In this section, I thought of talking a question that I’m frequently asked, “should I invest time in Angular 1 or 2 (now angular 4)?”. I hope this post enable to take decision wisely and effectively. Whenever, I’m asked this question, I counter questions developers with my questions.
- Are you new to Angular?
- Have you tried building any angular app?
- Which version you tried with and what problems you faced?
To me, frankly speaking, before investing time in any framework, I usually see
- Who is backing the framework?
- What is the community size?
- Who are the competitors?
- How frequent is their release cycle?
- How responsive they are on bug-reports and feature request?
After evaluating these factors, I choose a framework and then invest my time not only theoretically rather practically which means I build an app around the same. This actually gives you more deep insight of the framework.
Now, to answer the question, there is no “official” answer. But the short and precise answer is if you are starting fresh, then you should always invest time in latest and stable version. Another aspect to look at, which framework industry is using is currently. Majority of companies are still on angular 1 and they have plan in near future to upgrade the same. In this case, you need to have understanding of both the frameworks so that you can work on the current code-base and accordingly plan for future upgrade. Another benefit of this, you can easily toggle between the projects which also makes you more valuable resource. In angular term this is like dual-binding.
But, if you are familiar to only one framework and don’t want to invest time in learning new or existing stuff, then you are only way available, which kind of make you less valuable resource in my perspective. Below are some numbers which will also help you take your decision wisely.
Summary:- It’s all depend on you, how you manage time . Angular jobs will be on the rise, in fact the need for AngularJS support in the enterprise will be even higher. So, potentially if you are having good JavaScript knowledge, then you are good. There is no right answer regardless, but hopefully this post has given you some insight as to what you need to consider.
Thanks,
Rahul Sahay
Happy Coding