How to stay up to date with Angular
A little history
There is, still today, some confusion, especially for those who are starting to take their first steps in Angular about the designations AngularJS, Angular or Angular2. In a simple way, the most obvious difference between them is that AngularJS, is version 1 of Angular and uses JavaScript, Angular2 or just Angular, is the version that uses Typescript. Nowadays we just say Angular and not Angular2. This possible confusion was generated because when version 2 came out, version 1 was still treated as Angular instead of AngularJS. For simplicity, the team decided to rename Angular1 to AngularJS and all versions after 2 to simply Angular. To illustrate this, I leave a link where you can see the differences between versions over time:
Free Tip: Pay attention to the information you put on the CV, make sure it’s really AngularJS you want to say instead of Angular or vice versa, it could end up being “expensive” on the day of the interview.
Is it possible to migrate an AngularJS application to Angular?
Migrating an AngularJS application to Angular is possible, although it is a laborious task and not recommended. The best thing in these situations, and even as a way of creating something well-structured, is to redo the application in Angular from scratch. However, in case you really need to do it, here is the official documentation provided by the Angular team:
Ways to stay up to date
Understand the timeline of new releases
It is important to understand the timeline in order to have a better version of the time we have to investigate, test and put into practice the new features of each version.
Every 6 months a new major version comes out (ex: version 14, version 15, etc) and between each version there are 1-3 minor versions (ex: 15.1, 15.2, etc). More detailed information is on the following page:
In this way, we already know that we have about 6 months to be aware of all the news of the new version. But is it really necessary to be up to date with everything that is coming out?
Yes and no.
Yes, if our role in the project/company includes training people in Angular, if that’s the case, it’s important to know exactly what’s happening in each version. If this is not the case, it is not imperative to always be aware of updates because one of the things that is always implemented in Angular is compatibility with old versions, that is, the old code will continue to work even with new versions of Angular.
Fortunately, the Angular team works hard to make life easier for each of us when we update to a new version, as it includes scripts that run automatically in order to change the project, certain features that have been updated, but still maintaining the functionality intact with the behavior of the previous version.
In version 14, for example, Typed Forms were implemented, who was using Forms in a generic way, in version 14 saw that it changed from Form to UntypedForm, however, the functionality is the same. It is, nevertheless, necessary to pay attention to certain aspects, such as browser compatibility. An example of this is that the most current versions of Angular are no longer compatible with older versions of Internet Explorer. My advice is that, before updating, check what is described on the Angular update site. Version 12, for example, no longer supports IE11.
What, then, is the best way to keep up to date?
There are some ways to do this, and we can start with the most traditional way: the Angular blog itself, as it is permanently updated with articles about each new version released, sharing what’s new and examples, as well as other useful articles to learn new features. I share below the link to the Angular blog as well as the link to medium where you can also find interesting articles:
- Blog Angular: https://blog.angular.io
- Blog Medium: https://medium.com
A second quite pertinent form is communities. We are not alone, there are many other professionals around the world who, like us, want to stay up-to-date and join communities to help us or be helped. Here’s a link where you can find some significant communities:
- Communities: https://dev.to/t/angular
In the same way that we have blogs and communities, for those who like to learn through reading, consulting, and exchanging knowledge, we also have video options. On YouTube we can find a lot of content that will be of much help for all of those who prefer to acquire knowledge this way, allowing professionals to be watching the videos and doing things at the same time. Of course, the Angular team has its own channel, making it, once again, one of the key places to start understanding all the updates:
For other videos, just search for Angular followed by version (ex: Angular 15.1)
One last and very important way to keep up-to-date is, without a doubt, through training courses. As much as we are experts in what we do, trainings allow us to explore more efficient/correct ways of doing things we already do, as well as show some of the innovations in a very practical way. Here are some links to websites/platforms where you can find relevant courses:
- Udemy: https://www.udemy.com
- Angular University: https://angular-university.io
- Platform aggregator: https://www.classcentral.com
Final Notes
This article aims to help any Angular programmer to be more up to date with each new version, however, these are just guidelines. Each professional will find, over time and with experience, the easiest and most convenient way to keep up to date.
Like other developers, I am always available to learn from my colleagues and therefore, feel free to leave any comments, suggestions or even other relevant links, so that I and other readers can continue to learn/evolve and improve our learning strategy future.
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