#3. What is Angular

Read time : 8-10 minutes

What is Angular ?

Angular is a platform and framework for building single-page client applications using HTML and TypeScript. Angular is written in TypeScript. It implements core and optional functionality as a set of TypeScript libraries that you import into your apps.

The architecture of an Angular application relies on certain fundamental concepts. The basic building blocks are NgModules, which provide a compilation context for components. NgModules collect related code into functional sets; an Angular app is defined by a set of NgModules. An app always has at least a root module that enables bootstrapping, and typically has many more feature modules.

1. Components define views, which are sets of screen elements that Angular can choose among and modify according to your program logic and data.
2. Components use services, which provide specific functionality not directly related to views. Service providers can be injected into components as dependencies, making your code modular, reusable, and efficient.

Modules, components and services are classes that use decorators. These decorators mark their type and provide metadata that tells Angular how to use them.

1. The metadata for a component class associates it with a template that defines a view. A template combines ordinary HTML with Angular directives and binding markup that allow Angular to modify the HTML before rendering it for display.
2. The metadata for a service class provides the information Angular needs to make it available to components through dependency injection (DI).

Advantages of Angular :

Angular has been supported on various platforms (web, mobile, desktop native), it is powerful, modern, has a nice ecosystem, and it’s just cool. To justify, few advantageous aspects of angular have been enlisted and briefed below:

1. Angular provides with tools as well as design patterns to build your project in a rational manner. When an Angular application is created properly, you end up with classes in an organised manner and methods that are not complex to modify and are even easier to test. The code of angular is designed conveniently and there is no need for spending much time in order to understand its functioning.
2. Angular actually is JavaScript, but a better version. Angular is built with TypeScript, which in turn relies on JS ES6. There is no need to learn a totally new language. Besides, you still receive features like static typing, interfaces, classes, namespaces, decorators etc.
3. You don't  need to reinvent the bicycle. With Angular, you already have loads of tools to initiate the crafting of the application right away. You have directives to give HTML elements dynamic behavior. You can power up the forms using FormControl and introduce various validation rules. You may easily send asynchronous HTTP requests of various types. You can set up routing without much headache. There are many more benefits that Angular can offer us.
4. Components are decoupled. Angular have attempted to remove tight coupling between various components of the application. Injection happens in NodeJS-style and you may replace various components without much of hassle.
5. All DOM manipulation happen in their respective orders. With Angular, you do not present couple tightly and the logic of application makes your markup much cleaner and simpler.
6. Testing is at the heart. Angular is destined to be thoroughly tested and it supports both unit and end-to-end testing as well with tools like Jasmine and Protractor.
7. Angular is mobile and desktop-ready, which means that you have single framework for multiple platforms. How pleasant is that?
8. Angular is constantly being amended and has a large community and ecosystem. You can find immense number of materials on this framework and numerous useful third-party tools as well.

Therefore, we can say that Angular is not only a framework, but rather, it is a platform which motivates developers to build applications for the web, mobile, and the desktop.

Challenges With Angular :

Every revolutionary discovery arrive with their own demerits. Portraying the same, Angular as well have its own challenges. Angular is quite a big and complex framework with its own philosophy. It can be challenging for newcomers to understand and get used to it. Learning the framework’s concepts is not the only task. On the other hand, you also have to be comfortable with plenty of additional technologies:

1. It is recommended to code Angular apps in TypeScript, so you must understand it. It is possible to write the code with modern JavaScript (ES6), though not much people head with this approach.
2. TypeScript is a superset of JavaScript, so you’ll need to be comfortable with it as well.
3. It is beneficial if you get the grasp of the Angular CLI in order to speed up the development process even further.
4. Node’s package manager npm is used extensively to install Angular itself and other components, so you will need to be comfortable with it's usage as well.
5. Learning how to set up a task runner like Gulp or Grunt can come in really handy, as there can be lots of things to be done before the application is actually deployed to production.
6. Using minifiers (like UglifyJS) and bundlers (like Webpack) is also very common these days. Thus, you have to be familiar with this as well.
7. While developing the app, it is necessary to be able to debug the code. So, you should be familiarise working with debugging tools like Augury.
8. Testing is an inseparable procedure in development. Therefore, it is very important to test Angular applications, which can undeniably be very complex sometimes. Two testing tools are most popular for testing Angular applications. They are better recognised as Jasmine (which is a framework for testing) and Protractor (which is used for end-to-end testing).

As composed above, you can see that there are quite a lot of things to learn in order to start creating client-side web applications. But do not let the challenges discourage you. There are numerous resources available on internet that may help you learn all these tools and technologies. Dorado will also be talking about most of the tools and technologies right from the beginning. With hard work and dedication, you will be able to make excellent and efficient use of Angular in no time. you will also be able to create complex apps with least errors.

Conclusion

In the final analysis, you’ve now got a basic idea about what Angular is and in what cases it may come to use. You also got a generous idea about it's merits alongside its challenges. Now you can buckle up and get working with it.

If you would like to start learning this framework completely and step by step, check out the Angular 10 for beginner tutorial series.

Angular 10 for beginner tutorials.

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