AngularJS in the Wild: A Survey with 460 Developers (PLATEAU Workshop 2016)

To implement modern web applications, a new family of JavaScript frameworks has emerged, using the MVC pattern. Among these frameworks, the most popular one is ANGULARJS, which is supported by Google. In spite of its popularity, there is not a clear knowledge on how ANGULARJS design and features affect the development experience of Web applications. Therefore, this paper reports the results of a survey about ANGULARJS, including answers from 460 developers. Our contributions include the identification of the most appreciated features of ANGULARJS (e.g., custom interface components, dependency injection, and two-way data binding) and the most problematic aspects of the framework (e.g., performance and implementation of directives).

Transcript

1. AngularJS in the Wild:
   A Survey with 460 Developers
   Miguel Ramos,
   Marco Tulio Valente
   UFMG, Brazil
   Gustavo Santos
   INRIA, France
   Ricardo Terra
   UFLA, Brazil
   

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2. jQuery
   AJAX
   Single-Page Applications
   Technologies
   2
   

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3. JavaScript MVC Frameworks
   3
   

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4. 4
   GitHub Contributors Google Searches
   AngularJS’s Popularity
   Questions on StackOverflow
   

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5. AngularJS characteristics
   Augments the HTML vocabulary
   Uses Dependency Injection
   Implements two-way data binding
   Provides different abstractions to structure applications
   5
   

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6. Motivation
   There is no clear knowledge on

   how the features proposed by AngularJS

   affect the development experience

   of JavaScript applications.
   6
   

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7. Developers’ Perceptions about
   General Aspects of AngularJS
   1
   2
   Mapping Study
   Survey
   7
   

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8. Mapping Study
   8
   

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9. Mapping Study
   Initial search queries
   “The best features of AngularJS” or
   “Problems with AngularJS”
   Search specific queries
   “Transclusion directives”,

   “AngularJS testing”
   Snowballing
   Digital libraries
   Q&A
   Blogs
   9
   

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10. Survey Design
    ● Open questions, Likert-like questions, and
    multiple choice questions.
    ● 25 questions, ~15 minutes
    ● Only background questions were mandatory
    ● Scales with an even number of options
    ● “Other” option in multiple choice questions
    10
    

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11. Questions
    2
    1
    3
    4
    5
    6
    7
    Participants background
    Key characteristics of AngularJS
    Problems in AngularJS templates
    Testing
    Development practices (complementary questions)
    Complex features of AngularJS
    AngularJS 2.0
    11
    

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12. Participants
    QO AO E
    Question owner Answer owner Editor
    12
    

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13. Survey promotion
    Pilot survey Final survey
    Sent to 30 users
    Scores from 9 to 24
    Typographical errors
    Ranking questions to rating
    questions
    Responses were discarded
    Initially sent to 60 users
    700 users emailed daily
    Sent to 3060 users
    Scores from 3 to 831
    460 responses (15%)
    13
    

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14. Survey Results
    14
    

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15. Background
    JavaScript experience AngularJS experience Largest application
    15
    

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16. Background
    16
    

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17. Key Features of AngularJS
    35.1%
    29.4%
    68.1%
    22.8%
    60.6%
    61%
    24.8%
    23.5%
    45.2%
    17
    

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18. Testing
    How often do you use the ngMock
    module for testing?
    Answered by:
    441 developers
    (95.9%)
    Possible reasons:
    Low usefulness of the features provided
    by the ngMock module
    Unfamiliarity with the module
    Few developers test their applications
    51.5%
    21.3%
    18
    

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19. Testing
    How difficult is to test this AngularJS components?
    Discussion:
    Common components are easy to test
    Directives with external templates may
    be hard to test due to the need of pre-
    compilation, and their interaction with the
    DOM
    35.3%
    53.7%
    61.7%
    19
    

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20. Mastering AngularJS
    54.9%
    32.4%
    43.6%
    61.9%
    58.5%
    52.2%
    20
    

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21. Most expected features of AngularJS 2.0
    Answered by:
    378 developers
    (82.1%)
    68.3%
    60.1%
    56.1%
    48.7%
    21
    

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22. Conclusion
    22
    

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23. 2
    1
    3
    4
    5
    6
    7
    Mostly experienced developers
    Most appreciated features: UI components, data binding
    Problems with performance degradation
    Components more difficult to test
    Development practices
    Complex features of AngularJS
    Most expected features on AngularJS 2.0
    23
    

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24. Thank You!
    24
    https://github.com/aserg-ufmg/angularjs-survey
    Miguel Ramos,
    Marco Tulio Valente
    {miguel, mtov}@dcc.ufmg.br
    Gustavo Santos
    gugajansen@gmail.com
    Ricardo Terra
    terra@dcc.ufla.br
    

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