The Angular Renaissance is here. In the last two years, I guess actually even in the last year, 2023 alone, it feels like Angular got more new features than it got over all those other years before that. We got Standalone Components, we got Signals and various features around Signals. We got better server side rendering, we got Deferrable Views, we got a new control flow syntax with those if statements and so on so that we don't need NGF anymore and other things. So Angular really got quite some new features that seemed to take it into the right direction. At the same time, it's worth noting that if you take a look at the download numbers of the different Angular versions, that the Angular community and the people who use Angular are pretty fragmented and there are quite a lot of users who don't even have stable access to Standalone Components yet, let alone Signals, that therefore is a problem Angular will have to deal with. Now, as mentioned, Angular got a bunch of new features over the last two years. For example, new features like Standalone Components, which make it a bit easier to build Angular applications and to learn Angular because you don't have to learn about NG modules and understand why you would put your different building blocks into different modules instead of just importing and using them. We also got Angular Signals as a major new feature you can play around with already, which has the potential of making Angular more performant and getting rid of ZoneJS in the future, which is a package that's being used by Angular, which basically watches for potential things that could happen on the website that could lead to state changes. Being able to get rid of debt dependency could also lead to better performance and an easier mental model. So we got a lot of new features in Angular, but as I also mentioned before, all these new features also add one main problem, they're not being used by all Angular developers. Indeed, if you take a look at the download numbers and you kind of aggregate them and calculate some shares, you can see that there's a decent share of Angular developers who are using a version that's so old that they don't even have stable access to Standalone Components yet, leave alone Signals. And if we take a look at the usage numbers of the latest version, we can see that that's actually a minority of Angular developers. So a large chunk of Angular developers doesn't take advantage of those latest features yet. Now, that will probably change over time, but still it of course is a potential problem for the Angular team because it means that they must make sure that those old versions of Angular still work and that the old way of building Angular applications will work for years to come because there seem to be many companies and teams that are used to that old way, which are not very likely to change in the near future, and therefore, of course, they must be supported. And that, of course, kind of restricts the pace at which the Angular team can move forward. We have all these new features, but at the same time, a lot of Angular developers aren't using them yet. And nonetheless, it's of course great that we have them because in order to stay relevant, Angular of course needs to add new features and give us simplifications like the new control flow syntax or give us better server side rendering support and so on, because otherwise there, of course, would be a huge danger of Angular eventually being replaced by more modern, leaner and simpler frameworks or libraries. That's why, in my opinion, Angular is moving into the right direction. But why the Angular team, of course, also has to get the balance right and also support all those old features and old approaches in order to not lose the existing Angular base. They essentially need to do both, push Angular forward, but also maintain it. And that, of course, is definitely a tricky task. Now, if you take a look at their official roadmap, you can see that they do have more plans regarding Signals, regarding server side rendering and hydration, and also maybe regarding a future without Zone.js or a future where we maybe can build Angular components differently without creating classes. That's not guaranteed and set in stone, but it's something they're thinking about. And of course, that also could be something that makes learning and using Angular simpler because there may be is less boilerplate to write. Because that has always been one main disadvantage of Angular compared with React, for example, that you do have to write a decent share of boiler plate coat in order to create an Angular project, instantiate an app, and work with components. With React, where components are just functions, that has always been a bit leaner and easier, at least in the recent years than it is with Angular where you have classes with those decorators and where you used to have those NG modules, which you don't need anymore when using Standalone Components, though. So that's that point I made regarding Angular moving into the right direction. And therefore I am very positive regarding Angular in 2024. Of course, there is this challenge of getting that balance right between supporting the old approach and old features and experimenting with new features and introducing new features. But I'm very confident that the Angular team will be able to get that balance right because after all, Angular is being used by many enterprises, many companies, and by a lot of teams inside of Google. And therefore, they will get a lot of validation for all their new features as well as all their support for old features. The only thing where I'm not too sure if they'll be able to keep up with React, for example, is regarding full stack Angular apps. Because in the React landscape, we can see that there's a huge move towards building full stack applications with NextJS or Remix there. So React is more and more becoming a library that's being used by frameworks that can be used to build full stack applications, because overall there seems to be that trend where we're moving away from decoupled front ends and backends back to integrated full stack applications at least for certain use cases. And when it comes to Angular, there only is Analog.js as such a meta framework that can be used to build full stack applications. And don't get me wrong, Analog,js is amazing. It's an amazing project and it has a lot of potential, but of course, it's not on the same level regarding the features it offers, for example, as Next.js is. And it's the only one, there is no alternative to it as far as I know. There is no remix for Angular, for example. And that of course could potentially maybe become a disadvantage because if you wanna build a full stick application where you don't have a decoupled front end and backend, doing that with Angular can be tricky and it, especially might be easier if you do it with React. So it will be interesting to see what Angular is doing in that direction and how Analog.js will develop and change over time, and if we maybe also see some alternative to Analog.js. But other than that, as mentioned, I am very positive regarding Angular in 2024.
