Staying true to the Angular dynasty.
When you are in a serious relationship, you want your partner to have it all… So when someone more attractive comes along, it’s hard to resist the temptation, isn’t it? That’s true for those who started their love story with Angular (or should we say “AngularJS” or “Angular 1”?), have dumped him for Angular 2 (or should we say just “Angular”?) and are now in search of Prince Angular Charming 3?
At the beginning… there was AngularJS.
Let me tell you, they are in for a big disappointment — Angular 3 will not come their way — ever! But if they can wait just a few weeks, Angular 4 will be there ready to rock their world or confuse them further (he also goes by “Angular”).
So what’s going on here? Did you fall in love with grandpa and are ready to embrace the grandkid?! Who killed Angular 3? Why are there so many generations in just a few years? Let’s take a look at some family history.
Grandpa JS (AngularJS, the first version — better known as “Angular”) was born in 2009, but after awhile he simply wasn’t good enough: he could neither be server-rendered nor compiled into native code. You could also forget about rendering well to other environments (how selfish of him!). He had done his job, though — he allowed you to extend HTML vocabulary for your app, providing you with an expressive, easy-to-develop and readable environment. But his best was simply not good enough for you, the perfectionist! He had one huge problem: he would bind himself onto an existing DOM, adding super powers to it. In a modern world that is unacceptable!
Angular makover (Angular 2).
So his successor, Angular 2 (AKA “Angular”) came along to save the day, to take care of all your needs, but drastic modifications had to be made. You wanted it all: speed, power, performance, scalability, offline compilation, rendering in other environments (lil’ picky, are we?). He came into this world to make you happy — yes, the impatient and demanding you. He was willing to do it all, and even took full control of the templates and made the changes before they arrived in the DOM.
But this wasn’t good enough for you either, and now you want more, you are looking for someone new, someone better. You are waiting for Angular 3 to live happily ever after, but it’s not gonna happen…
The third generation — Angular 4.
Angular 3, the unwanted child.