Do you know State of Javascript? This is a famous survey about JavaScript language for JavaScript developers. This year, more than 20,000 JavaScript developers have participated to it.
It talks about JavaScript flavors, such as Ecmascript, TypeScript, Elm etc, mobile app tools, backend and frontend frameworks.
Let's take a look at this last point. I assume you know React, Vue and Angular.
We can easily say that React is the most loved frontend framework, more than 80% of developers used it and would use again or would like to learn it. It's about 70% for VueJS.
Take a look at Angular: only 33% in these categories and more than 60% would not use it again or are not interested.
Whereas version 7 of the framework has been release a month ago, it seems that the Google framework is dying.
Let's talk about reasons that could explain unpopularity of Angular framework in the comment section!
Top comments (26)
Angular is not dying.
A) the State of Javascript survey its self is extremely unscientific.
B) the survey is conflating Angular.JS and Angular together which is confusing and creating a misleading numbers. Since they are essentially two different frameworks, sharing a name and some concepts only. AngularJS is in LTS and no longer being actively developed. once again, it's not a scientific survey by any means.
C) Npm download numbers are not indicating that Angular dying, much like React and Vue the numbers are trending upward.
I agree with your first two points, but as said, it's a survey intended to developers. On 20,000 developers, more than 60% don't want to use Angular (and AngularJS?) again, isn't it frightening for the future of the framework ?
About third point, I don't know, I never check NPM downloads.
Developers are really stubborn, sometimes we are a lot bigot, and we tend to stigmatize things outta very little motifs, one of the more regular is: the lack of time to learn technologies other than the learned ones. I don't know but there is a very small group of developers I trust in, and one of them, Jeff Delaney, is too avocated to Angular, I trust more in him than in 12,000 developers I don't know.
That's a fair point actually. Its common to assume that Angular === AngularJS, and if you ask me I would never use AngularJS again. I don't think Angular is near of being dead.
I don't assume Angular === AngularJS, framework are totally different! Given that AngularJS won't receive any major update, I think we have to assume that survey talk about Angular only.
I wouldn't be so sure about it. I understand that it was the intention of the survey, but it's actually a good point to think that people thought it includes AngularJS as well.
I agree It's more or less a testament to how bad the Angular branding has been handled along with just how bad this "survey" has been conducted.
But I'm done feeding the click bate titles, like this one. Are their jobs looking for Angular Developers Yes, in my area a quick job search showed up just as must if not more than React.
But what if most of those developers are mostly react developers that have just heard of angular and not used it in any meaningful way?
People have been saying that Java is dead for years, probably more than a decade.
Java still hasn't received the message :-D
I wouldn't worry too much about it honestly. And if Angular truly "dies", then you'll know something went wrong along the way.
This is why I am wondering if Angular is dying :D
But you're right, it can survive some years, but I think live would be better than survive!
Well yes, living is always better than surviving :D
We'll see.
Angular is not dead. It's just so complex and hard to grasp that people rather choose React/Vue IMHO.
Thanks for your feedback. I agree with you, Angular is more complex than React/Vue, or lighter frameworks/libraries. But is it the only reason? I mean, maybe time spent in Angular learning is worth, and developer could give a try.
Hi!
I work with AngularJS and many possibilities I was completely satisfied )
But a new version has been released - Angular. He was incopatioble with previous one... (
I made one application on an angular and was somewhat disappointed
And I thought: why do I need an Angular?
Angulyar was not needed...
I see no reason to use an angular. it does not give advantages, but creates problems - the size of the bundle and the download speed
In the end, I switched to using React and Vue (preferable).
more one small thing:
the number of users of messenger "Telegram" channels in Russia:
I think Angulyar breaks the main modern trend in the development of web applications - speed and compactness. And this is bad. IMHO
Thanks for this large comment. I had to work with AngularJS for almost 2 years, but didn't really liked it..
Today I'm working with Angular, and I'm very happy to have this kind of architecture. But yeah I agree, speed, compactness, reload time are slooooow...
People used with Spring backend usually choose Angular straight for frontend dev.
React has issues which angular doesnt have (but Vue also doesnt have them). Vue prob has the best of both worlds.
I actually think that getting into Angular is quite easy. Would probably be easier than React if we didnt have a documentation issue. Yeah, Angular's docs are quite intimidating, that scares people out.
More than docs, Angular ppl want to push RxJS, which is not necessary in 95% cases, but veeery scary. RxJS is feels like the VIM of libraries.
React is not simple. It just hides its complexity on its initial docs / learning process. It looks straightforward at first sight then you stumble upon multiple issues. For instance: It is much simpler to write a shared angular service than to design an efficient react context. Even hooks are quirky AF.
React has its own perks, using it is easier and it takes about 30% less time to build an equally complex app than what it would take on Angular.
HOWEVER, Carefully using Angular's Change Detection and Incremental DOM beats the React and the VDOM by miles, with respect to bundle size, memory usage.
Apps employing Angular 9 and up use Ivy Compiler as default. TBH applications on Angular are and will provide better user experience specially on Mobile devices.
I'm not sure to understand, how a frontend framework could affect UX on mobile? Can you detail?
More like a combination of UX and HCI. UX counts for user interaction based events, but, lags, bottlenecks and memory leaks that cause buttons to respond late or call backs be delayed even by a few milli seconds is really frustrating.
Mobile devices though have a better architecture than most computer devices, but are less powerful than your desktop computers. Tools that work fine on your system might not work so good on the phone due to less powerful resources.
Many professional developers also fail to understand tha effect of incorrect CSS on performance and how it could cause a webpage to re-render at times. I too miss out on it sometimes.
I hope this helped. For a better understanding you could look into VDOM, how it works, and its pros & cons.
Then go over Incremental DOM.
Since I am a Computer Systems Engineer too, I love performance along with beauty, Dev time's a tradeoff though.
Ok I see your point, and agree a lot with you!
Thanks for explanation.
still using it, and excited about ivy ;)
no harm knowing them all (angular, react, vue)
Angular 9 has been released, i think Angular has a bright future ;)
Have a nice week correcting your package.json
Indeed Bagus, this new version seems to be promising!
They also mixed Angularjs and Angular as one in the survey
Angular is dead to me. After being on a year long project with it, it is an awful, unproductive, slow performing framework. I would not do Angular again even if you paid me a million dollars.