About AngularJS

AngularJS is an MV*-style javascript framework. You may already be familiar with MVC architecture: model/view/controller. In Angular’s case (and many other frameworks’), the “controller” part is a little muddy. Unlike traditional back-end frameworks, the controller isn’t the middle man between the request and response but rather, it’s a scoped object that may contain functions, additional logic, and helps every part of the application interact together.

Now, despite AngularJS coming into the mainstream just about two years ago, its initial release was actually back in 2009. Its development really took off when one of the original creators started working at Google and over time, Google put its weight behind it, making it enterprise-ready over time.

What do I mean by that? Well, if you’ve ever spent any amount of time in the development world, you’ll know that long-term enterprise-y projects are 10% solution, 10% optimization, and 80% legibility under which I also classify architecture, maintenance and similar concepts. AngularJS does a good job separating different portions of an application into various files where a view, for instance, does not conflict with a controller or other libraries. Nothing is necessarily tied together except via dependency injection.

And since it’s backed by Google, we can bet that it will be around for a few years and won’t disappear into the nether (similar to what happened to KnockoutJS, unfortunately).

During my talk, I wanted to emphasize just how greatly AngularJS is enterprise-ready. It’s like Zend or Symfony for PHP or (the default) Java. Due to its architecture, new developers can jump in after learning the basics of Angular since most applications follow the semi-rigid pattern that Angular sets up.

Lastly, keep in mind that Angular is a FRONT-END framework that runs single-page apps. That means that what makes it special is that it can load and interact with data without reloading the page or having to rely on the server to figure out how to display data.