In Angular, what's the conceptual difference between the error and catch functions for promises?

Question

I finally got Angular promise error handling down but it was counter-intuitive to me. I expected errors to be handled by the failure callback but instead I had to use a catch. <

Answer 1

By angularJS documentation for $q:

Methods

then(successCallback, errorCallback, notifyCallback) – regardless of when the promise was or will be resolved or rejected, then calls one of the success or error callbacks asynchronously as soon as the result is available.

.....

catch(errorCallback) – shorthand for promise.then(null, errorCallback)

The two pieces of code you posted are identical.