Technical and business advantages of Angular

Angular is one of the most popular frontend framework for frontend development. It was developed by Google and it’s the successor of AngularJS , the first version of the framework which was discontinued in January 2022.

In this article we will go over the most important benefits of using Angular, both from a technical perspective and also from a business point of view, so by the end of this article you will be able to decide if Angular is the right choice for your frontend development project.

Business Benefits of using Angular

1. Ease of learning for backend developers 
   If you have read other articles on this topic you might have found that Angular development has a steep learning curve. This is correct if you or your developers are most used to Javascript and the early frontend development where there were no constraints or structure. However, for backend developers, switching to Angular has a homie feel about it as they discover (almost) the same syntax, structure, and rules they love. The only challenge is the paradigm of switching from the backend to the frontend.

From a business perspective, this means that you could leverage backend developers to work on the frontend side with a quicker and easier turnaround. That is the reason Angular is a preferred choice for projects with a backend in .NET or Java.

2. Cross-platform development
   With Angular, you can develop single-page applications, but you can also develop Progressive Web Applications or mobile applications as the framework and the community has developed support for it.

For building PWAs, the Angular framework offer out-of-the-box support for Service Workers which is one of the most important steps for turning an application into a PWA.

For building mobile applications, there are two options. One is the Angular + Ionic framework which is used along with Cordova or Capacitor plugins to access native device functionality. The other option is Angular + NativeScript, which offers direct support to the platform APIs.

3. Performance and Scalability
   One of the important advantages of Angular is that the framework is built with performance and scalability in mind, this is the reason it’s chosen for enterprise applications. 

Angular enforces an opinionated structure for development in order to make sure that your application will be scalable, compared to its competitors where it gives you more freedom, and leaves the decision to developers which often time results in more work and possibly scalability problems.

4. Google support
   The developer of a framework is always a factor to weigh in when choosing a potential solution as it will provide peace of mind knowing that the framework is there to stay and will be under continuous development to accommodate the changes in modern web development.

Angular is developed and maintained by Google since 2010, one of the largest companies in the eco-system.  

2. Technical benefits of Angular

1. Typescript
   TypeScript is a superset of JavaScript and its main advantage is the strong type-checking that keeps the code clean and error-free.

Angular is built with Typescript which makes it easier for the developer to maintain a large codebase and offers tools to speed up the development.

2. Two-way data binding
   This is Angular specialty. 

The two-way data binding synchronizes the data between the model and the view, so each time values are changed either in the model or in the view the other part is synchronized as well, without the need of writing additional code.

3. Angular CLI
   The CLI is another powerful tool in the toolset that provides the option to initialize, develop, scaffold, and maintain Angular applications directly from a command shell.

4. Dependency Injection
   Angular comes with a built-in dependency injection mechanism that makes it easier for developers to change or reuse dependencies without altering the code or installing new modules.

This also makes it easier to test components and services as you can inject instances that can isolate dependencies.

5. Lazy Loading
   Lazy loading is an optimization technique built in Angular that allows loading only parts of the application that the user currently uses, and not the entire application at once. It is a very important feature for the app’s performance.

Conclusion

As you can see from the above points, Angular has a lot of advantages both business and technical, and you can use it for building multiple solutions such as Single Page Applications, Progressive Web Apps, enterprise applications, as well as cross-platform mobile applications.

Either solution you plan to develop, with Angular you can expect:

• Performant and scalable applications
• Readable and testable code
• Maintainable codebase
• Community support
• Happy developers 🙂