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Things that suck in AngularJS

lhorie.blogspot.ca

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Re: Things that suck in AngularJS

#41

Post by dsjoerg »

alxndr wrote: post #31
joshuacc wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that the documentation could be better. When I first started working with Angular I had similar issues. However, after spending a decent amount of time working with the framework, I find the documentation fairly clear. The problem is really the lack of concrete examples of how things fit together. However, Angular UI is a totally separate set of projects that is not run by the Angular team at all. Not sure wh…

With this many people saying the documentation could be improved, is there a reason holding everyone back from contributing or improving it?

In my case it's because I don't understand it well enough to write doc. The people who _do_ understand it well have managed to do so despite the state of the documentation, so maybe they think the doc is sufficient?

It's one of those nasty problems, like the influence of money on politics, or gerrymandering, where the people best able to fix it are the ones least likely to think it's a problem.

Re: Things that suck in AngularJS

#42

Post by graue »

paultannenbaum wrote: post #21
camus2 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google has the chance to build the new framework that will run the web in 2-3 years. Much like Rails a few years ago. Angular is an amazing framework. It seems like they just don't care. People use to say that about ExtJS a few years ago , then BackboneJS, etc ... There will never be one framework to rule them all , like Rails never ruled server-side developpment, Rails influenced other frameworks. Likewise Angular…

Maybe my understanding is wrong, but closure (and closurescript) are compiled languages. Angular is a UI framework, so comparing them is apples to oranges. And I think the Angular community would be thrilled if it had even close to the kind of documentation that Rails has. You are correct, no one framework will rule them all, but there are examples of OS projects that have good docs (like jQuery and Rails) that can b…

You may be thinking of Clojure and ClojureScript — with a J. It's confusing naming, but those are different, and are not Google products.

In this thread, we're talking about Google's Closure (with an S) Library. Google also makes a Closure (with an S) Compiler, but it's more of an optimizer — it "compiles" from JavaScript to optimized JavaScript.

Re: Things that suck in AngularJS

#43

Post by gadr90 »

A framework guides you into a determined way of doing things. It is a known tradeoff: 90% of what you need to do is simpler, 10% may be a little harder. I have now built two medium-large web apps over the last months with Angular and while, naturally, it's not without problems, I have found that most of my difficulties were due to me doing things in a non-Angular way.

I also find it is going in a very good direction with the recent changes in 1.2.0. They listened to a lot of feedback from the community.

Re: Things that suck in AngularJS

#44

Post by k3n »

camus2 wrote: post #15
gkoberger wrote: post #4

Documentation is by far the worst part of Angular. I spent 90% of my time Googling and 10% writing code. (Hey, maybe that's Google's plan -- ramp up traffic to search. Synergy!) AngularUI is confusing, mostly undocumented and often behind Angular. Splitting ngRoute/ngAnimate into their own files is an odd choice, although I assume the former is so they can replace it with the superior ui-router. Which also is weird.…

> Google has the chance to build the new framework that will run the web in 2-3 years. Much like Rails a few years ago. Angular is an amazing framework. It seems like they just don't care. People use to say that about ExtJS a few years ago , then BackboneJS, etc ... There will never be one framework to rule them all , like Rails never ruled server-side developpment, Rails influenced other frameworks. Likewise Angular…

I think Angular is just the latest in their web dev portofolio, driven by internal needs. They have Closure, which is basically their own jQuery + package/module/dependency loader & framework. Then there's Dart, which is kind of their version of CoffeeScript/TypeScript/etc. (and even looks strikingly like Angular at times[1]).

There are definitely overlapping concerns, but they've dogfooded Angular for both the YouTube TV[1] portal as well as their DoubleClick site, and so I don't think it's just for external purposes.

1. https://www.dartlang.org/polymer-dart/

Re: Things that suck in AngularJS

#45

Post by jaequery »

gkoberger wrote: post #4

Documentation is by far the worst part of Angular. I spent 90% of my time Googling and 10% writing code. (Hey, maybe that's Google's plan -- ramp up traffic to search. Synergy!) AngularUI is confusing, mostly undocumented and often behind Angular. Splitting ngRoute/ngAnimate into their own files is an odd choice, although I assume the former is so they can replace it with the superior ui-router. Which also is weird.…

I don't think Google created Angular, but rather a Google employee. I'd imagine if Google fully backed Angular, the syntax/design would've been much cleaner. Angular with a fresh boot would be something I'd hope for, they just keep adding things on top of it to keep BC as much as possible which is why it feels so dirty at times. I too get (extremely) frustrated with Angular at times for all the points mentioned by OP. Honestly sometimes I don't even know why I bother with it, I feel it being counter-productive if I actually think about it. It just seemed cool concept at the time but over the long run, I feel I am just digging my own grave. Great post for venting about the frustrations, I been needing to vent myself too.

Re: Things that suck in AngularJS

#46

Post by amirhhz »

k3n wrote: post #38
alxndr wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With this many people saying the documentation could be improved, is there a reason holding everyone back from contributing or improving it?

The irony is that not only is there a commenting system to complain about the docs, but that at the top of most of the pages is a prominent "Improve this doc" button, which when clicked, takes you directly to the file in Github. Some of the docs are .md (markdown) while the rest are the actual code files. I don't know how often they accept pull requests, much less for doc-only changes, but they have almost 150 PR's i…

It was a while ago when I last did it, but the team are perfectly happy to merge-in docs corrections and improvements. IIRC, the CLA is not necessary for docs either, only for actual code.

At the last London AngularJS meetup it was mentioned that the team have 'pull request parties' where they try to merge or close as many contributions as they can, but more of them just keep coming ... good problem to have I guess, but they are aware of it and trying to address it.

Re: Things that suck in AngularJS

#47

Post by hswolff »

camus2 wrote: post #15
gkoberger wrote: post #4

Documentation is by far the worst part of Angular. I spent 90% of my time Googling and 10% writing code. (Hey, maybe that's Google's plan -- ramp up traffic to search. Synergy!) AngularUI is confusing, mostly undocumented and often behind Angular. Splitting ngRoute/ngAnimate into their own files is an odd choice, although I assume the former is so they can replace it with the superior ui-router. Which also is weird.…

> Google has the chance to build the new framework that will run the web in 2-3 years. Much like Rails a few years ago. Angular is an amazing framework. It seems like they just don't care. People use to say that about ExtJS a few years ago , then BackboneJS, etc ... There will never be one framework to rule them all , like Rails never ruled server-side developpment, Rails influenced other frameworks. Likewise Angular…

I thought Gmail was a compiled to JavaScript from Java application?

Re: Things that suck in AngularJS

#48

Post by martindale »

alxndr wrote: post #31
joshuacc wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that the documentation could be better. When I first started working with Angular I had similar issues. However, after spending a decent amount of time working with the framework, I find the documentation fairly clear. The problem is really the lack of concrete examples of how things fit together. However, Angular UI is a totally separate set of projects that is not run by the Angular team at all. Not sure wh…

With this many people saying the documentation could be improved, is there a reason holding everyone back from contributing or improving it?

The barrier of having to contribute via GitHub is actually a fairly large one. Think about it; not even all developers understand git. The design challenge of creating a simple way to contribute/improve documentation (read: educational materials) is something we're working at Coursefork [1]. It's a tough one to solve, but we think we've cracked it.

[1]: http://coursefork.org

Re: Things that suck in AngularJS

#49

Post by nostrademons »

hswolff wrote: post #47
camus2 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google has the chance to build the new framework that will run the web in 2-3 years. Much like Rails a few years ago. Angular is an amazing framework. It seems like they just don't care. People use to say that about ExtJS a few years ago , then BackboneJS, etc ... There will never be one framework to rule them all , like Rails never ruled server-side developpment, Rails influenced other frameworks. Likewise Angular…

I thought Gmail was a compiled to JavaScript from Java application?

Nope, you're thinking of GWT. Relatively few Google products actually use GWT; the bulk of them are on Closure. GMail's client (and Google+, and Docs, and Search) all use Javascript-compiled-to-Javascript for the client side.

Re: Things that suck in AngularJS

#50

Post by troyk »

antihero wrote: post #39
adrianbg wrote: post #8

My biggest pet peeve is how it suppresses errors in inline expressions.

Fucking hell. I do like AngularJS, but everything to do with expressions pisses me off. Fairly incoherent documentation, combined with lack of errors or any sort of meaningful way to debug them.

No doubt, care to share how you feel about $scope inheritance?
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