Angular

Angular is an opinionated JavaScript framework developed and maintained by Google. At the time of writing, it's currently approaching version 5 and offers a structured standards-based approach to web development. It uses TypeScript to enforce type safety and ECMAScript 2015 > support.

In comparison to Angular, Vue looks to enforce a smaller set of constraints and allows the developer more choice. One of Angular's core competencies is TypeScript everywhere. Most developers that came from Angular.js were hearing about TypeScript for the first time when Angular 2 was announced, and I noticed a fair amount of backlash because of the need to "learn a new language". The thing is, JavaScript is TypeScript and the value of increased tooling (autocompletion, refactoring, type safety, and much more) cannot be overlooked.

This is especially true when it comes to working on enterprise projects as the onboarding challenge gets harder with increased project complexity and team size. With TypeScript, we're able to better reason about the relationships between our code at scale. It's this structured development experience that is the prime strength of Angular. This is why the Angular team chose TypeScript as the primary development tool. The benefits of TypeScript are not limited to Angular; we'll be looking at how we can integrate Vue with TypeScript to gain these same benefits later on in the book.

Are there any drawbacks to using Angular as a development framework? Not necessarily. When we're comparing it to Vue, the onboarding experience is vitally different.