Google Says Angular 2 Will Support Python, Java (thenewstack.io)

An anonymous reader writes: Google will release a faster beta version of Angular 2 in about two weeks, with a smaller version targeted for April. "We're improving our ability to handle different languages," says Google's Brad Green, noting that 213 contributors are currently working on Angular. "Our plan is to have versions that will work with many server-side technologies, from Java to Python." Microsoft has already demonstrated how it's building Angular into ASP.NET and Google is also working with the Drupal team. But Green says they'll also continue supporting Angular 1 for at least another year, until a majority of users have transitioned to the new syntax. Google says there are currently 21.3 million developers using Angular 1, compared to just 300,000 using Angular 2. "We've got a ways go to," Green admitted.

Comments

Front end?

[roninmagus]

Can someone explain why the backend matters? I've not used Angular 2 but have used 1 extensively, and it always just calls a rest service for JSON. I understand others will have other needs, but won't you always just be calling a URL to get or submit data? That service could be written in BASIC for all I care.

Re:Front end?

[Anonymous Coward]

The main case for backend support is isomorphism.

You run into a few problems when you put angular1 or 2 apps into production on the SEO side of things and also on the first hit performance side of things.

For the SEO side of things, even though the google bots do execute javascript they do not wait for async actions to complete. Angular Apps usually load some templates via XHR and/or json data from a service, so these won't complete and google will index a broken site where nothing works.
( Don't mention prerendering via a headless browser, this does not work and will never work )

On the other side of things even if you inline and minify templates etc... you will always either have a big bundle of templates to download on the first hit ( more than you acutally need ) or load them individually... So you end up with a lot slower first hit experience than you might want.

Enter isomorphism: The idea is to have your client side routes also exist on the server, so that when a user or google comes in the server can render out the necessary templates and even service data directly to the returned page, so zero async calls are required and rendering can start immediatly .all while downloading the EXACT content needed for that. and no more.

Afterwards the normal rendering process takes over and its business as usual.

This requires server support ( we had to write it ourselves for ASP.NET Core 1.0 in my last project ) and ideally should be DRY....
We currently configure our angular ui-router routes just on the server specifiy template and data dependencies and the server renders it out exactly like that ( prepopulating the template cache and the data cache of angular 1 )

We have gotten our first hit time to a fully rendered page ( neglecting any networking latency ) down to 50ms that way, and we have no extra work anymore to keep the SEO people happy.

Re: js crapware fad of the month

[Anonymous Coward]

I have used angular2 for a month now and I hate javascript. But I have to say that this is the best Javascript framework I have seen. The component architecture makes it possible to create actually generic and reusable components. I still think that .net will go away soon but angular2 will probably be the most important and used thing in the net. And quite soon even. Within 1 or 2 years.

They should call it !Angular

[ilsaloving]

I was a major fan of Angular until all this crap with Angular 2.

Was it *really* necessary to make fundamental changes to the syntax, thereby making it completely incompatible with Angular 1? It's dishonest to even call it Angular 2, when it has almost nothing in common with the previous.

And everyone thought Java's constantly revolving APIs were bad...

Re:What is Angular?

[Jack Griffin]

I thought this was news for nerds, not news for web app developers....