Why you should stay away from Angular CLI

This article has been written for those new developers looking for that magic answer that will bring all the clarity when trying to decide which front-end web development framework should you learn. By now you might have felt the overwhelming sensation of the more you read the harder to choose between all the options.

Let me talk to you a little about Angular and its Command-Line Interface (CLI) tool. Angular being part of Google’s ecosystem has been working to indulge its community, users and new developers to adopt this framework. With the use of Angular’s CLI the initial setup and launch of a simple Angular application have never been easier. The only effort required is to come up with a project name and voila you have a running Angular project ready for you to just focus on the actual project and not so much about its setup.

As pleasant as this might look, especially for a new developer eager to start coding away, you should really take close attention to what is happening behind all this magic managed by the CLI. As a new user of this framework, it is of high importance that you know what is happening behind scenes and how your project has been set up. I would highly advise that you should consider setting up the project manually (as painful as it sounds) at least once so you know what is actually happening.

Having a good understanding of what is going on and the implications of the project setup is a great skill you could have especially when (not if) you find unexpected errors for no apparent reason. You don’t want to see yourself in the situation where you have almost all of your code done but then an error makes you realize there was an error in the project setup that now it requires major changes in the way your application has been developed.

Do not get me wrong, I do believe using the Angular CLI is a great tool and that you should not completely dispose of it. All I’m saying is that you should consider going through the pain of manually building the project setup once (may twice) as it will give you the knowledge to troubleshoot simple configuration errors in the future.

Angular has received lots of criticism for it being a very opinionated framework. What does being an opinionated framework mean? Well if a framework is opinionated, it locks or guides you into their way of doing things. This means they have some “hard” rules you are expected to follow. However, this could also be considered an attribute rather than a weakness when such rules have been implemented to follow best practice standards.

But what does all this mean? Well, it simply means that Angular was built in a way that it expects you will follow best practices as well, but that does not mean you don’t have any room if you desire to have a different approach and Angular will not prevent you from not following such rules.

With that being said and considering that the code you will be creating will most likely need improvements as you add more functionality to it. It is always better to try to stick with the best practice guides (they are called best practices for a reason), it will be much easier to find solutions to your problems from people that have experienced them before. Building your project away from the standards will really reduce the chances of other people’s solutions will solve your problem.

In order to provide standardization, Angular has published its Style Guide. It is basically a guide to Angular syntax, conventions, and application structure in an easy to understand and most important with reasons supporting why each standard has been adopted by Angular.

As mentioned in Angular’s style guide: “Naming conventions are hugely important to maintainability and readability”. Angular Style Guide should be your first resource to rely on when trying to understand the structure of your project and keeping your application structure closer to the suggested standards should make a huge impact when troubleshooting.

Interested to learn more about it?

Take a look at these sources I believe will help you understand better the importance of having a good base knowledge about the underlying structure of your Angular project.

Related posts:

Happy Valentines Day to all of you. Enjoy the Valentine Week with your lover and spread the love all over the world. Get the Happy Valentines Day Wishes from the below section and send them to your…

The first usage case of Smart Contracts on NEXA was released today by software provider Otoplo, when they announced a new HODL feature in their wallet which allows users to lock their Nexa coins into…

The CEO of your favorite makeup brand used a racial slur, what do you do?