What is Better - Angular or AngularJS? Why?

First off, let’s clear the misconception about the way both the frameworks are referred to. Although Angular and AngularJS names are used interchangeably, they are not the same at all. They share a common name just because both frameworks are sourced by Google. Also, Angular is the subsequent version of AngularJS. And both are used for front-end UI development. That’s where the similarities end. Post that, there is a world of difference between them both. Let’s see the differences and understand why one is better than the other.

What is AngularJS?

AngularJS, the JavaScript framework was launched in 2010 which was an instant hit among the developer community. However, observing the trend set up by ReactJS and VueJS, Google worked hard to change the underlying programming language to put up stiff competition. That’s how Angular came into existence.

What is Angular?

Angular 2 and the latest versions, or just Angular is the subsequent version of AngularJS seemingly. But in reality, it is a paradigm shift from AngularJS. While AngularJS is a JavaScript framework, Angular is based on the TypeScript programming language. You can say that all the drawbacks of AngularJS were supposed to be corrected with Angular.

One more point to be noted at this juncture is while Google offers long-term support (LTS) to Angular, the AngularJS support from Google ends by December 2021.

Angular Vs AngularJS: Differences

Both the frameworks are used extensively for front-end development. There are no two ways about it. According to a Stack Overflow survey 2018, Angular and AngularJS are chosen 37% of the time to create impressive UIs.

Architecture

Programming Language

Angular Commandline Interface

Dependency Injections (DI)

App development

Performance

AngularJS uses the Model View Controller (MVC) architecture which simplifies the coding process.
On the other hand, Angular is based on the components and directives like React. It offers an HTML template that allows the developers to build components. Angular is used to build larger and more complex websites.

While Angular JS uses JavaScript, Angular uses TypeScript, a superset of JavaScript language. The difference is essentially static typing which improves the overall performance and enables building large and difficult-to-maintain applications.

As Angular has its own CLI for generating components, directives, and services, it expedites the process of application development. On the other has AngularJS uses Angular CLI or HTML to develop applications.

Dependencies are objects the class needs to perform a function. The way the DIs work using Angular is a lot different from AngularJS. The Angular uses single-direction state change which is more hierarchial in approach. This type of DI boosts the overall performance of the framework significantly.

While AngularJS cannot be extended to develop mobile applications, Angular can be used to develop mobile app UI as well.

Angular is at least 5x faster in performance as compared to AngularJS. The two-way binding in AngularJS works as a double-edged sword when it comes to developing complex web applications. The two-way binding is rendering the changes on view whenever the model is changed and vice-versa. However, by and by the developers felt that it was impacting the performance due to all the support the two-way binding needed.
In contrast, Angular’s unidirectional data flow keeps matters simple and easy.

Should you choose Angular or AngularJS?

Every aspect we spoke about in the earlier section shows that AngularJS is no match for Angular. However, the learning curve of Angular is quite steep as you need to learn the TypeScript language which complicates the matters.

For straightforward applications, AngularJS might offer to make the development process simple, however, for heavily maintained applications Angular is the go-to framework.

Conclusion

AngularJS was an instant hit when it was first released, however, the Angular 4 release proved to be a better alternative. Angular is currently a highly competent framework for building enterprise-level applications. Google is working constantly towards enhancing the performance of the Angular framework, more so with AngularJS coming out of support from Google by the year-end.