[jondubois]

I feel more comfortable using technologies that have had moderate, steady growth in popularity over many years like Polymer than technologies which experienced sudden, explosive growth like Angular 1 (we know how that turned out).

Early explosive growth means that the technology is hype-driven; adopters haven't given themselves the time to critically and objectively evaluate the solution - It's not so different from economic bubbles. People get excited and buy into it without thinking and then at some point in the future when they realise that it won't live up to their expectations they all start selling at the same time.