Thursday, July 3, 2014

Adios Knockout! Amigos Angular

About a year ago, I was starting a new product and wanted to develop using SPA technology. At that time Durandal + Knockout provided me a viable solution. I also blogged about it. You can find it here.

Fast forward to today, many things have changed. Angular is gaining traction rapidly and is becoming the go to technology for SPA applications. To spur this momentum Durandal is converging with Angular. On other side Microsoft is also promoting Angular and most likes is not planning for Durandal replacement framework that works with Knockout.

Knockout is a very good library and has excellent data binding facility. I liked its binding capabilities and backward compatibility. But Knockout is a library and not a framework, it cannot be used by its own for a SPA application. I need to amalgamate it with other technologies. As I am in a bleed edge technologies, using too many libraries/frameworks could be suicidal. Sometimes these amalgamation of technologies may provide flexibility.

Angular provides an integrated solution. I may lack my flexibility but that can be easily compensated by the good patterns and designs Angular forces its developer.


At this juncture it is clear for me to depart from Knockout to embrace Angular. I will continue my blogs with my learnings in Angular. I will also do the Knockout blogging.

2 comments:

  1. sorry,
    but don't see a good reason for dumping Durandal js
    Still does job thrown at it perfectly isn't it?

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    Replies
    1. Durandal does a good job and that is the reason I picked it over Angular earlier. I was hoping the Microsoft embrace Durandal and make it a competitor for Angular. Contrary to that Microsoft is alluding to Angular.

      The future of Durandal is merging with Angular. The current Durandal version will be supported and maintained. But in the current market the surrounding technologies are changing rapidly and I am sure that we cannot embrace them with the current version of Durandal(without any upgrades).

      If you are using Durandal now or plan to use Durandal, at some point you need to migrate to Angular. I feel the sooner the better. That is why I recommend switching to Angular as soon as you can.

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