Things that suck in AngularJS • Hacker News Board

Re: Things that suck in AngularJS

#91

Post by novaleaf » Tue, Oct 29, 2013, 7:20 AM UTC

pygy_ wrote: post #67

Oculus wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where'd you get the wrong idea that it was a Startup? AngualrJS was a side project of Misko, who was working at Google on the DoubleClick team, until he bet he could rewrite DoubleClick in 1 or 2 (can't remember) weeks using his framework and cut down on the LOC/code complexity. He eventually did and they decided to go full time on the framework. They discussed this at the start of their Google IO presetation.

[0] which leads to [1] Notice the "Copyright 2009 - Angular / BRAT Tech. LLC" at the bottom of the page. IIRC, They had a plan to provide a paid or freemium server-side counterpart. edit: freemium, see the first revision of getangular.com[2], there's a pricing tab which disappeared later on. update 2 : they were not acquired, they abandoned the startup because it did not get enough traction. The framework lived on, t…

i don't dispute this, but it pretty much flies in the face of everything the team has publicly communicated so far.

Any thoughts on why the whitewash? Maybe to get better traction as being a 100% google skunkwork?

Re: Things that suck in AngularJS

#92

Post by apunic » Tue, Oct 29, 2013, 7:27 AM UTC

Got also into Angular for some while and my verdict: if this wasn't made by Google it wouldn't haven gotten off the ground. Its concept has too many quirks and isn't thought through. Tried recently React and this feels much more sane, you have to relearn stuff but it's way less than Angular and performance is better.

Re: Things that suck in AngularJS

#93

Post by coopdog » Tue, Oct 29, 2013, 7:34 AM UTC

randomfool wrote: post #84

chii wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always wondered why GWT isn't much more popular (at least, for google properties). I know of a half dozen apps written in GWT by google. The rest is probably in closure (or something else). Perhaps they still haven't solved the SEO problem of GWT internally, and so only things that don't need SEO-features like control panels, dashboards (but ironically, the google groups forums too) are in GWT.

GWT is seen as extremely slow (especially compilation times) and not suited to heavy client-side applications. I don't think the SEO nature of GWT is fundamentally different from Closure or Angular.

GWT on AppEngine (which it has great integration for) has a ten second startup time when not loaded, and on the free tier they unload it when not in use, so that's not the greatest.

I used GWT for a while and it would be great for enterprise and large teams. The static typing which I usually love/insist on though, does seem pretty cumbersome for something as simple as a web page. I've switched to scala play for the back end and lots of tiny angular 'apps' on the front, and it's so much faster to develop for.

Re: Things that suck in AngularJS

#94

Post by kosinus » Tue, Oct 29, 2013, 7:35 AM UTC

gkoberger wrote: post #29

kosinus wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're really spending 90% on Google, and 10% writing code, then you're doing it wrong. At least a good 30% of your time should involve reading code. In any framework. That said, AngularJS' code is magic in places. The magic is contained within small modules, or at least as small as those can get for what they're supposed to do. But documentation is only enough to get you started. In any framework. (And in my expe…

I was of course generalizing -- by "Googling", I meant everything from reading StackOverflow to browsing GitHub to looking at the docs. That being said, I'm not quite sure where that 30% figure comes from. Whose code am I reading? Why am I reading it? Angular isn't your run-of-the-mill framework. They've reimagined almost everything. That's fine (and for the most part, I like what they've done) -- but documentation i…

AngularJS code. I regularly dive in whenever I run into an obstacle.

The 30% figure is a wild guess, and may sound a bit large, but I certainly spend a lot of time reading other people's code. Or even rereading my own code.

Docs can be improved, absolutely, but there's no framework where I didn't feel that way about documentation. I don't think I've worked with any framework for more than an hour without looking at its code.

Re: Things that suck in AngularJS

#95

Post by kosinus » Tue, Oct 29, 2013, 7:42 AM UTC

yeukhon wrote: post #30

kosinus wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're really spending 90% on Google, and 10% writing code, then you're doing it wrong. At least a good 30% of your time should involve reading code. In any framework. That said, AngularJS' code is magic in places. The magic is contained within small modules, or at least as small as those can get for what they're supposed to do. But documentation is only enough to get you started. In any framework. (And in my expe…

> At least a good 30% of your time should involve reading code. In any framework. Understand that not every developer has a good knowledge of these frameworks. Understanding the DOM, browser-specific JS stuff are not piece of cake. Hence documentation is super crucial to have. This is like asking every developers to read Linux kernel video driver when their video driver crashed.

So you're learning a lot more than just AngularJS, then, and attributing the problems you run into along the way to AngularJS.

Maybe AngularJS is hard to grasp if you're not already familiar with the DOM, compared to other frameworks. I wouldn't know, to be honest.

Your video driver example is not a good comparison, in my opinion. You're comparing developers to users. If a developer triggers a bug in a video driver through some specific OpenGL calls, he will certainly try to develop an understanding.

(The bad part about video drivers is that the maintainers of proprietary ones are hard to reach. But Valve is doing it, I guess because they have contacts.)

Re: Things that suck in AngularJS

#96

Post by Kiro » Tue, Oct 29, 2013, 7:46 AM UTC

Worst for me: hooking up Angular with a stateless REST API without using a middle layer application for authentication.

Re: Things that suck in AngularJS

#97

Post by adamors » Tue, Oct 29, 2013, 7:47 AM UTC

When I first started using Angular I actually bought a video course on it from Pluralsight. So when I started my first Angular project I hit the ground running.

There are also a lot of free videos on Youtube, that sometimes explain things more clearly than the docs.

Re: Things that suck in AngularJS

#98

Post by davissorenson » Tue, Oct 29, 2013, 7:54 AM UTC

flylib wrote: post #33

camus2 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ember creators cleary did not know where they were heading when they began writing it. AngularJS was influenced by Flex and Spry( the creator worked at Adobe ) from the start, and still is.

Ember was heavily influenced by Sproutcore

Ember WAS Sproutcore, Sproutcore 2.0 is what became Ember.

Worth noting: Sproutcore was used to build iCloud, apparently.

Re: Things that suck in AngularJS

#99

Post by dodyg » Tue, Oct 29, 2013, 7:56 AM UTC

Please do not use a framework that you do not understand. It is not good for the sustainability of your application. It is better to read/maintain a verbose application than dealing with some obscure magic.

I tried to learn AngularJs but I can't understand it so I gave up and used a simpler and more limited JS library (ractivejs).

Re: Things that suck in AngularJS

#100

Post by davissorenson » Tue, Oct 29, 2013, 7:57 AM UTC

general_failure wrote: post #14

If you think angular docs are bad , you should try ember. Ember is so frustrating. All answers on SO are out of date or wrong.

It used to be like this, but throughout this year in preparation for the 1.0 release the devs really stepped it up. The official guides are good nowadays.