From the course: Angular: Creating and Hosting a Full-Stack Site

Why Angular?

From the course: Angular: Creating and Hosting a Full-Stack Site

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Why Angular?

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- [Instructor] So we're going to be building the front-end of our buy and sell site using Angular. Now, you might be wondering why we choose to use Angular instead of just creating our site using basic HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, or instead of using some other low code solutions such as WordPress or Wix. Well, compared to hand coding a site, Angular has a lot of advantages. The main advantage is that it makes the task of creating a performance website much simpler and faster, without taking away any of the fine grain control from the programmer. It allows us to create these modular reusable components that can then be arranged into a fully functional website, instead of hand coding each individual page on our site. Imagine, for example, that we have a blog site with a hundred articles, each with pretty much the same structure. Now, what if we wanted to add a signup form to the top of all of our pages? Well, if our site was just a collection of HTML documents, we'd have to make the same exact change to a hundred separate files, which, you know, isn't a pleasant task by any stretch of the imagination. With Angular, on the other hand, all of our pages would be based on a single reusable page component, so we'd only have to make this change once to see it across all the pages. So, the next question is, why you'd use Angular over a platform like WordPress, or Wix, or Squarespace, which allow you to create a website without writing much or in any cases, any code? Well, first of all, since this course is aimed primarily at developers, if you want to create a blog and you're not already a fairly strong developer, I actually would recommend that you use one of these platforms instead of Angular, since it'll probably end up being much more difficult for you in the long run if you try to create a code based site, if you still struggle with basic coding. So, another question is why you'd choose Angular over some of the other web frameworks like React or Vue. And the answer to this question is that it kind of depends on your personal situation and needs. Angular is definitely more opinionated than the other major frameworks. And what this means is that, as we'll see while we're building our site, for most use cases, Angular provides some sort of guidance on what exactly the preferred way to do things is, and this is something you wouldn't find in React, for example, where there are often many different ways to accomplish pretty much the same thing. And this means that Angular can be especially helpful if you're fairly new to front-end development, and don't yet have the instincts that only come from years of creating web applications. And ultimately, if you're still wondering whether to use Angular, or React, or Vue, really the best way to see the differences between all these frameworks is to just try them out for yourself, try building the same apps using all three and see what you like and don't like about each one. All that being said, Angular is a fantastic tool for programmers who want to create, basically, any type of web application, and with technologies out there like NativeScript and Ionic, it's become a tool for creating mobile apps as well. Angular developers are currently highly sought after by many companies who are looking to modernize their web apps or stay ahead of the curve. So with that knowledge, let's move on and see how we can quickly set up an Angular powered front-end for our web application.

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