Angular developers have made it clear they are not happy with the controversial plans for Angular 2.0.

Angular developers have made it clear they are not happy with the controversial plans for Angular 2.0.

Wrong way sign via Shutterstock

Following the recent announcement of Angular 2.0, developers have flooded forums and comment sections with angry comments.

“Let this mark the day that I decided to get the hell out of web dev,” one developer commented on a JAXenter report. “Nope, not April 1st… I was really hoping it was,” said another user in response to the apparent absurdity of Angular changes.

Many developers are angered by the absence of any migration path from Angular 1.x to 2.0 combined with a migration period of 24 months (at best).

Officially announced at this week’s ng-conference, the next generation of Angular plans to introduce a new syntax, new architecture and a new development experience. Scheduled for release at the end of 2015, Angular 2.0 will drop directives, controllers $scope and jqLite and break all compatibility with Angular 1.x. The framework’s development team claims this will address many of issues of the current generation, however its community is not yet convinced.

“Is this a joke?”

Reddit users have been lambasting the plans and debating Angular’s plans. “People thought that Python 2.7 -> 3 was bad, but this is much worse.” Other users are threatening to look for alternatives if Angular goes ahead with its modified syntax: “The new syntax is horrible, prefer the old much more. Might consider looking at other frameworks if they are going down this path.”

Meanwhile, hundreds of developers have taken to Twitter to voice their opinions on the matter.

A minority of developers were surprised at the negative consensus, and declared their support for the next generation. “Wow I’m shocked by all the negative comments. As a web developer that has used AngularJS professionally since v1.0 I think all the changes address major issues: Unnecessary controllers, $scope bloat and communication between directives ALL solved.”

Others Redditors are standing by the new syntax: “I was admittedly irked when I first saw the example, but after some consideration and a bit of research, I think it will quickly grow on me. I will like the separation of standard HTML attributes and angular attributes based on a baked-in convention such as the parentheses and brackets.”

The Osborne effect

In a worst-case scenario for Angular, the recent announcement could be an example of the Osborne effect – when a prematurely announced product has the complete opposite of its intended effect.

In some instances (as with Sega, Windows Phone 8 and Nokia) new projects can fail as a result of the mere fact that the product has been announced well in advance of its availability. The phenomenon gets its name from the Osborne Computer Corporation which went bankrupt in 1985 after taking one year to release a product it had announced.

In contrast to Apple’s ultra-secretive approach, the pre-announcement of Angular 2.0 is likely intended to build excitement and prepare its community for the extensive changes to its framework. But this also gives its community plenty of time to complain about the next generation features and hope that its developer team will backpedal.

One JAXenter reader summarised the plans to ‘simplify’ Angular with an xkcd comic strip.

 Source from

http://jaxenter.com/angular-2-0-announcement-backfires-112127.html