Whether you’re a seasoned developer or early in your programming career or a business owner who provides web application solutions, there’s always something to learn about Angular.

What is AngularJS?

Angular emerged for the primary purpose of simplifying the web and mobile app development process by combining end-to-end tooling, declarative templates, and other features like dependency injection.

AngularJS is a front-end web development platform that operates as a JavaScript framework. It should not be confused with a JavaScript library, like jQuery. They are completely different. Angular is similar to platforms such as Polymer, Aurelia, and React. Being developed by the tech giant of the world in 2010, Google, this open framework has since received several upgrades and facelifts to keep up with the dynamic environment of the web development industry.

In less than eight years, Google has released half a dozen updates, which makes AngularJS a desirable tool for web developers from novice to experienced ones. Angular hasn’t always remained in good favor with users. New versions have not always been back-version compatible, and this has led to confusion and the proliferation of various Angular migration myths.

Today, Angular 6 is still pleasing the masses. Angular has been ranked as the second most-used technology for developers. If you’re serious about a career in website or software development, you’ll want to stay abreast with the latest developments.

When to use AngularJS?

To create a simplified experience for front-end developers who are majorly focusing on the design aspect of a web application, AngularJS equips them with the major functionalities to create an advantageous user experience. If you’re a front-end developer and having second thoughts about using AngularJS for your next project, we’ve laid out a few key instances where this framework would be most beneficial.

• You’re designing a progressive web application (PWA).
• You’re creating a large enterprise website or another large-scale project that involves a complex web infrastructure.
• You develop website applications that rely on dynamic content.
• You’d like to upgrade outdated website application designs.
• You’ve been hired to improve the user experience for a large website by initiating a major redesign.

Therefore, AngularJS is intended for large-scale projects of a certain complexity. This open framework is useful to professional developers who have a high level of skill, knowledge, and experience in writing code, crafting dynamic content, and creating web applications that are capable of performing many different functions.

YouTube TV and Netflix are a couple of examples of complex applications that use this framework. However, if you’re just beginning your journey in web app development, then you may opt for it after gaining a few years of experience. However, these examples should put Angular’s primary purpose and target audience into perspective.

Static content, short-term projects, and simple websites aren’t exactly ideal for AngularJS. While Angular can be used for lightweight projects such as these, it can prove to be more trouble than it’s worth when compared to frameworks that are generally simple, basic, and easier to learn.

The Pros and Cons of Using AngularJS

Under the right circumstances, AngularJS can come with a plethora of benefits for its users. While saving you loads of time when completing monotonous tasks, improving the form and function of the final product, and honing your skills as a developer, the JavaScript framework acts as the savior for enterprise owners and professional developers. That being said, just like any platform, Angular comes with its fair share of both pros and cons. Let’s review the list below and decide for yourself which way the scale tips.

Pros

• Angular is supported by Google, which makes for a dependable, trustworthy program that is most likely to keep up with Google’s occasional updates and announcements. Complement this with a wealth of detailed documentation and a reliable framework backed by a robust amount of helpful information and answers to common questions.
• While providing a great selection of third-party integrations that can be added to the framework with ease, AngularJS gives developers even more tools to improve the overall form and function of their product.
• Angular offers faster load time and increased security by using a brilliant concept commonly known as “ahead-of-time compiler”. Angular combines HTML and TypeScript into JavaScript during development, which means all of the code is compiled before the browser even loads your web app.
• This framework is designed to be fully customizable, giving more power to the developer and designer with the help of Angular elements and modules. Angular elements can also easily be added to projects that were built using another framework, which just adds to the appeal of this program.
• The dependency injection capabilities of the Angular framework can be hugely beneficial for the developers—if you possess the technical know-how to use it. Creating the various dependencies can be time-consuming, but well worth it if you’re working on a large-scale project that is expected to perform many different functions.

Cons

• One of the biggest drawbacks of using AngularJS is the platform’s limited SEO options and poor accessibility for search engine crawlers. However, Google is the number one search engine on the planet, so we hope that this problem will not continue to persist for much longer before a solution is presented in another update.
• Another glaring con of using the Angular framework is that it can be quite difficult to learn for novice web app developers. With such a complex web of modules, coding languages, integrations, and customizing capabilities, understanding Angular takes some time. Fortunately, Angular provides phenomenal support and there are several online tutorials and courses you can take to catch up and start taking full advantage of all the program has to offer.
• Unless you’re working on a project of appropriate size and complexity, Angular can easily weigh you down. Save this one for the big-ticket assignments and you’ll fare just fine.

Angular is created for enterprise-scale applications

Claiming that the new Angular is controversial would be too euphemistic. If you were to read different feedback posts from the development community, you’d likely stumble over complaints rather than excitement. But we aren’t that pessimistic about AngularJS because the framework is emerging with every passing day.