I remember when mobile phones, expensive, large, and inconvenient, were just beginning to appear, I used a pager. And I declared for quite a long time that I have no idea for what reason we need these bulky monsters, which couldn’t even be called mobile or smart, so they were known as cell phones.
But time passed, mobile phones conquered the market, and pagers irrevocably disappeared altogether. Today, we just cannot imagine life without a smartphone, which contains our whole life — from family photos to credit cards. Moreover, even if we’d really wanted to keep fidelity to our beloved old model, as I once hoped to stay forever with my oldie-but-goldie pager, the inevitable logic of the development of modern technologies will not allow us to remain retrogrades.
When we say “mobile development”, we mean “Angular Development Framework”
We can say the same about Internet technologies. Even if we are accustomed to dear old HTML with CSS, the World Wide Web itself will refuse to interact with us until we move on to technologies that yesterday were still something new and unknown, but today have become the de-facto WWW standard.
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One of these standards, which any self-respecting development company uses today, is the Angular Development Framework. And if you are engaged in software development, you cannot do without understanding how to make an app using this set of tools.
The size of this article does not allow us to tell in detail the history of the emergence and development of the Angular platform. We will limit ourselves only to a summary of the benefits and disadvantages of this framework, which is widely used today by all successful companies and outsourcing services.
A bit of theory
First of all, one important point should be understood in order to avoid further confusion in terms.
When talking or reading about Angular Development Framework, you may come across either the term “AngularJS” or just “Angular”. While the whole of this framework is based on JavaScript, “AngularJS” and “Angular” (or, to be more correct, “Angular 2+”) do not mean the same thing.
The fact is that an open-source Google-backed development environment called “AngularJS” was first officially introduced back in 2010. This framework turned out to be a real breakthrough for the entire professional Internet community, as it made it possible to turn static HTML layouts into dynamic ones. The new architecture made it relatively easy to embed active forms and elements on web pages.
Of course, these opportunities were immediately appreciated not only by web designers but also by angular development services involved in the field of mobile development.
Seeing the popularity of the new stack, Google in September 2016 released a significantly improved version of the framework called “Angular 2”. In fact, the code was rewritten almost from scratch, which eliminated the transition from one version to another by simply reinstalling the new Angular over the previous one.
Although the angular developers have created mechanisms for switching from one version to another, it is customary to distinguish between the first version and all subsequent ones (and there are already nine of them).
Thus, the initial “Angular” is known as “AngularJS” And all versions released after 2016 are designated as just “Angular”.
Pros and Cons
Now that we have figured out the basic terms, it’s time to talk about the pros and cons of this complex and feature-rich framework.
It should be noted right away that the “Angular” development environment refers to the stack, which, either by chance or as a tribute to someone’s specific sense of humor, is denoted by the abbreviation MEAN.
These four letters represent the four constituent parts of the stack:
- M – MongoDB, NoSQL database;
- E – Express, internal software;
- A – Angular, the actual interface of this front-end framework;
- N – Node.js, a JavaScript runtime environment.
As follows from the above, “Angular” itself is a fairly complex solution, while being part of an equally complicated stack. This explains both the advantages and disadvantages of “Angular”.
Pros
Component-based architecture is the very first advantage of “Angular” that shows the supremacy of the latest versions of this framework over “AngularJS”. The “Angular” architecture is a set of independent modules, which, as in the “Lego” constructor, can be connected in any combination required by the developer. In particular, the Ninth version of this framework includes Google Maps and YouTube.
Reusability — the principal possibility to encapsulate an immense number of different independent elements significantly saves resources by using the same blocks in different parts of “Angular”.
Easy to maintain and repair “Angular”-based products. Due to the multicomponent architecture and the independence of the individual blocks, the connection of third-party team members is fast and efficient. Plus, upgrading and fixing bugs in the final product is much easier.
As it usually happens, the disadvantages turn out to be a logical continuation of the merits. “Angular” is no exception in this case.
Cons
The specific architecture of “Angular” requires special approaches to ensure effective SEO. In practice, it turns out that at this stage, the presence of highly qualified specialists, such as the QArea company, is necessary to ensure the correct indexing of the final product by search engines.
The variety of building blocks that make up the Angular architecture requires precise and careful technical debugging. The abundance of components can make relatively simple programs too heavy.
Summing Up
To summarize, we can say that the Angular Development Framework is a complex, well-thought-out system that requires highly qualified specialists. Moreover, this development environment is capable of providing more than impressive results. Suffice it to say that “Angular” is the backbone of products such as Google Apps, Xbox, Forbes, Delta Air Lines, and a host of others.
