Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by tomsaffell 4695 days ago
Have you built anything with AngularJS? I've built apps in both Flex and AngularJS, and to me AngularJS is a very different beast, and a much better beast. Unlike Flex, AngularJS: does not provide a UI component library, has a first-class runtime environment (that is growing, not shrinking), integrates into existing websites (rather than sitting inside them as black boxes), brings an MV* way of thinking with it (Flex had MV* options, but only 3rd party add-ons), and finally (this is purely a personal one), is a joy to code with (I love AS3, but I found Flex to be clunky)

I'd be willing to bet that AngularJS will be hugely successful, and will gain a significant share of the Single-Page-App market.
1 comments
taude 4695 days ago
Yeup, i've worked with both and a lot, and with Flex back in the day (I co-authored a big publisher book on the topic).

I'm not saying Angular/Flex is the same beast. I'm saying that one of market segments that is going to find it most useful is the same people who were looking at Flex to solve problems back in 2006/07. Naturally, technology has progressed quite a bit since Flex came out. For a JS library, Angular hits a pretty good sweet spot for those same large dev teams looking to build native browser-based apps.

link
tomsaffell 4695 days ago
Yes, I'd agree that both solve the "large dev teams looking to build native browser-based apps". But I think the difference is that Flex was reasonably good at it, but was very effectively sold into the enterprise by Adobe. Hence it did well in the enterprise, but not great outside.

By contrast, AngularJs is not being sold into the enterprise by anyone (yet?), and is, IMO, better at solving those problems.

Hence my prediction: unlike Flex, AngularJS will gain market share in single-page-apps outside the firewall, as well as inside the firewall.

link