It is getting easier by the day to find developers who have adopted AngularJS. Whether the people you are working with are freelancers or full-time employees, there is a compelling argument for them learning AngularJS now or in the near future.
As we discussed in part 1 of this series, AngularJS is JavaScript web application framework. Originally developed as an open-source project aiming to create a framework that improves on the traditional uses of HTML, AngularJS is now maintained by a number of Google employees while retaining its open-source origins. As a result, you will find developers and freelancers have drastically varied levels of knowledge on the subject, depending on their interest in open-source projects. Those that do use it tend to love it.
Why Developers like Angular
AngularJS allows developers to bridge the gap between HTML and the functionality of single-page applications. It makes it easy to produce declarative UI and eliminates a lot of the difficulty that comes with managing dependencies, resulting in easier parallel development. Angular also makes data-binding more straightforward than any other framework out there: it removes the need to create complex models for connecting the UI to the treatment of data, and your developers will be able to spend less time writing the same code repeatedly. These are just some of the key factors that make AngularJS an attractive prospect for developers. It’s an ongoing project, and the end goal is to vastly improve testing and provide structure for the entire application building process.
To put the advantages more simply, AngularJS allows developers and freelancers to write code that works easily with different controls and, combined with Web API, functions more smoothly on a range of devices.
Locating Angular Specialists
You may be wondering how to find developers and freelancers who specialize in AngularJS, or who at least have a decent level of knowledge to build upon. The answer is that front-end developers have been rather slow in adopting AngularJS in large numbers, but specialists are out there. Despite being around since its early stages in 2009, Angular is still working to win over the majority of experts. The main issue seems to be that developers and web development freelancers in general are hesitant to invest great amounts of time and money in a framework that is still relatively new. It has undergone numerous changes across different versions, as one would expect, but there have been issues. For example, the Angular team’s Chrome extension, Batarang, was released in 2012. Since Angular has been updated, the plugin has been left behind and is incompatible with recent versions, irritating some users. Despite this, however, there are several good sites to visit in order to find freelance AngularJS developers, such as Elance, Guru, and Toptal. For some helpful hints on finding the perfect freelancer, check out one of our past blog posts, Tips on Choosing the Best Freelance Site for your Needs.
Developers have primarily been migrating to AngularJS - or at least picking it up - from backgrounds in Java, as the styles are fairly similar. However, the aim of Angular is to simplify complex tool selections like the ones offered by JavaScript, so the appeal does extend to experts in a range of languages. In time, this simplicity and the diversity of AngularJS will win over developers at both the front and the back end, and will save hugely on costs by making the development process much simpler.
Stop back next week and check out the third installation in this series which will delineate the benefits of AngularJS in even more detail.