Is Angular Bad?

Angular’s not that bad — not as bad as React developers make it out to be. The thing is, we’re usually biased towards what we know. For outsiders looking in, Angular can seem convoluted, massive, and somewhat complicated. But what many don’t realize is that it’s all the same JavaScript under the hood. The only major difference is how the JavaScript is structured.

Angular itself doesn’t really suck. If you think it does, most of it is probably in your head. There is friction against the framework because it looks and works somewhat differently from what you’re used to. Or perhaps it’s simply not doing what you want it to do because there’s a gap in your knowledge.

Yes, I’m an Angular developer. But I’m not advocating it because it’s my native framework of choice. If you’re looking for a React bashing kind of piece with Angular placed on a pedestal, this isn’t it. This is a discussion piece, something that sits above code nuances and x is better than y kind of talk. It’s a meta-perspective on code, the functionalities, and where Angular sits on the spectrum of our ability to use it as a tool.

It’s all just JavaScript

At the base of everything web and front end related is JavaScript. It doesn’t matter if you use React, Angular, Vue, jQuery, Ajax, or node, it’s all a form of JavaScript.

The issue that the industry faces is that many developers, new and transitioning, often pick up JavaScript but never get around learning it properly. This is partly because JavaScript is easy to pick up. You can just create a bit of code and most of the time, it’ll just work. There’s no complicated set up required, no structural implementation, or exported compilation. It’s a scripting language by design, meaning that it’s compiled and interpreted at runtime.

This often gives many developers a false sense of mastery, leading them to jump right into libraries and frameworks without background knowledge of the language itself. Having a computer science degree won’t save you from JavaScript. Only learning JavaScript will save you from JavaScript.