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History of Angular

Angular is a popular front-end web application framework developed and maintained by Google. It's known for its power and versatility in building complex, large-scale applications. But how did Angular come to be what it is today? Let's delve into the history of Angular to better understand its evolution.

The Birth of Angular (AngularJS)​

The story of Angular starts back in 2009 with a project named AngularJS. It was developed by Misko Hevery at Bratislava, Slovakia. Hevery, a Google employee, started working on the project to simplify the process of web application development. AngularJS was officially released in 2010, after Hevery convinced Google to support the project.

AngularJS introduced many innovative concepts that set it apart from other JavaScript libraries and frameworks of the time:

  • Two-way data binding: This allowed automatic updates between the model and view components without requiring developers to write explicit code.
  • Dependency injection: This made it easier to manage and test modules.
  • Directives: These allowed developers to create custom HTML tags that serve as new, custom widgets.

AngularJS quickly gained popularity among developers due to its revolutionary approach to web development.

The Transition to Angular​

Despite the success of AngularJS, its development team at Google identified fundamental flaws with its architecture that could not be easily fixed without a complete rewrite. The main issue was that AngularJS was not built with mobile devices in mind.

In 2014, Google announced that it was working on Angular 2, which would be a complete rewrite of AngularJS. The announcement was met with mixed reactions, as it meant that AngularJS code would not be compatible with Angular 2.

Angular 2 was officially released in 2016, and it introduced several significant changes:

  • Component-based architecture: Instead of the controller-based architecture of AngularJS, Angular 2 adopted a more modern, component-based architecture. This made it easier to manage complex applications and improved performance.
  • Mobile support: Angular 2 was designed with mobile devices in mind, making it more versatile than its predecessor.
  • TypeScript: Angular 2 switched from JavaScript to TypeScript, a statically-typed superset of JavaScript developed by Microsoft. This allowed for better tooling and improved developer productivity.

The Evolution of Angular​

After the release of Angular 2, the Angular team decided to adopt semantic versioning and release a major update every six months. This led to the quick succession of Angular 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10.

Each major release brought new features and improvements. For instance, Angular 4 introduced a more efficient version of the Angular compiler, and Angular 5 brought a build optimizer and improvements to the decorator syntax.

With Angular 9, the Angular team introduced the Ivy compiler, which significantly improved the performance and bundle size of Angular applications.

Conclusion​

Today, Angular is one of the most popular and widely-used front-end web application frameworks. Its history is a testament to its adaptability and innovation in the face of changing web development trends. As Angular continues to evolve, we can expect it to continue to shape and influence the world of web development.