[RangerScience]

From what I can tell of my experience, Angular is a library you can turn into a framework, by which I mean...

...It seems easy enough (given that I haven't actually taken something through what I'm about to suggest...) to go from zero independent JS - only using existing directives - smoothly and gradually into a full browser-side MVC. Start with directives, add some controllers, now a service or two and eventually some routing....

I also recently finished my first big feature using Angular, and am now ripping out most of the guts because I've realized that The Angular Way would let me do things drastically simpler. So I think there's some actual simplicity in how you can use it that may be hard to spot at first, or may not be apparent when you're coming from a different cognitive toolset (not that I know of anything other than Angular that I can for sure say has the same or a similar toolset...). As I grok it more, I like it more, but some stuff still gives me issue. I just don't use those parts until I understand, and then I delete the two-thirds of my code I don't actually need.

Also: I don't know ReactJS, so don't take this as a comparison to it in any way.