Compared to what?
My experience was:
* My first module
* My first controller
* Attaching controller to div
* My first interaction with ng-click and $scope
* My first route
* Refactor controller from div to router
* Using a route with an anchor tag
* My first form with ng-submit
* My first service
* My first value to wrap jquery
* Using $.ajax to call a service
* Discovering $http and refactoring out $.ajax
* Refactoring the service into a factory
* My first directive to wrap jquery-ui
and so on.
> contrived google trends chart
http://www.google.com/trends/explore?hl=en-US#q=angularjs%2C...
We'd like to showcase successful and interesting Angular apps on the website(s) (by which I mean angularjs.org/angulardart.org and builtwith.angularjs.org, etc)
> It was a few weeks ago at the first ever AngularJS conference, ng-conf, that all of my assumptions about Angular were proved true.
According to the OP, it changes everything because it has 'become a platform'. Whether that is true or not is up for discussion, a discussion that is definitely HN-worthy.
I like Angular, but I also find that in many cases it's pretty heavy weight for me. I've been working on a library that lets you add AJAX to your app w/o any javascript, using HTML attributes, REST-ful bindings and the Basecamp2 content-swapping approach:
It's not designed to be a be-all-end-all javascript library, but it lets you tactically AJAX-ify your app in high value places without a lot of complexity.
Here's a (crappy) demo I threw up:
It's in early alpha, but if anyone is interested, please fork and ping me. Lots of interesting stuff to implement still.
Programmer: "I'd like to use Ember.js to build our new tablet app."
Manager: "Who built Ember.js? Who supports it? Where did it come from?"
Programmer: "Tilde, Inc."
Manager: "No dice."
... one month later ...
Programmer: "Okay, I've been playing with AngularJS and--"
Manager: "Who built it?"
Programmer" "Google is leading development."
Manager: "Perfect, I'd like to see 500 LOC fully tested by next week and a shippable app in two months, though I expect we'll let that slip one or 14 months if we have to."
Angular does not. It's an awkward black box.
I can open the source code of backbone & understand everything it's doing. Using a simpler stack makes the code more timeless, any competent js dev is able to continue my work. Pretty sure you can't say the same with your angular app.
I, for one, am glad to embrace my new frontend overlord.
It makes me wonder who is convincing the managers, then, if not the developers that actually have to build the software?
And are developers embracing AngularJS because it is now becoming a marketable skill that hiring managers are looking to fill, or because of its own merits?