Should I Use Angular?

It depends. Some developers will tell you that it’s better to use React and build your own components without much additional code. But that may be a problem, too. Angular is a fully integrated framework that allows you to start working on your project quickly without thinking about which libraries to select and how to deal with everyday problems. I think of Angular as being for the front-end, as RoR is for the back-end.

TypeScript

If you don’t know TypeScript, don’t be scared. Your JavaScript knowledge is enough to learn TypeScript quickly, and most modern editors are quite effective in helping with that. The most preferable options nowadays are VSCode and any of the JetBrains IntelliJ family (e.g., Webstorm or, in my case, RubyMine). For me, it’s preferable to use a smarter editor than vim, as it will give you an extra heads-up on any mistakes in the code as TypeScript is strongly typed. Another thing to mention is that Angular CLI with its Webpack takes care of compiling TS to JS, so you shouldn’t let the IDE compile it for you.

Angular CLI

Angular now has its own CLI, or command line interface, which will do most of the routine operations for you. To start using Angular, we have to install it. It requires Node 6.9.0 or higher as well as NPM 3 or higher. We are not going to cover their installation for your system, as it’s better to find up-to-date documentation for installation on your own. Once they are both installed, we are going to install Angular CLI by running the following

Components

We have our empty app running. Let’s talk about app composition in Angular. If you have some background in AngularJS development, you know there were controllers, directives, and components that were somehow like directives but simpler, to allow you to upgrade to Angular 2. For those who don’t have that wonderful experience of having to choose between them and figure out what goes where, don’t worry. It’s mostly just components nowadays. The component is the most basic building block in the Angular world. Let’s look at the code that was generated for us by Angular CLI.