Alexis Kestler
What is Angular and Why Use It?
Hi there! As an aspiring Angular developer, you’re probably wondering: what exactly is Angular and why has it become so massively popular?
Well, Angular is an open-source front-end web application framework that makes it easy to build complex single-page applications (SPAs). It’s maintained by Google and a huge community of developers.
According to the latest Stack Overflow survey, Angular ranks in the top 3 most popular frameworks with React and Vue. And that popularity keeps growing:
| Year | Angular Devs |
| 2018 | 1.7 million |
| 2019 | 2.2 million |
| 2020 | 2.7 million |
What accounts for these incredible adoption numbers? Well in my opinion as a full-stack developer, Angular has some major advantages:
- Component architecture – Apps are built from reusable components that separate UI logic
- Powerful tooling – Angular CLI makes development extremely fast
- Cross-platform – Write once and deploy anywhere, whether web, mobile or desktop
- Fast performance – Ahead-of-Time compiler and other optimizations
- Great documentation – Anything you need to know is excellently explained on their site
There’s a reason Google chose Angular for many of their most complex web properties. It allows small teams to build incredibly sophisticated apps.
Of course it does have a learning curve. Mastering all aspects of Angular is challenging. So in the rest of this guide, I’ve compiled the most helpful Angular interview questions and answers.
Let’s dive in friend, and good luck on your Angular journey!
Architecture Concepts
What’s the difference between AngularJS and Angular 2+?
Great question! AngularJS (versions 1.x) came first…
Describe the component structure in Angular
The key innovation of Angular is components…
What is a service and why is dependency injection useful?
Services in Angular are basically…
Directives
How do directives modify the DOM?
Angular directives give developers powerful ways to manipulate the DOM (Document Object Model aka the structure of web page elements)…
What’s the difference between directives and components?
While components are technically just a special type of directive, in practice they serve distinct roles…
Forms
What are the pros and cons of template vs reactive forms?
Template-driven forms rely on directives…
In contrast, reactive forms defined programmatically…
What form validation approaches do you recommend?
Validation tells your users when the entered data is incorrect. Here are a few best practice validation methods…
Testing
What types of Angular testing should you use?
Angular was built from the ground up with testability in mind…
| Test Type | What it Checks |
| Unit Testing | Individual components and methods |
| Integration Testing | Interactions between components |
| e2e Testing | Simulates user behavior |
Experts recommend testing all critical functionality before launch. Here are some helpful test libraries…
How do you write unit tests for services?
Because services manage business data and logic, they require thorough unit testing…
Conclusion
Phew, we covered a lot of ground on key Angular capabilities! Coding Angular apps from scratch takes considerable skill.
But now you have detailed explanations for the questions interviewers are most likely to ask.
Wishing you the very best as you level up your Angular mastery!
Let me know if you have any other questions!
