Microsoft embracing and endorsing AngularJS

Developers following the true gospel of Microsoft have a tendency of using MSDN Magazine and Microsoft-Giveaways as their true source of information. This was the correct approach in the past when anything related to Mac or Linux was N/A (not applicable) for us true believers. This approach has kept many believers away from AngularJS...but not any more! 

BTW: While the PC had 95% market share and IE4 ruled, we were right in ignoring the trivial few percent of heathen Jobs-Witnesses and Thorwaldiens, who believed in the resurrection of design and command lines. By ignoring them, we saved lots of time and harrowing discussions - resulting in world peace...

...until it turned out that the others were right too!

Microsoft used to be the system. Now it's one of many. It used to control a majority of the client devices, then became arrogant like IBM did - before Microsoft took over. And now it learned the same hard lessons: others are taking over.

And so the pantheon of Microsoft-Excecutives held a bunch of board meetings and decided that the only way to manage such a poly-religious system is to find a culture experienced with such poly-theism. Some guy probably read the Ramayana from a free sample on his kindle Microsoft-Surface-RT, got enlightened and spoke:

"let's get an Indian guy to fix this!"

So they went and got Satya Nadella (సత్య నాదెళ్ల - I love these squiggly characters :). And oh-boy fix it he did!

Did you know Satya was actually running Microsoft "Cloud Operations" before becoming CEO? His systems couldn't compete if they only ran Microsoft-stuff. So they opened to run everything. Have you noticed how often node.js is mentioned on MSDN Magazine or on Azure-articles? There's even a dedicated node.js developer center for Azure!

And he extended this strategy to all of Microsoft. I love it :)!

So what does this mean?

Microsoft stopped trying to force a Microsoft-Lock-In solution on us. The future is open...and compatible. For example, Microsoft dropped the old XML preference against JSON. It also means that Microsoft isn't pretending to have the better DHTML, better AJAX, better Data-Binding any more, but that it's now promoting what works - not what binds you to them.

What works on the client - like node.js on the server? Is it the Microsoft-inspired knockoutJS? Or is it the Google-inspired AngularJS? It's ironic that Microsoft originally promoted JavaScript based development around 1997 - while pretending that Internet-Explorer was part of Windows, but then "forgot" all about it once they reached market dominance. Now Google is promoting the same thing - just without the vendor-lock-in.

Some great new AngularJS endorsements from Microsoft:

• An upcoming free Microsoft Virtual Academy Introduction to AngularJS (running on Jan 21st 2015)
• A recent Virtual Academy Single Page Applications with jQuery or AngularJS (October 2014)
• ASP.NET 5 and AngularJS Part 1, Configuring Grunt, Uglify, and AngularJS (January 2015) promoted here
  
• ASP.NET 5 and AngularJS Part 2, Using the MVC 6 Web API (January 2015) also promoted here
• Microsofts Channel9 just released over 20 AngularJS videos in Q4 2014
• ...and many more

You'll notice the compact timing - as if a Microsoft internal directive was changed around the middle of this year saying:

"you can play with the cool kids now, no more promoting knockoutJS"

Why should we DNN-Disciples care?

We cannot learn all possible technologies - our time is too limited. We're actually forced to use similar technologies to become more effective as a community. Choosing the right technology is therefor crucial - also because our Open-Source contributions will be copied by others - and if our published "best-practice" examples used weak tool, then beginners will copy this - and fail on the market. So it's our responsibility to choose wisely. Not based on ideology like "Google's behind it" but based on criteria like "What works best" and "What has widespread adoption"

So I hope that - now that Microsoft has changed sides - you too will "see the light" :) and give AngularJS a try. I guarantee: if you start with AngularJS, you'll start to get excited after 30 minutes - and after the first 2 hours you'll be hooked :)

Material to get started with AngularJS and DNN

1. If you want to read or learn more - check out my blog series about AngularJS
   1. JavaScript MVC 1.1 - You need a good JavaScript MVC Framework
   2. JavaScript MVC 1.2 - Why AngularJS beats the **** out of knockoutJS
   3. JavaScript MVC 1.3 - Views/Templates with knockoutJS and AngularJS
   4. JavaScript MVC 1.4 - Learn AngularJS Fundamentals in 1 Hour
   5. My JavaScript MVC 2x series on App-Views, App-Controllers, App-ViewModels and App-Initialization
2. If you want to get your hands dirty right away, have fun with the following AngularJS Apps
   1. Media/Press releases App - see live, get App
   2. Simple FAQ Tutorial App - see demo, get App
   3. An simple contact form, built with various Angular best-practices - get App (may be a bit advanced for first steps)
   4. and other AngularJS Apps with WebAPI tutorials and more

With love from Switzerland,
Daniel 

Daniel Mettler grew up in the jungles of Indonesia and is founder and CEO of 2sic internet solutions in Switzerland and Liechtenstein, an 20-head web specialist with over 600 DNN projects since 1999. He is also chief architect of 2sxc (2SexyContent - see forge), an open source module for creating attractive content and DNN Apps.