[tracker1]

I can't speak for GP, but have used angular up through 4.x (not quite current) and don't find it better than React's ecosystem imho.

With React I can often bring in additional components and libraries without friction. With Angular it feels like doing anything means significant friction. And heaven help you if you want to change the way something internal works, or work around things.

[jf-]

I can’t say I’ve had that much trouble bringing in third party libraries, nor have I had a need to change how the framework works internally. I think this is the same as with most frameworks, you tend to just use them rather than doing stuff under the hood. Can you give an example?

[tracker1]

At this point not really... it's been over a year since I've had to really worry about it. It was better using angular-redux or ngrx, but still was a weird experience. When you have eventing issues with RXJS, or handling integration with other libraries, it's definitely not as broad or mature as the React space is. Anything from chartjs to color pickers, I'm trying to recall the last big issue I had in an angular app. In the end, I just remember pain all along the way more than most specific examples.

Oh yeah... drag-drop integration... that was the single biggest pain. None of the component libraries worked well, and doing it manually was harder than I've experienced before, including just straight JS, and definitely worse as a whole than using say jQuery-UI.

If it were a year or more ago, I could cite better examples of pain points. 2+ is better than 1.x, but still horrible. I'd rather see people adopt Vue over Angular. I still prefer a react-alike over any of them.

[jf-]

Funny you should mention drag drop, it’s now built in as of version 7, just released a few days ago. Look up the CDK for more details.

Whenever I’ve needed drag and drop functionality in the past I’ve found it in existing UI components. A fairly comprehensive one is primeng. I’ve also added an angular colour picker and highcharts without very much trouble.

Often when I hear people complain about angular, I wonder if they just don’t understand it very well and are trying to do things the wrong way. Angular is opinionated, but I don’t find it terribly difficult or painful, though at this point I do have rather a lot of experience with it and find it’s difficult to put myself back in the shoes of someone with less.

I really do enjoy the framework and how comprehensive it is. I like having a framework that gives me so much out of the box without having to go to a somewhat unstable ecosystem of related projects. Frankly I think Angular’s bad name is due in part to it simply being fashionable to put Angular down, and partially because it’s critics never really learned how to use it.

Also, something about jsx just rubs me up the wrong way.

[tracker1]

I feel the opposite... I feel like React, by comparison, and JSX are much like the huge lego sets you used to be able to get generically... being able to plug in whatever I want. Angular feels like being stuck with a Duplo version of MindWorks.

As to JSX, it's something close to what I wanted a long time ago... when E4X was added to Mozilla's browsers, along with support for it with Flash/ActionScript3 and XML literal support in VB.Net (not that I love that language) ... interactivity to the UI was SO much simpler. The shame is it was never really supported in other browsers, which left it dead on the vine.

When JSX came out, it's REALLY close to what I already wanted, and in most cases better. In the end, I can compose a React/JSX component starting with a static render function in a file by itself... I can grow it and turn it into a class or wrap it in higher order components. Compose with extensions like react-redux, material-ui, react-jss with ease. Every single time I write an Angular component, I'm looking up configuration arguments for @directives. It's just painfully restrictive by comparison.

Simplest react component

    // HelloComponent.js
    import React from 'react';
    export default ({name}) => <div>Hello {name}!</div>


    // StatefulComponent.js
    import Hello from './HelloComponent.js';
    ...
       return <Hello name={this.state.name} />

That's off the top of my head... that's just the code you have to write... Now, do the same thing in Angular off the top of your head, I'm willing to bet it's a LOT more verbose, ugly and hard to remember/modify what you need.