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After what seemed like an endless journey, Angular 2 has finally been released.
The first Angular 2 release candidate was unveiled in early May 2016 and has steadily become more stable and complete. In a blog post, Jules Kremer laid out what this final version really means:
What does "final" mean? Stability that's been validated across a wide range of use cases, and a framework that's been optimized for developer productivity, small payload size, and performance. With ahead-of-time compilation and built-in lazy-loading, we’ve made sure that you can deploy the fastest, smallest applications across the browser, desktop, and mobile environments.
In an unexpected move, Angular has also switched to semantic versioning (semver) for version 2.0.0 and up. During the RC phase, there were many breaking changes, which frustrated many in the community. Often a RC is a declaration that the core structure is complete and the product is, literally, a version that could be released as final. In Angular 2's case, each RC (except for 1 and 7) contained numerous new features and breaking changes. The move to semver should provide better guidance about how the platform is evolving.
However, because semver requires a major version bump whenever there are breaking API changes, it is likely that we'll see Angular follow in the footsteps of React, which is now on version 15.
Part of why the release took so long is that it is no longer just a web framework. Angular 2 is now a platform that encompasses a wide range of capabilities including universal server rendering, a mobile toolkit, and a command line interface. Its feature set is enormous, providing significant value in an all-in-one package.
The JavaScript community is one of the fastest moving in the industry. Tools, platforms, and libraries often have a limited shelf life before something new comes along to displace it. In the years since Angular 2 has gone from idea to release, other frameworks have seen a dramatic rise in adoption. Facebook's React and the associated community, in particular, has seen tremendous growth. Angular is still extremely popular, but Angular 2 is now arguably the underdog. Only time will tell if the years spent in development will be its undoing.
For now, the team has shifted its focus to stabilizing experimental features, bug fixes, and more documentation. The Angular web site has all the details.
