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2 years with Angular

fse.guru

41–50 of 216 posts

Re: 2 years with Angular

#41
post #6

If Angular is not The Thing (a premise which I have no trouble believing), then what is a Good Thing to perform the task of, for example, consuming Django Rest Framework endpoints and making a frontend of them?

Perhaps also consider whether front-end frameworks are a Good Thing given your requirements? Many of the largest sites on the internet don't use them in any significant way, and you could just as easily use Django to server HTML/CSS to browsers, as well as a Rest endpoint for mobile apps or other users of your data.

I think in a lot of cases they actually aren't a good thing at all.

I have used a fair number of websites recently which used front end frameworks badly and ended up causing all sorts of havoc (not being able to save the page, random {{ things like this }} appearing all {{ over }} the place at inconvenient times, pages just not loading, janky controls, etc.)

In short, bugs that don't happen when you have static web pages and forms and a smatter of javascript.

In almost all of these cases I think users would likely not have noticed a substantive difference between an angular-style web app and simple HTML forms.

Re: 2 years with Angular

#42
post #25

I recently wrote about my experience with Angular in a different forum. Sharing it here: I worked on Angular last year building an app with a few complex views. The initial days were full of glory. Data-binding was new to me, which produced much goodwill towards the framework. Things started falling apart as I had to inevitably understand the framework in a little more depth. They practically wrote a programming lang…

Somewhat, but not completely unrelated to your story...

> Google recently released a new version of their developer console (https://console.developers.google.com) which is built on Angular.

Which actually works worse than the previous version. The layout is non-responsive and creates massive amounts of scrollbars on "portrait"-monitors, while 90% of the screen is effectively white-space.

Completely wasted. Completely pointless.

So whatever Angular-templates Google is using, they are clearly not (any more?) adhering to responsive design nor using pixel-independent CSS, and in 2014 that's pretty sad.

Re: 2 years with Angular

#43
post #8
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that says it all: the most framework specific part of the article are the links in the end to other articles. Its good to have feedback from the community, but I wish some of these posts would get down to the specifics, we would all benefit much more. Something like: "I tried to this (details) in Angular and it was difficult, tried to do it again with this other framework and it was much easier".

the author actually has a series of "Angular Bad" articles on his blog which are more or less specific: http://www.fse.guru/angular-bad-parts-part-1 http://www.fse.guru/angular-bad-parts-part-2 http://www.fse.guru/angular-bad-parts-part-3 http://www.fse.guru/angular-bad-parts-part-4 http://www.fse.guru/angular-bad-parts-part-5 http://www.fse.guru/angular-bad-parts-part-6

To me it's not specific enough. In the first part the author claims that

>'Dependency injection lacks some functionality you will need sometime.'

But fails to reveal which functionality he has in mind.

He later claims that 'inheritance is an antipattern' and posts a link to google search results as 'proof'.

Not worth reading, in my opinion.

Re: 2 years with Angular

#44
The problem is not Angular specific, every Framework is designed to solve a certain problem in a certain way.

But most developers think, that when they learn once a Framework, they can use it for any kind of project.

When i read "xxx is really cool and fun" iam really careful. Most people create a "Hello World" and then THEIR favorite framework is the greatest thing in the universe and they communicate it to others.

Take a framework, live with the mistakes, until the next "better" framework appear... and it will appear, and the next, and .... ;)

Re: 2 years with Angular

#45
As someone who has thus far only used with Angular for smaller projects, seeing performance raised as a concern is a bit of a concern for ever using it in a serious project. Would still like to see some numbers to back up the anecdotal evidence.

It's also hard to motivate starting a potentially large project in Angular right now, knowing that v2 is on the way that is basically a new framework.

Re: 2 years with Angular

#46
You know, I'm just going to say it:

Angular is the Rails of Javascript.

That probably sounds like a derogation. But behold: I offer nuance!

They're both big and powerful, and capable of rewarding dedicated study with enormous power. Thus they develop a devoted following whose members often do things lesser mortals find little short of wizardry.

They're also both built to be friendly and welcoming to the newcomer, and offer a relatively short and comfortable path from zero to basic productivity. Thus they trigger the "I made a thing!" reward mechanism which excites newbies and leaves them thirsting for more.

They also, in order to go from newbie to wizard, involve a learning curve like the north face of K2.

In both cases, it's a necessary consequence of the design decisions on which the platform is based, and those decisions, by and large, have sensible reasons behind them -- not, I hasten to note, decisions with which everyone will (or should) agree, but decisions which can be reasonably defended.

But that doesn't make it a good thing. When people start off with "I made a thing!" and then run smack into a sheer wall of ice and granite, initial excitement very often turns into frustration and even rage, as on display in some comments here in this very thread.

(I hasten again to add that I'm not judging anyone for being frustrated and angry over hitting that wall -- indeed, to do so would make me a hypocrite, given my reaction to hitting that wall with Rails a year or so ago.)

Further compounding the issue is that, often enough, wizards who've forgotten the travails of their ascent will condescend to say things like "Well, what's so hard? Just read {this book,that blog post,&c.} and it's all right there." Well, sure, for wizards, who are well accustomed to interpreting one another's cryptic aides-memoire. For those of us still toiling our way up the hill, not so much.

I will note, though, that while I hit that wall (hard!) with Rails, and in the end couldn't make it up, I haven't had the same problem with Angular. The sole significant difference I can identify, between the two attempts, is this:

When I took on Rails, there was no one else in the organization who knew (or should've known) the first thing about the platform. When I had a problem with Rails, I faced it all alone, with only my Google-fu, my source-diving skills, and my perseverance on which to rely. For a while I did well, but in the long run, for all but the most exceptional engineers, such expenditure of personal resource without resupply becomes unsustainable.

When I take on Angular, I do so with the support of a large team, composed of the most brilliant and capable engineers among whom I have ever had the privilege of working. When I have a problem with Angular, I have a dozen people at my back, at least one of whom is all but guaranteed to have encountered the exact same situation previously -- or, if not this precise permutation, then something very like it, from which experience more often than not comes precisely the advice I need to hear, to guide me in the direction of a solution.

Of course, whether this is really useful to anyone is an open question; I think it's a little facile, at least, to say "Oh, if you're having Angular problems, all you have to do is find a team of amazing people who mostly all have years of Angular experience, and work with them!" But, at the very least, if you're going to be fighting through the whole thing all by your onesome, maybe think about picking up a less comprehensive but more comprehensible framework, instead.

Re: 2 years with Angular

#47
This post reminds me of these other two [0, 1] that ultimately lead Leo Horie to create Mithril [2], a tiny (5 KB down the line) but complete MVC framework that also eschews most of the criticism raised by the OP.

The Mithril blog is also worth a look, it addresses a lot of concrete scenarios with recipies to solve common front end problems with the framework. For example, here's a post on asymetrical data binding [3].

————

0. http://lhorie.blogspot.fr/2013/09/things-that-suck-in-angula...

1. http://lhorie.blogspot.fr/2013/10/things-that-suck-in-angula...

2. http://lhorie.github.io/mithril/

3. http://lhorie.github.io/mithril-blog/asymmetrical-data-bindi...

Re: 2 years with Angular

#48
I've got to build an SPA and I'm trying to choose between Angular and React, can you guide me a little, the app will :

- create a big form based on an XML schemas, the form will be used to generate valid XML with the schemas

- some schemas can be really big with more than 3000 elements, the whole thing won't be shown in full to the user directly but probably folded

- because it is based on XML Schema, it must have interactivity to make some elements repeatable, and groups of nested elements repeatable, some elements with bounds, some maybe draggable to reorder them, everything an XSD can do...

- it will also some kind of polymorphism where you can choose the children element type and have the corresponding schema showed

- it will also show a leaflet map, with some interaction between the form and the map

- there is also a rich text editor where you can arrange xml objects between formated text

I fear that angular won't be fast enough for that, but his support for forms seems better, I've tested JsonSchema forms generator like https://github.com/Textalk/angular-schema-form and https://github.com/formly-js/angular-formly the first one is slow when editing 3000 items the second seems fast when editing, and slow when it generates the json. I've done some angular tutorials and their concepts don't stick in my head. I've tested React and their concept stick easily in my head but there is less native support for forms.

I had just decided to go with angular partly because of all the hype around it, but I see the article and others as a bad omen and I want to go with react now. Any advise ?

Re: 2 years with Angular

#49
This seems to be the summary of every tech flame war ever, and applies rather well here:

A: I've used tech X in a lot of Y contexts, and I find it's not great. I will generalise slightly imply that tech X is not the panacea that it has been presented as.

B: Yeah? Well, I've used tech X in a lot of Z contexts, and I find it works fine! You're wrong! You're using it wrong! Maybe you're not wrong in context Y, but for most other contexts X is still the best tech!

C: I haven't used tech X at all, but here's my opinion on it anyway.

Re: 2 years with Angular

#50

While most of the arguments presented in this article are somewhat valid but I hope with the release of Angular 2.0 majority of the issues will be addressed (though does it make sense to make such drastic changes in the upcoming is another debate and already taken care of at: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8507632 ) I'm currently working on a comparatively large webapp built in Angular and it was after about 7…

If you were given a chance to choose your stack again, what would you pick now? (Considering all the learning you have gained after going with Angular for your large web-app)

Actually it depends more on the time of development and project specs. For now I'll probably choose ReactJS.

If by the time Angular 2.0 is launched then I'll definitely give it a shot, it seems promising and is based on ECMA6 utilizing the new features provided by it will be a plus.

IMO AngularJS can be scaled _IF_ used with caution, though I won't recommend it unless one has a good experience with its core.

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