Does Angular still have a future?
I’ve been developing in Angular in an enterprise environment for 5 years. Based on my recommendation, five teams switched to PrimeNG. We have thousands of Spectator-based tests. In recent weeks, Spectator has disappeared and PrimeNG has become paid.
Of course, comments will come saying the big company should just pay for it. But in a large company, everyone operates as a small development team with a strict budget, and a procurement like this can take years. It’s often simpler to just rewrite everything using NG-ZORRO.
I like Angular’s enterprise approach and the fact that everything is integrated, but if I use tools that are not integrated into the ecosystem, like Spectator or PrimeNG, it will eventually become a pain.
I understand the OpenNG Foundation initiative, but I feel that in the long run it will fade away. Far fewer people contribute to enterprise frameworks, because most companies’ policies prohibit that kind of activity, and for hobby projects people do not necessarily choose this stack either.
Lately, I’ve been asking myself: does this have a future? Will there be a community behind it?
Yes, I know this may sound like “ultra rich multinational company can no longer use a community-maintained tool for free,” but at the end of the day we are also just a small team of few people with a budget and limited time. If I have to spend that time developing basic tools, then I would rather just switch to React, because in that ecosystem these things are already available.
I'm curious how others see this.