A Developer Evangelist's Thoughts on Angular 2

Back in December, Google finally released a beta version of Angular 2, bringing performance improvements through offline compiling, pre-rendering, and view caching. The other day I spoke with TJ Van Toll, a developer evangelist with Telerik/Progress Software to share his thoughts on the new release. Telerik was involved in developing Angular 2 and has implemented the language into their KendoUI and NativeScript products due to enormous customer demand.

One of the biggest favors the Angular team has given developers is the simplification of API tools. Before Angular 2, Angular’s APIs could be confusing and challenging once the basics were mastered, due in part to the amount of product-specific nomenclature. The new Angular 2 APIs are much simpler to understand, and will hopefully drive user adoption to help build more advanced web apps. With increased user adoption means more demand for enterprise adoption.

These improvements to the language don’t mean an update to existing Angular apps is immediately necessary. The Angular team has provided documentation to help users upgrade, but it depends on what kind of app you’re trying to run. If you’re building a new app, it’s probably best to use Angular 2.

As an employee of Telerik/Progress Software, TJ has a unique insight into what developers are using Angular for already, and that’s primarily for more complex, form-driven web apps. With Angular 1, the most compelling use was to help users fill out really big forms with little difficulty, such as W-4’s. TJ is also very excited about Angular 2’s focus on native development. This has helped Telerik introduce “code sharing” to their NativeScript product to reuse over half of your Angular code across any platform, saving a lot of time to build more new features.

So what can Angular add? Not much, according to TJ, though TypeScript is still a love-it-or-hate-it tool for most developers. To help broaden the appeal of Angular, there is documentation available for developers to use JavaScript instead. Right now, the biggest thing people want is an announcement of a stable release, so everyone can feel confident about playing with all of these new toys.