Preface

Our quest for a good JavaScript framework started about four years ago. We were working on a platform for the insurance industry, and most of the UI for the system was written using the Apache Flex framework (formerly Adobe Flex). Flex is an excellent framework for developing web UIs, but it requires Flash Player, which wasn’t in favor anymore.

After trying several pilot JavaScript projects, we noticed a substantial drop in our developers’ productivity. A task that required one day in Flex would need three days in other JavaScript frameworks, including AngularJS. The main reasons were the lack of types in JavaScript, poor IDE support, and the absence of compiler support.

When we learned that Google had started development on the Angular 2 framework, with TypeScript as a recommended language for development, we became early adopters in the summer of 2015. At that time, there was very little information about Angular 2 other than several blogs and videos from the conference where the Angular team introduced the new framework. Our main source of knowledge was the framework’s source code. But because we recognized great potential in Angular, we decided to start writing courseware for our company’s training department. At the same time, Mike Stephens, Manning’s associate publisher, was looking for authors who were interested in writing a book about Angular 2. That’s how this book was born.