Google AngularJS Framework - Worth the risk?

Question

I have been asked to build a small web application for one of our clients and think it might be a good opportunity to try out a different framework for building web applicat

Answer 1

So far i think Google's Angular is great. Particular like the databinding and dependency injection.

For other js framework, there are knockout.js , backbone.js etc. here are some posts: angular.js example in backbone.js and/or knockout.js

Answer 2

I realise this post is old and you haven't gone with Angular, but I have a similar background to you, and I'm at the same point as you when asking the question.

So for the benefit of future visitors, some of the "risks" and links to resources I've found useful...

• As many have already mentioned, Angular can have a very steep learning curve "Not only me, but co-workers that I consider highly smart developers, have struggled with some of the basic concepts" AngularJS is amazing... and hard as hell (link also has some good tutorial links which you asked for), and the version 2 stuff is looking more like java, which wouldn't have been a problem with your C# background, in my opinion Directives are hard enough to understand without verbose annotations and so on.
• Angular performance can be poor in some cases, especially when using ng-repeat on a large number of elements Considering Speed and Slowness in AngularJS and Scaylr's experience. Other's have mentioned that performance really degrades over ~2000 bound elements, but that's usually met with arguments about how any app with more than that many elements probably isn't a good app. Keep it in mind though if you have legitimate use cases which call for many bound objects.
• Angular is popular in terms of contributors, but ranks way way behind, say, jQuery in terms of production usage. Finding Angular developers might be tough, and jQuery or other developers converting have that "steep learning curve" to deal with.
• Because Angular is young, you have no guarantee that it'll gain enough traction for your new Angular skills to be employable, and your new application not to quickly become legacy code
• In v1.2 Angular doesn't support IE7 and below and v1.3 will drop IE8. For >=IE9, you need to follow some special coding practices.
• The many javascript widgets, plugins and libraries which you might be used to using can't be used properly with Angular without heavy modification and people often suggest to re-write your component in Angular anyway.
• UPDATE March 2014: after 2 months attempting to build a non-trivial densely functional one page app: There are many versions of Angular, and it's hard to say which is the best or most stable. It will depend on what you're coding with it. I'm finding some bugs Angular that are fixed by upgrading to a later version and others fixed by regressing to an earlier one. I've never had to go version shopping like this with jQuery.
• UPDATE May 2014: Young, broken tools. Batarang is great until it doesn't work. I can't trust it until they fix this one.

And finally, the three best resources I've found for learning this stuff

• Todd Motto's ultimate guide, and
• UPDATE April 2014: this eBook chapter is quite amazing. I didn't buy the rest of the book yet, but the concept is fantastic
• A full non-trivial app written in Angular (the accompanying book is OK, but doesn't really talk about the non-trivial app enough, as they appear to be saying advertised on their site)