Angular vs JavaScript - A Detailed Comparison

About Angular and JavaScript

What is Angular?

Angular is a popular frontend framework written in TypeScript. It was developed by Google in 2009 and is used to build interactive and responsive web pages. Angular is a preferred choice by many developers due to its ability to create complex and modern websites with ease.

Since its inception in 2009, Angular has had many updates and versions which have provided users with many new features and bug fixes over the years. These versions include Angular 1 released in 2009, formerly known as AngularJS, followed by other versions over the years. The latest release is Angular 15, which was introduced in November 2022.

Angular uses MVC architecture to separate data, presentation, and user interaction logic. It offers directives that extend HTML syntax and support for testing. Angular also uses TypeScript, which provides static typing for better code reliability and maintainability. Overall, Angular provides a great development experience and helps to streamline the development process thus companies look to hire Angular Developers

What is JavaScript?

We generally use HTML to structure the webpage and CSS to add styling to it but that is only the static web page where users can't interact. That is where JavaScript language comes into play.

JavaScript is a lightweight programming language that is cross-platform, interpreted, and object-oriented. Developers use JavaScript to design interactive and dynamic web pages. JavaScript supports both client-side and server-side programming. JavaScript is one of the most popular programming languages because it is highly versatile. It allows us to control multimedia, animate pictures, and do a variety of other things.

There are two methods for adding JavaScript code into an HTML web page: internally and externally. In the Internal  JavaScript method, <script> tag is used within the body of HTML to add all the JavaScript code. External JavaScript, on the other hand, requires storing the code in a separate .js file and then retrieving it within the HTML page. While working on large projects, developers frequently use this technique to keep the code structure organized.

Key Features

Angular - Key Features

Typescript: TypeScript is a language that is a superset of JavaScript, which improves the readability of code. It is not mandatory to use TypeScript while developing Angular applications, but it is highly recommended. Using TypeScript enhances the structure of the code and makes it easier to maintain.

Document Object Model: In Angular, the Document Object Model (DOM) considers an XML or HTML document as a tree structure with each node representing a specific component of the document. When there are multiple updates made to a single HTML page, Angular updates the entire tree structure of HTML tags instead of just updating the ones that were changed previously.

Data binding: Angular uses two-way data binding, which means that changes to the model or view are automatically reflected in the other. This makes it easier to create dynamic and responsive user interfaces.

MVC Architecture: Angular uses the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architecture to carry out the development process. It enables developers to separate the application's data, presentation, and user interaction logic into different components, making it easier to manage and maintain.

Development Environment: One of Angular’s key features is its integrated development environment (IDE) tools, which provide several functionalities to enhance the development process. One such feature is autocompletion, which suggests code snippets as a developer writes, speeding up the coding process and reducing errors.

Testing: Angular has the Jasmine testing framework, which offers diverse features for creating different types of test cases. The Karma test runner executes the tests and can be customized using a configuration file that defines settings such as the testing framework and reporters.

JavaScript - Key Features

Cross-platform: JavaScript language is supported by various operating systems including Windows, macOS, and Linux. It is built into Netscape 2.0 and greater, and runs on all platforms which support Netscape.

Light-weight: Since JavaScript is not a compiled language, there is no prior byte-code conversion. However, it does adhere to a model known as Just-In-Time (JIT) Compilation. Hence, just before it executes, it is transformed to bytecode. Because of this, JS is a lightweight programming language. JavaScript can be executed on even less powerful machines.

Interpreted: As discussed above, JavaScript is not a compiled language but it's rather an interpreted language just like Python and Ruby. The source code of JavaScript is interpreted by the browser, line by line and is then executed.

Browser support: JavaScript is supported by almost every web browser including Chrome, Firefox, Safari etc.

Case sensitive: JavaScript is a case-sensitive language where all variables, function names and other identifiers must follow consistent capitalisation of letters.

Object oriented: JavaScript is a prototype based Object Oriented programming language. Data types like Arrays, Functions, etc. inherit properties of the object prototype.

Scripting language: JavaScript is a lightweight scripting language designed for client-side processing on the browser. It manages the web pages displayed to the user and its associated processing, such as cookies, sessions, and local storage, on the client's machine (browser).

Dynamically typed: Type checks (whether string or number) take place during run-time which makes JavaScript dynamically typed language. In JS, we don't need to clearly state upfront what kind of data will be kept in a variable. For instance, when we define var "num", "num" can now hold a string or an integer.

Performance Comparison

Angular Performance

Angular has become a popular choice for developers due to its performance capabilities. Modern web applications require their website to scale, be responsive and not lag. Angular perfectly fits these requirements and delivers high performance! Angular provides certain key features that help to develop websites that are fast and smooth.

Angular is fast because it uses something called reactive programming. This helps Angular manage how data flows through an application, which makes the application faster and more responsive. It means that when things change in the application, the user interface is quickly updated to reflect those changes.

Angular's performance is improved by its modular architecture. The framework uses a modular design that allows developers to divide their applications into smaller modules. This reduces the complexity of the application, which in turn increases its performance.

Another reason why Angular is fast is that it uses something called Ahead-of-Time (AOT) compilation. This means that the framework generates optimized code during the building process, which makes the application load faster and perform better overall.

Overall, Angular is a great option for developers who want to build web applications that are speedy and responsive.

JavaScript Performance

JavaScript is a widely used programming language for creating web applications and interactive experiences and many firms look to hire JavaScript developers. Its performance has improved considerably over the years, thanks to enhancements in web browser speed, hardware, and JavaScript language features. The faster and more efficient web browsers have allowed JavaScript to perform better, which means developers can now build more complex and interactive applications that run more smoothly and respond more quickly.

Modern JavaScript engines, like V8 and SpiderMonkey, can compile and execute code at incredibly fast speeds. This makes it easier for developers to create highly responsive applications that users can enjoy without delays or lags.

Another critical factor that affects JavaScript performance is the smoothness of the user interface. To achieve this, developers need to minimize the time taken for JavaScript to render and update the user interface, as well as optimize the use of memory and other system resources. Techniques like lazy loading, code splitting, and caching can help to reduce the amount of JavaScript that needs to be loaded and executed by the browser, ensuring a smoother and more responsive user experience.

JavaScript's performance has significantly improved and is expected to continue doing so as web technologies and hardware advance further in the future.

Popularity over the years

Angular

Angular is a web development framework that has become widely popular among developers globally. It was initially created by Google in 2009 and has gained a lot of attention since then.

Angular has undergone significant development over time, with major updates being released every six months. The most recent version, which is Angular 15, was launched in November 2022. This latest release contains various new features and enhancements.

According to the Stack Overflow survey of 2022, Angular is the fifth most popular web framework used by developers, with more than 20 percent of the voters told they use Angular. Angular is an open-source framework that has more than 87K stars on GitHub.

JavaScript

Over 1.8 billion websites exist worldwide, and 95% of them use JavaScript. According to Github's 2020 Octoverse Report, JavaScript is by far the most popular language.

The basis for JavaScript's success is its origin tale. Its original name was Mocha, followed by LiveScript and then Javascript. The story starts in December of 1995 at the Netscape headquarters, where Brendan Eich participates in a ten-day coding sprint and comes out with a new language. Because of a license deal between Netscape and Sun (the company that owned Java), the language was renamed to Javascript and particularly "Java" script because Java was the most popular language at that time and this would help in Javascript's marketing.

While JavaScript has earned the title of "The Language of the Browser," its destiny changed in 2009 with the introduction of Node.JS, a runtime environment that allows JavaScript code to be executed outside of a web browser. Because Node.JS represents the idea of "JavaScript everywhere" paradigm, JavaScript's popularity has consequently increased.

Due to JavaScript's popularity, a number of libraries and frameworks have been developed, which have improved the effectiveness and efficiency of application development. React JS, jQuery, D3.JS, and other libraries are now used in the majority of apps all over the globe. Large apps can be built with the optimal performance of frameworks like Angular, Ember JS, and Vue JS. According to Stackoverflow, JavaScript has one of the largest communities amongst the programming languages.

Advantages and Disadvantages

Advantages of Angular

Reusability:  Angular has an architecture where developers can create building blocks called components. These components can be used again and again in different applications. This saves time and effort since developers do not have to write the same code over and over again.

Better tooling with Typescript:  Typescript is a superset of Javascript, and provides additional features that help developers in the development process.

Services and Dependency Injection:  Angular's dependency injection helps to reduce the complexity of code and makes it more maintainable.

Security:  Angular has safety features already included like shielding against cross-site scripting and cross-site request forgery. This makes it simpler for developers to create applications that keep user data safe and prevent any possible threats.

Large Community:  There are a lot of developers using Angular, and they love to collaborate, contribute and help each other. There are also events happening related to Angular Development.

Disadvantages of Angular

Steep learning curve: Angular is a highly advanced and complex framework that can be difficult to learn, especially for developers who are new to web development.

Limited SEO options: Angular has limited SEO options and is not easily accessible to search engine crawlers.

Performance Overhead: Features that make Angular powerful, like two-way data binding and dependency injection, can sometimes result in a performance overhead that impacts the speed of the application.

Advantages of JavaScript

Less server load: JavaScript runs on the client-side and hence, the requests sent to the server get reduced. User input is validated before the request is sent to the server and hence, it saves server traffic which reduces the load on the server.

Rich interface: JavaScript's rich interface capabilities allow for dynamic and interactive web pages, with features such as animations, user input validation, and real-time updates without requiring a page refresh. This makes for a more engaging and seamless user experience on the web.

Increased interactivity: By allowing developers to manipulate HTML and CSS elements in real-time, JS can enhance the user experience by providing increased interactivity, dynamic content updates, and seamless page transitions.

Speed: JS runs on the client side without the need for outside resources and third party apps which makes it a very fast language.

Versatility: JavaScript is a highly versatile programming language that can be used for both front-end and back-end development, as well as for building mobile and desktop applications. Its flexibility and vast ecosystem of libraries and frameworks make it a popular choice for developers across various domains.

Updates: In order to maintain JavaScript's relevance within the industry, the development team and ECMA International regularly update and build new frameworks and libraries.

Disadvantages of JavaScript

Browser compatibility: JavaScript can behave differently in different browsers resulting in different outputs, which can cause compatibility issues.

Multi-threading or Multiprocessing: JS doesn't support multi-threading or multi-processing.

Debugging: Debugging JavaScript can be challenging due to its loose typing and dynamic nature, making it more prone to errors.

Client-side security: JavaScript is executed on the client-side, which means that it can be exploited by attackers to carry out malicious activities.

Use Cases

Angular - Use Cases

Typescript: TypeScript is a language that is a superset of JavaScript, which improves the readability of code. It is not mandatory to use TypeScript while developing Angular applications, but it is highly recommended. Using TypeScript enhances the structure of the code and makes it easier to maintain.

Document Object Model: In Angular, the Document Object Model (DOM) considers an XML or HTML document as a tree structure with each node representing a specific component of the document. When there are multiple updates made to a single HTML page, Angular updates the entire tree structure of HTML tags instead of just updating the ones that were changed previously.

Data binding: Angular uses two-way data binding, which means that changes to the model or view are automatically reflected in the other. This makes it easier to create dynamic and responsive user interfaces.

MVC Architecture: Angular uses the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architecture to carry out the development process. It enables developers to separate the application's data, presentation, and user interaction logic into different components, making it easier to manage and maintain.

Development Environment: One of Angular’s key features is its integrated development environment (IDE) tools, which provide several functionalities to enhance the development process. One such feature is autocompletion, which suggests code snippets as a developer writes, speeding up the coding process and reducing errors.

Testing: Angular has the Jasmine testing framework, which offers diverse features for creating different types of test cases. The Karma test runner executes the tests and can be customized using a configuration file that defines settings such as the testing framework and reporters.

JavaScript - Use Cases

Cross-platform: JavaScript language is supported by various operating systems including Windows, macOS, and Linux. It is built into Netscape 2.0 and greater, and runs on all platforms which support Netscape.

Light-weight: Since JavaScript is not a compiled language, there is no prior byte-code conversion. However, it does adhere to a model known as Just-In-Time (JIT) Compilation. Hence, just before it executes, it is transformed to bytecode. Because of this, JS is a lightweight programming language. JavaScript can be executed on even less powerful machines.

Interpreted: As discussed above, JavaScript is not a compiled language but it's rather an interpreted language just like Python and Ruby. The source code of JavaScript is interpreted by the browser, line by line and is then executed.

Browser support: JavaScript is supported by almost every web browser including Chrome, Firefox, Safari etc.

Case sensitive: JavaScript is a case-sensitive language where all variables, function names and other identifiers must follow consistent capitalisation of letters.

Object oriented: JavaScript is a prototype based Object Oriented programming language. Data types like Arrays, Functions, etc. inherit properties of the object prototype.

Scripting language: JavaScript is a lightweight scripting language designed for client-side processing on the browser. It manages the web pages displayed to the user and its associated processing, such as cookies, sessions, and local storage, on the client's machine (browser).

Dynamically typed: Type checks (whether string or number) take place during run-time which makes JavaScript dynamically typed language. In JS, we don't need to clearly state upfront what kind of data will be kept in a variable. For instance, when we define var "num", "num" can now hold a string or an integer.

Which is better - Angular or JavaScript

Both Angular and JavaScript are valuable technologies for Web Development. While JavaScript is a versatile language that can be used for a wide range of web applications, Angular is a powerful framework that simplifies the development of complex single-page applications.

It's worth noting that Angular is built on top of JavaScript and relies heavily on it to function. Therefore, while they are not completely independent technologies, they serve different purposes and can be used together to create robust web applications.

Ultimately, the choice between Angular and JavaScript depends on the project's specific requirements and the developer's expertise. By understanding the strengths and weaknesses of each technology, developers can make informed decisions and build better web applications.