

AngularJS 1.3.0 - EugeneOZ
http://angularjs.blogspot.com/2014/10/angularjs-130-superluminal-nudge.html

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rmsaksida
I feel Angular is better than almost everything out there but still not quite
right. It seems way too complex for what it does, and the syntax looks like
somebody vomited all over your code. Does two-way databinding have to be so
awkward? Angular does help you in writing maintainable code (which is vital
for JavaScript - dealing with large JS codebases is hard), but it also ties
you to a technology which is probably transitional. I have high hopes for 2.0,
and I hope they work out these issues.

~~~
KajMagnus
Have you seen React.js
([http://facebook.github.io/react/](http://facebook.github.io/react/)) and
Mithril
([http://lhorie.github.io/mithril/](http://lhorie.github.io/mithril/))?
They're supposedly smaller, faster, and easier than Angular, and does roughly
the same things, as far as I've read. And they support server side rendering.
At least React does.

~~~
skeletonjelly
React is just for presentation though (the V in MVC)

~~~
Renaud
But React + Flux is an alternative to MVC.

Still early days for Flux, but the principles are sound and I hope it offers a
viable alternative to all these framework that rely mainly on variants of the
MVC pattern.

~~~
Kiro
Flux seem so overcomplicated I can't believe what I'm seeing.

~~~
colinramsay
I think Flux is probably very simple, it's just been presented very, very
poorly.

~~~
Kiro
Do you have any good tutorial that presents in a better way?

~~~
colinramsay
I agree with andwaal that reflux is the simplest way so far that I've seen. I
think what is really lacking is a demonstration application which isn't just
"hello world" or the standard todo app rewritten in React. I just don't find
that helpful.

For another overview, see this article:

[http://blog.andrewray.me/reactjs-for-stupid-
people/](http://blog.andrewray.me/reactjs-for-stupid-people/)

Please don't take offence at the title, I didn't write it :D

------
aikah
Nice!

Angular is described by its creator as a better browser. That's why it gets so
much heat. Because you actually have to hook into a app lifecycle you dont
control.

And you know what ? that's great,because it means there is only one way to
skin a cat and when you have to work with a huge team,it's time saving as
there is no architectural debate. That's frankly why I like big and
opinionated frameworks such as Angular.

It's basically the framework's way or the highway,code becomes predictable and
you only need to know how the frameworks works to understand other's people
code. You know there will be no DOM manipulation in controllers. You know that
the view layer will communicate with other layers through services.You know
that developpers will have to use promises. And you know you'll be forced to
write testable code that makes heavy use of dependency injection.

~~~
jbigelow76

        >That's frankly why I like big and opinionated frameworks such as Angular.
    

That's weird that you say that Angular is opinionated, or maybe it's not.

When I first started hearing about Angular, the story was that Angular was
very opinionated compared to Backbone which made you figure everything out on
your own.

Then as Ember gelled Angular became the un-opinionated framework that left the
developers to their own devices compared to the very opinionated "Ember way".

I guess every framework is what you want it to be, or what you don't.

~~~
junto
Ember makes strong opinions about the backend webservices as well as the front
end. I don't think Angular does that.

~~~
regularjack
Ember Data is opinionated about the backend, Ember itself isn't. You can use
Ember without Ember Data, as is the case with Discourse, one of the largest
Ember apps out there.

[http://eviltrout.com/2013/03/23/ember-without-
data.html](http://eviltrout.com/2013/03/23/ember-without-data.html)

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heydenberk
> One-time bindings – by prefixing an expression with "::", it will only be
> interpolated once, and then no longer watched.

Does anyone else find the DSL(s) in Angular to be maddening?

~~~
pixie_
If Angular wasn't endorsed by Google would it be as popular as it is?

~~~
hippich
After working for some time on angular project, I got a conspiracy theory:
Google bought this company and threw angularjs to masses so they get all
excited and spin wheels reimplementing stuff already done elsewhere, while
Google will keep building products :)

I am joking of course, but each joke always have part of truth in it..

~~~
Cthulhu_
Minus the fact that AngularJS was developed as a Google internal project / by
a Googler / for a Google service (their support / help pages iirc), after they
struggled for months building it.

~~~
hippich
from looking on angular internal code, i still feel they struggle with it :)

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skybrian
They also released AngularDart 1.0 a few days ago:

[http://blog.angulardart.org/2014/10/angulardart-10-has-
lande...](http://blog.angulardart.org/2014/10/angulardart-10-has-landed.html)

~~~
ChaosPony
How does AngularDart compare to AngularJS, on a feature level?

Does it have all or most of the features from the new 1.3 release?

~~~
jbergens
The´re a bit different. Actaully the AngularDart has features that 1.3 don't
have, like the new router, and I'm sure there is something in 1.3 that don't
exist in AngularDart. But AngularDart seems to be the more "advanced" one.

~~~
bsaul
Does using AngularDart means you can code with types and get decent auto-
completion ? I know it can compile to regular JS, but does it _really_ works
well with non-chrome browser ?

~~~
gherkin
It works just fine with a non-Chromium-based browser. You need to include the
shadow DOM script though, since AngularDart depends on that.

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davej
Shameless plug for my open-source project Angular Classy. Recently pre-
released a beta for 1.0, of course it's fully tested and compatible AngularJS
1.3.

[http://davej.github.io/angular-
classy/beta.html](http://davej.github.io/angular-classy/beta.html)

Feedback is always appreciated.

~~~
atomical
Could include a short description with your shameless plug?

~~~
jph00
...or at least a description on your actual web page? All I see there is a
change log and example.

~~~
purephase
Parent linked the beta, take out beta from the URL. Looks like a pretty decent
project.

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junto
Small sidenote. Whilst I understand that the Angular team feel obliged to use
Blogger, can people please not use the Blogger dynamic views. No content
without JavaScript. Why doesn't Google come up with their own standard Google
Blogger template for their project teams anyway?

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JanezStupar
I don't like Angular. Everybody likes it but I don't.

It feels like 2004 all over again. SOAP! SOAP! XML! GWT!
ColdFusion!!!!1onene!!!1

I also don't like working with Google toolchain, because for a company full of
smartest dudes on the planet it certainly seems like these dudes don't care
about their customers.

Below is a list of reasons why I dislike Angular.

1\. GAE documentation sucks, GoLang documentation sucks and indeed Angular
documentation sucks.

2\. By using Angular you are throwing away the toolchain we have been honing
and making better for the last fifteen years.

3\. Debugging - If I have learned anything from the XML dark ages it is that
you do not want to program in a language that is not debuggable. And yet, here
comes Google and does it again!

4\. Overloading semantics. I hate Angular for just going and reinventing so
many of the words and context we use in this trade.

5\. Angular is not free! I would not use Angular for the same reason I would
not use Java. I would hate to tie my future to this uber monstrous
corporation's whims.

Thinking about Angular I realized (yet again!) that Google has jumped the
shark. It is no longer pragmatic and cheeky startup of fifteen years ago.
Nowadays it is more akin IBM and Microsoft of old.

Edit: Basically to me Angular is another stab at the softcoding - where
Angular is the app and your code is softcoded definitions of behaviors. And as
such it will eventually fail for the same reasons all the similar projects
have done so before. Some of which are listed above.

~~~
wiradikusuma
Err..

1\. I admit Angular documentation sucks, but that's not atypical in any open
source. It's getting way better btw, and there are tons of resources from 3rd
party.

2\. Which toolchain are you referring to? If we're talking Web/JavaScript
(where Angular is for), I can say the toolchain e.g. Grunt is quite recent.

3\. I somewhat agree with this. We can use e.g. Chrome Dev tools and Batarang
(Angular Chrome plugin), but definitely there's room for improvements.

5\. Care to elaborate your definition of free? Even for Java, I can say a
significant ecosystem for Java is open source. Sure, some Enterprise prefer
Java Enterprise Edition, but many are satisfied with Spring and other open
source Java-based solutions.

~~~
JanezStupar
2\. Templates and existing JavaScript code - i.e. Bootstrap, jQuery,
templating languages and other existing app components. With Backbone you can
easily use any JavaScript library - because it itself is just JavaScript. I
really don't like how angular forces everything to have a ng-something
derivative.

5\. Angular is not free because it is this monolyth that only the sage men
within the temple of G can comprehend. The sages give you an incantation for a
ritual and you, the believer use it. If it is not yet, then its core is going
to become an indecipherable mess - built to serve the temple of G. Google is
building it for itself and as usual doesn't really care about anything but its
own objectives. Whatever they may be - a user might find itself in the same
situation that i.e. Silverlight users found themselves after MS decided that
Silverlight was not a good idea at all.

~~~
Cthulhu_
2\. Nothing's stopping anyone from using 3rd party libraries within an
AngularJS application - using React for the view layer, for example. Angular
encourages the use to separate concerns (mainly DOM manipulation) via
directives, instead of mixing that logic into other parts of your application
(like vanilla JS, jQuery and Backbone tend to do).

5\. You're wrong, and your argument is invalid. It's open source, legible,
modular and fully comprehensible if anyone bothers to dive into it.

------
luikore
> And as we announced back in December, AngularJS 1.3.0 no longer supports
> IE8. This allowed us to make improvements and performance enhancements that
> otherwise would not be possible.

It is possible, see how rivetsjs did that years ago. But it is still a very
nice thing to drop IE8.

~~~
Touche
If Microsoft no longer supports IE8, why should web developers?

~~~
girvo
Because it makes up 10 percent of the user base in my country.

~~~
freyr
And as long as we insist on catering to them, they won't be compelled to
install a modern browser.

~~~
girvo
You're preaching to the choir, but try convincing my boss and the company that
owns our agency; it's too large a user-base to ignore, and we do some stuff
for the government so we don't have much of a choice.

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keda
Excited to see the bind once expression introduce.

~~~
davej
Yes, this is a big deal for performance!

Having to run through 1000s of watchers in a digest cycle is not unusual with
a typical Angular site and oftentimes most of those watchers are redundant.

~~~
never_snapped
Are there any benchmark results available? They mention it increased speed, by
a lot, but don't give any numbers -- instead point to a code repo where you
can run your own. This is great, but I want an "at a glance" numbers on a
variety of platforms so I can verify their claim and then take it to my boss
to push through an upgrade. An "executive summary" if you will.

~~~
pteredactyl
If you read the post you'll see a link to benchmark scores

~~~
crucialfelix
there are no results there, just the code to run. I also looked for it.

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niallsmart
The full list of new features, bug fixes and breaking changes is in this epic
changelog:
[https://github.com/angular/angular.js/blob/master/CHANGELOG....](https://github.com/angular/angular.js/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md)

I trawled through it a couple weeks back and wrote up some of the most
interesting new features:
[https://speakerdeck.com/niallsmart/angular-1-dot-3-whats-
new](https://speakerdeck.com/niallsmart/angular-1-dot-3-whats-new)

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Bahamut
Looking forward to start playing around with 1.3 soon - got lots of bug fixing
to do around the Angular ecosystem I'm sure.

------
RonnieJGarcia
Exciting to see, Angular JS is what is allowing my small team to create some
pretty complex backend :)

~~~
itbeho
just curious but how is Angular helping on the _backend_?

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jszymborski
He probably means that it allows him to focus on the backend by making the
frontend easy to develop.

~~~
RonnieJGarcia
This, sorry for the lack of clarification.

