[atrk]

Personally, the two big draws to me of Angular were "free" (as in, I don't have to write much code) DOM<->data binding, and the explicit goal of testability.

As a learning exercise, I wrote a page using just jquery, rewrote it in backbone, and then rewrote it in angular. Backbone helped me separate concerns; Angular helped me do that while writing _way_ less code, since I didn't have to manage keeping the DOM and the JS model in sync.

[Glide]

I had the same experience as well.

I redid a relatively trivial CRUD interface from backbone to Angular. The amount of code that I didn't need in Angular was ridiculous. Most of the code in backbone was moving stuff from the DOM into JS. Like var x = $('#elem').val(); kind of things over and over just did not need to be there in Angular.

I think that these kinds of interfaces hit a really good sweet spot with Angular and other databinding frameworks.

[chucknelson]

Agreed - data-binding and "magic" automatic updates to the view when the model changes are key to what make Angular attractive. The focus on testing is nice too, though.