Thoughts on Angular 2.0

Neil Young once sang how “every wave is new until it breaks”. The line was a poke at trendiness in the music industry, but I find the lyrical snippet is applicable to software development, too, in a number of subtle ways.

There has been a lot of turmoil surrounding the future direction of Angular, which is fair. The preview and announcements made for Angular 2.0 during ng-europe were dramatic and conveyed no empathy for the customers and development teams who have taken a dependency on the framework. Those people are left wondering when the ng-wave will break.

The Blessings and Curses of Backwards Compatibility

Web developers have always faced incompatibilities, but have also been fortunate enough to build software on top of a set of technologies and standards that have diligently preserved backward compatibility. This diligence allows the nearly 20 year old web page for the animated movie Space Jam to live on. We’ve been accustomed to building software using web standards that keep working into the future. Stability is good for business.

But backward compatibility has a price. I believe the web moves at a snails pace, which is contrary to popular opinion. However, compare the evolution of the JavaScript language to some of its peers like C# or even Java. Next year’s ECMASCript 6 release is the first big move forward for the language in nearly 20 years. Also consider the XMLHttpRequest API. The API is central to today’s applications, but it has taken the industry 15 years to standardize the API  and build the tools to make mainstream developers productive with asynchronous requests and dynamic DOM updates.

Should Angular 2.0 be backward compatible? Or should Angular 2.0 follow Py3k?

Python 3.0, also known as “Python 3000” or “Py3K”, is the first ever intentionally backwards incompatible Python release. There are more changes than in a typical release, and more that are important for all Python users. Nevertheless, after digesting the changes, you’ll find that Python really hasn’t changed all that much – by and large, we’re mostly fixing well-known annoyances and warts, and removing a lot of old cruft.

Surfing the Waves of Change

Web development feels like a fast changing environment, but a closer look will show we mostly churn in the turbulence of small, incremental improvements. It’s rare for a wave to arrive and move everyone forward.

I still believe Angular 1.x is the best wave to ride today. I already have applications in production with Angular 1.2, and at least one more on the way with 1.3.  With the core Angular code base being only 25k lines of JSDoc’ed, tested, working, healthy code, I believe the wave can keep rolling for years to come.

I also believe Angular 2.0 should be a new wave that makes a break from Angular 1.x and evolves without being encumbered by backward compatibility or designs for an easy migration path. We’re still early in the history of application development on the web, and there will one day be a newer, bigger, better swell. It’s name might be Angular 2, or maybe something entirely new will come along. That’s life in the rough seas of web development, where you can either fight the waves and drown, or surf the waves and stay on top.