The central problem with Angular is what is says about the software industry in general - that a framework so fundamentally and ridiculously flawed could invite such wide appeal suggests that many people have absolutely no idea what they are doing.I have yet to see an Angular project that doesn't qualify as tiny. For that purpose -- banging out some internal CRUDish app -- if it allows people to create working success, then it's a success. Instead people are busy arguing over the semantics of over-engineering a couple of text boxes, and that really is what leaves me boggling. Though of course, as is the nature of these things, there are over-dramatizing camps, and one month Angular is the greatest thing ever on HN, the next it's the demonstration of all that is wrong in the world. The reality, as always, is somewhere in between.
It wasn't that many years ago when people didn't even understand basic concepts like closures in JavaScript, or the power they bring. Now people are viciously arguing about the edges. It's all very surreal.
There is simply no way that you can say that you know Javascript and at the same time support Angular.
One of the most common features pushed by just about every framework (just saw it about React yesterday) is desperately, and leakily, trying to abstract Javascript into some sort of classic OOP language. Some of the most popular tools allow you to write in various compiled-to-JavaScript languages (TypeScript, CoffeeScript, GWT, etc). It's all very strange. But again, if JavaScript is treated just as a runtime, and if it works for a team, there is some measure of success.