Angular was dead on arrival

I'm commonly asked why more people don't choose `angular2` which in my head I correct to `angular`. (we're on angular 3 alread.. no, 4,... no.) Quite simply, the answer is Typescript.

Angular was dead on arrival
Photo by Maxwell Nelson / Unsplash

I'm commonly asked why more people don't choose angular2 which in my head I correct to angular. (we're on angular 3 alread.. no, 4,... no.) Quite simply, the answer is Typescript. Whether we like it or not the majority of javascript developers in our field are new or mediocre developers who don't have the time or cognitive ease to attempt to learn another language.

It was a huge mistake for the team to release the library with the small amount of constantly outdated documentation entirely in Typescript. Most stackoverflow searches for angular aren't even relevant or accurate given the constantly changing api. Without good documentation, and so much irrelevant or outdated answers on stackoverflow these developers lose hope, and angular lost potential users.

Originally I thought the quick rise of react was because they're backed by Facebook or they solved something new, but that's not entirely accurate. With vuejs we see a lot of similarities to react and angular. But what made it popular and with more users than angular so quickly wasn't solving something new, but something I think react did well: good documentation.