Demystifying The Myths About Angular

Angular is a TypeScript-based open-source front-end web development framework developed by Google. Unlike React which is a front end library, Angular is pretty damn big fish as it is a complete framework that has all the things you need to develop your web application / websites.

This article is focused on demystifying some myths about Angular JS and Angular.

Myth 1: 👻We need to learn Angular JS so as to get acquaint with latest release of Angular 

Truth: 👉 Angular is the complete rewritten of Angular JS and it is not recommended to start with Angular JS.

Myth 2: 👻There are so many versions of angular like angular 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 ,9 (the list may go on as per the release). How can I learn angular when there are so many options available?

Truth: 👉Yes indeed Google has launch the stable release of Angular in 6-9 month cycle but you shouldn't be worry. It's all just the patches added to fix the bugs in the previous version of Angular. Also, Google tried hard to make the usability of Angular as easier as it can be. So you might find the syntax you use previously in say angular 8 gets bit shorter to use in angular 9.

Recently in version 9 of angular, there are no such subtle changes and it was mainly focus on faster compiler support using IVY and smaller assemblies generation

Myth 3: 👻Can I say it Angular, Angular 2 or Angular<LatestVersion>

Truth: 👉Well, Google suggested to call all the subsequent Angular releases after Angular JS as Angular or Angular 2. (Considering Angular JS as Angular 1)

Myth 4: 👻My previous web application was built with Angular 5 and now I want to migrate it with Angular 8, Do I need to learn angular 8?

Truth: 👉You are not supposed to learn Angular 8. just go to this link https://update.angular.io/ and paste version of angular you are currently using and the one you wish to migrate to. It's that simple.

Myth 5: 👻 React is easy compare to angular, blah blah, tada tada.

Truth: 👉 Well I am not an advocate for either angular or react. However, As I've said it before that React is a front end library while Angular is a front-end framework. 
Though react is easy to pick up initially but it gets clumsy and complex along the way. While you end up importing additional libraries to support routing, state management, testing. We can say you end up creating your own customize framework around the library of react in order to create your website.
Sometimes these supporting libraries you use are not battle tested and your framework becomes volatile and unstable. Hence the thought of nothing worthwhile is easy seems to be applied here.

React is good to have for creating static HTML content if you consider using just react library. But, as we know our enterprise application rather has complex requirement and we do need routing, state management, service / api access etc.

Based upon my experience with respect to Angular, the learning curve is quite steep. If you are from the back ground of server side framework like ASP.NET MVC then it might seems easy to you. Also the inbuilt support for dependency injection in Constructor is readily available in Angular along with many use full feature that only an battle tested framework can provide. It has all the support of modules, state management, HTTP, routing, testing, compile time checking with typescript etc.

Angular needs some time to understand but for complex application it is one of the best web development framework

Myth 6: 👻 Do I really need Angular to develop websites.

Truth: 👉Well Angular allows us to create Single Page Web Application or SPA. 
There are many framework that can help you develop the website. But it depends on your requirement. There are no right and wrong ways in Software Development. There are always trade-offs. You need to assess your situation before jumping into the conclusion. Angular might be the great tooling for XYZ project but for ABC project you might consider using ASP.NET MVC or simple JQuery.

After all, every websites to this date are nothing but the orchestrated dance of coexistence with HTML, CSS and Javascript. 

There are different ways that lead to Rome. Pick yours that suit you and enjoy the journey.