Why is AngularJS Necessary?

It’s no secret that thousands of people are successfully transitioning into the kinds of productive, engaging careers in technology that they’ve always wanted. With a combination of traditional schooling, individual learning, apprenticeships, and bootcamps, they are acquiring the skills they need to stand out from the pool of applicants. 

Or to say it another way by summarizing every movie ever made by the Disney Corporation:  

Dreams Do Come True. 

One of the best ways of going about this is to learn to use the tools required in a given field. Just as learning to use a MIG welder effectively is a great way to demonstrate value to potential employers, putting together projects showcasing your proficiency with important coding frameworks is a good way to appeal to development shops.   

This piece will focus on one such tool: AngularJS. 

What Is AngularJS Used For? 

AngularJS is usually described as a powerful front end development framework whose primary function is to ‘extend HTML vocabulary’. We can learn a lot by unpacking these two statements a little bit. 

Front end development is distinguished from backend development in being more focused on things an end user actually sees. A front end developer is going to concern herself with making sure an application is responsive, easy to use, and aesthetically pleasing. 

HTML is a markup language used to describe content that will be displayed on a web page. If you’ve ever wondered how a browser knows the difference between regular text and bolded title text, the answer is that each is wrapped in a different HTML tag.  

AngularJS facilitates the creation of high-quality web applications by making the entire process of dealing with HTML much easier. 

Why Use the AngularJS Framework?

AngularJS changes how a developer deals with HTML. With AngularJS:

• Large chunks of boilerplate HTML code can be generated automatically, making a developer more efficient; 
• You can define custom HTML tags that behave more like widgets;
• Adhering to the popular Model-View-Controller design pattern becomes orders of magnitude easier;
• And much more. 

With AngularJS you’ll be a better developer, period. Given its popularity, learning AngularJS is a great way to make yourself a more attractive potential employee. 

Learning to Use AngularJS

Here are some ways you can become more proficient with AngularJS:

• Read “Practical Uses of AngularJS”.
• Or read the official AngularJS Tutorial. 
• Grab a copy of “Learning AngularJS” by Ken Williamson.  
• Check out this project-based AngularJS course from Udemy. 
• Codecademy has an AngularJS course aimed at beginners. 

This should be more than enough to keep you busy for a while!