This article was contributed by Modlogix-CEO Vlad Vakser.
Today we are going to talk about Angular migration as a service and the comparative advantages of Angular against AngularJS. We will shed some light on a few details on what makes Angular interesting, reactive programming for example, the use of TypeScript rather than live JavaScript, code modularity, etc.
AngularJS is outdated right now, that’s why more and more developers are looking for Angular migration services, such as Modlogix provides, to open new and updated opportunities for businesses.
What was the original concept?
However, firstly we have to go back to the concept of the late 2000s, when many developers were building static or even weakly dynamic websites and were content to insert JavaScript into HTML to produce effects that were a little less “cheesy” than we had at the time.
The concepts of AngularJS seem quite obvious to us today:
- First, decouple manipulations of the DOM model from business processing, which was done by applying the MVC pattern. With this pattern, the “view” is built using an extended version of HTML, with new markup to handle bidirectional data transfers between the model and the view. Hence a big advantage, automatic synchronization of this data on both sides of the system and less JavaScript code to write in applications.
- Still in the MVC pattern, the models have been made up of layers called “scopes”, JavaScript objects that correspond to the execution contexts of some of the views. The scopes referencing, as it should, both the data models and the contextual methods.
- AngularJS is also based on the notion of controller, which is responsible for providing the data and actions with which the user can interact in the views. The purpose of the controller is therefore to initialize the model, to expose it with the functions of the view, via the scope object and to react to the changes which occur in the model.
Note two more very important points: the fact that AngularJS has a dependency management mechanism, which was not a generality, and that it can implement non-blocking asynchronous processes, the client does not have to wait for the server to finish its job, before launching another task.
AngularJS VS Angular: what are the differences?
Angular, not to be confused with AngularJS, is a rewrite by the same Google team of the JavaScript API originally proposed by two project managers, an agile project management coach and Google employee. There are therefore two Angulars, the first conforming to its JavaScript origins and the second, based on the Microsoft TypeScript transpiler, much more efficient and completely rewritten, which we use today for very high traffic sites, which what React does for example, to which it is often opposed, dynamic, based on the SPA (Single Page Application) and MVC (Model View Controller) mechanism.
There remains some vagueness between these two versions, which comes from clumsy naming, which has led to obvious confusion. What is certain is that the two communities do not mix, without really opposing each other and it is in the internals of the two platforms, in the programming techniques, that we will find the real differences between the two options. Their common point being JavaScript.
Today, AngularJS and the TypeScript version, are unavoidable and approximately one in five developers have adopted them, who are sure in this way, to have the most modern paradigms, not only for well-structured and strong websites. traffic, but also for applications that are “webized” everywhere, in a sort of “no man’s land” between the old static HTML applications and the rich client sites, often proprietary, as we saw in the 2000s.
Real advantages of Angular framework
It must be understood that AngularJS and Angular are two different products, each of which has its advantages and disadvantages:
- Angular has the advantage of being based on Microsoft’s TypeScript, which is a JavaScript transpiler, the best way (along with other transpilers like CoffeeScript) to write good looking, safer and better organized JavaScript code. TypeScript allows the programmer to exploit anonymous functions, generics, all on a static type, therefore reassuring, etc.
- Moreover, Angular, in the opinion of users, is a success, a little complicated to implement, more in any case than an API such as Vue.js, or even than React, the latter continuing to lead the race.
- It has the big advantage of modularity, many functionalities having been deported to modules, with a hierarchy in the “components”, which is altogether simpler than the organization based on AngularJS controllers. This is directly perceptible in the rise of SPA pages, or even in PWAs, these Google “branded” applications, which have the same behavior on a mobile as if they had been developed with a native SDK.
- Another advantage of Angular compared to JS is the choice of the mechanism for updating linked data, between the model and the MVC view, of the “one-way binding” type and not “two-way binding” like c was the case before. Angular has also followed React in this journey.
It should be remembered that the “one-way” mode means that there is only one direction for updating the data, either from the model to the view, or vice versa, but not both. In other words, if a process is performed in the model that updates “bound” data, therefore linked to data in the view (the client interface), it is passed on to the client, but the operation cannot be done both ways. This reduces the risk of confusion.
Some also present the MVVM (Model-View-ViewModel) pattern, dear to Microsoft, as an additional quality, which is a form derived from the MVC (Model-View-Controller) and MVP (Model-View-Presenter) patterns, which allows for example, developers to work on the same application and with the same data set, without there being any confusion or obstacles to maintenance and testing, which precisely remain an essential aspect of the framework.
All these factors cause the transition of developers from AngularJS to Angular and other frameworks. If you are still working with AngularJS and you are looking for new opportunities in the development of your software, you definitely need the help of Angular migration services company.
About the author
Vlad Vakser is the current CEO at Modlogix. He provides full-cycle software development and/or team staffing for a SaaS company that wants to scale and grow efficiently.
Last Updated on July 12, 2023 1:19 pm CEST
