard, not to penetrate to the marrow of a practice.

“If you study calligraphy, you will find that those who are not so clever usually become the best calligraphers. Those who are very clever with their hands often encounter great difficulty after they have reached a certain stage. This is also true in art, and in life.” The best horse, according to Suzuki, may be the worst horse. And the worst horse can be the best, for if it perseveres, it will have learned whatever it is practicing all the way to the marrow of its bones."

(Shameless self-plug - I wrote a blog post about this a while ago: http://i.saac.me/post/lurning-cearves/)

Re: Why does Angular.js rock?

#114

Post by sahrizv »

d0m wrote: post #105
sahrizv wrote: post #4

I am just starting up web development and have decided to use Django for backend. However, this Angular vs Ember comparisons have lowered my confidence as I think whatever choice "I" make, will turn out wrong in the long run. Can the experienced people here tell me what I should choose? I am fine with either style of approach to HTML(template vs declarative) and I just want a batteries included framework, which I can…

I'm a django expert and I've built dozen of projects with it. So it would be hypocrite of me to tell you not to learn it. On the other hand, when I first started learning it, it was a young framework not well known (PHP was still hot.. Rails and Django developers were the hipsters of the web on the edge of technology ;-) I'm pretty happy about my choice to be on the edge as when it got mainstream, I was already very…

I understand the point you are making. The only problem with picking up a relatively less mature/complete framework is that I intend to use it in production. Since I am starting up as a novice, I cannot afford to sacrifice maturity for the high of being on the edge. I realize there's benefit for me in being on the edge as you mentioned( and I would love to play with the newest toy), but in my case, I unfortunately can't do that. Thanks for stopping by! :-)

Re: Why does Angular.js rock?

#115

Post by movingahead »

sahrizv wrote: post #69
paulwithap wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure you want to use Django?

Actually I did give a thought to Node.js/express and more pleasantly, the recent one called Mean.io. Mean.io is especially appealing to newcomers like me because it hides significant complexity in linking up stuff on the node.js platform. However, the only thing which puts me off is the instability/novelty of node and consequent unsuitability for production environments. Django OTOH has been battle hardened, and ther…

As someone who made that choice a while back, I can understand your reasons. I was also familiar with Python from my projects at college and so Django was a natural choice for building a web app. But, I struggled with a lot of basics in Django and then switched to Rails. I can speak with confidence that Rails ecosystem is amazing and the learning curve is easier thanks to the bunch of tutorials and screencasts available.

Though, I hear that the beginner resources in Django have improved a lot lately. If that is the case, it should be an equally good choice.

Re: Why does Angular.js rock?

#116

Post by coldtea »

warfangle wrote: post #88
mickeyp wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Delphi had amazing data binding. You literally dropped two non-visual components on your form; plonked down data-aware components; and then pointed it at any number of databases via ADO, DAO, ODBC or BDE and you were flying. Unrivalled flexibility and power and you could do knock together a CRUD app in a couple of hours. Add to that the incredible flexibility afforded by 3rd party components like DevExpress and you h…

How was it at near-platform-universality and secure HTTP transmission?

You mean getting something else (that's orthogonal) in exchange, justifies a regression to pre-90's in other areas?

Re: Why does Angular.js rock?

#117

Post by mickeyp »

coldtea wrote: post #116
warfangle wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How was it at near-platform-universality and secure HTTP transmission?

You mean getting something else (that's orthogonal) in exchange, justifies a regression to pre-90's in other areas?

Plus it was trivial to make n-tier architectures. Tying it to the web was quite easy too, and there were components out there that made data interchange via HTTP trivial - like SOAP.

Re: Why does Angular.js rock?

#118

Post by delambo »

greghinch wrote: post #42
sahrizv wrote: post #4

I am just starting up web development and have decided to use Django for backend. However, this Angular vs Ember comparisons have lowered my confidence as I think whatever choice "I" make, will turn out wrong in the long run. Can the experienced people here tell me what I should choose? I am fine with either style of approach to HTML(template vs declarative) and I just want a batteries included framework, which I can…

Don't worry so much about picking the right tools. Just pick something that is popular and start using it. You want something that is popular to start with because a) there will be a large support community and b) there will be more jobs available for someone who knows a popular framework. That second point is most important, because until you start building/working on an in-production project, most of your efforts w…

Another consideration is the projects that have been built with each framework. That can help you gauge popularity, where the jobs are, where you could get a job (or potentially poach someone from), and the capabilities of each library/framework:

http://backbonejs.org/#examples

http://emberjs.com/ember-users/

http://builtwith.angularjs.org/

Re: Why does Angular.js rock?

#119

Post by mgkimsal »

regularfry wrote: post #93
steveklabnik wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Writing documentation is really hard. It's also hard to get people to contribute to documentation. I had a conversation with someone recently that was frustrated about the Rails documentation: "Here's my blog post about how to do X. Apparently that's what Rails people do rather than write docs." When I asked why they didn't contribute to the docs rather than make Yet Another Blog Post that feeds into the exact proble…

My very first PR to the Emberjs project was an improved entry-level tutorial, just to work people past the pain points I'd experienced getting up and running following the then-current getting started guide (which were neither few, nor far between). The initial response? "This would be better as a blog post."

WOW - that's crazy. Thanks for a recent real world example.

Re: Why does Angular.js rock?

#120

Post by chroto24 »

paulwithap wrote: post #49
pkozlowski_os wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's be precise - at the moment there are exactly 68 open pull requests, _one_ of them being about documentation: https://github.com/angular/angular.js/pulls There is a huge difference in the open source world between ranting and actually doing something about your pain-points.

One open pull request, but every single page of the documentation is filled with comments from confused people asking for better docs. Fortunately, there's also sometimes a comment giving a proper explanation of that piece of the API.

Sounds like the PHP docs
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