If you’re ready to master a new technology, it pays to hear from someone who knows. In our Ask 3 series, we interview an expert from our worldwide network of authors to help you learn about the most important technologies today. In our fifth post of the series, Angular expert, Deborah Kurata answers 3 questions about this critical technology.
Angular is one of the most popular frameworks for building web applications. With built-in features such as binding, routing, HTTP and animations, plus its CLI for generating code and compiling/bundling, it’s easy to create modern, full-featured web applications. Angular’s use of TypeScript also makes the transition from Java or C# smooth for developers, and its vast ecosystem and documentation make it easy to get up to speed quickly.
What's the most important thing happening in Angular right now?
The Angular team recently announced “Angular Labs,” with the goal of providing a place for the Angular team to explore new features without affecting Angular’s stability. One of the exciting things currently labeled with Angular Labs is schematics, which allows teams to build their own scaffolding for use by the Angular CLI. And Angular Elements, which will allow packaging of Angular components as custom elements that can be used outside of the context of an Angular application. Exciting stuff!
What's an adjacent skill/technology that complements Angular?
Many Angular developers are taking advantage of RxJS, a sophisticated library (originally built by Microsoft) that provides observables to help you manage asynchronous operations. As with “the force,” the more you learn about observables and their many operators, the more powerful you can become with them.
What's the future of Angular?
Angular continues to keep pace with important changes in modern web development, yet provides stability for developers, libraries and tools. It achieves both goals by implementing semantic versioning, a planned deprecation policy and clearly defined release cycles. That’s why developers can easily move from Angular 4 to 5, for example, with little or no changes to their application. You can expect this goal of compatibility to continue, making it painless to migrate to future versions of Angular.
If you want to build modern web applications, learning Angular is a step in the right direction. Begin with the basics to get a firm foundation and a conceptual overview of its features and capabilities. Then dive into more intermediate level topics to expand your knowledge and learn patterns for real-world development. Find out where you should start by getting your Angular IQ.
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