We wrote an article about 3 years ago about the dominance of AngularJS. Much has changed since that time. This announcement was recently made by the Angular team, about the final release in AngularJS. It is with a heavy heart that I read these words:
AngularJS has had an awesome ride. Change is the only constant and we are about to send off our old friend onto a well-deserved ride into the sunset. On July 1, 2018, AngularJS will enter into a 3-year Long Term Support (LTS) period.
What does LTS mean for AngularJS?
LTS means that no more future releases will come from AngularJS. They will, of course, have security patches and bug fixes that come out, but 1.7 is where the version party ends. Your AngularJS apps will still continue to work. However, for someone who jumped on the Angular train from nearly the beginning, this moment is a hard one to accept. I know Angular is so much better than AngularJS, but there is a part of my developer's heart that will always belong down among the Directives and Service Service.
Angular has had a huge impact on the lives of many developers. Many of us have spent years learning how it works and using it effectively to build amazing things for the web. This announcement made me reflect on the time that I’ve spent working with AngularJS over the years. I wanted to ask some near and dear Angular friends what this moment meant to them, Bonnie Brennan, as usual, was the first to respond.
I'm not sure if it is ridiculous or not, but at this point, I am actually tearing up. Sure, it’s just a framework, just some JavaScript, just some code that makes the web run. But to me, AngularJS was/is so much more. (Read my Angular story here.) It was using AngularJS and Firebase with three-way data binding, that JavaScript constructs in general really started to click for me. That first "lightbulb moment" in development is not one I will likely ever forget.
Joe Eames was also nostalgic and his story reminds me so much of my own:
As I mentioned before, nothing will change for those of you working currently and still in AngularJS. Your apps will continue to work and bug fixes will still be shipped to the framework. And as the ng-conf team put it, "security flaws, breaking browser changes and jQuery drama will [continue to] be addressed".
As the AngularJS team put it in January:
We understand that many developers are still using AngularJS, and that the migration process to Angular takes time and energy, but we also are aware that developers want clarity on the future AngularJS development plans.
To their credit, the Angular has been transparent with their future plans surrounding AngularJS. Here's a summary of what we can expect for the year:
They are currently working towards the release of AngularJS 1.7.0 and we will continue development of 1.7 through June 30, 2018. On July 1, we will enter a 3-year period of Long Term Support (LTS).
- January 1 — June 30, 2018AngularJS 1.7 Active Development
- July 1, 2018 — June 30, 2021 AngularJS 1.7 LTS Period
I asked Stephen Fluin (Dev Advocate on the Angular team) his thoughts on the impending LTS:
After 1.7.0, the team does not plan on merging features or bug fixes that will cause even minor breaking changes. This is a good thing, it really is. As they told us, as soon as they noticed more consistent traffic to the Angular docs vs the AngularJS docs, they would initiate the LTS phase for AngularJS.
Angular has been growing more than 5x faster than AngularJS did since its original release. In October of 2017, the user base of Angular passed one million developers (based on 30 day users to our documentation), and became larger than the user base of AngularJS.
The team has SO many exciting things planned for Angular in 2018 and beyond. I try to keep up with all the things, and being a part of these two podcasts helps towards that end. So, if you are like me and love the latest and greatest news, I'd check these puppies out:
As for us working on Kendo UI, we have components for both your Angular and AngularJS needs. We plan on maintaining these components for our developers around the world for the foreseeable future.
Mike Brocchi from the CLI team summed things up really well and put into words the feelings of many of my friends in the Angular community:
Don't fret my AngularJS loving fellows. This is not a funeral, rather a new chapter for AngularJS. And I myself have my sights set on the very bright future of Angular. I cannot wait to see what 2018 and beyond hold for this incredible community.