Paul Krill
Editor at Large

Angular 3 is hot on the heels of Angular 2

news
Nov 9, 20162 mins

Angular 3 will have better tooling and will generate less code; Google also is promising a new major version twice a year

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Credit: czuba_artur

Fresh from the long-awaited release of its Angular 2 JavaScript framework in mid-September, Google will release Angular 3 in a few short months.

Expected in March, Angular 3 will focus on improved tooling and a reduction in generated code, said Rob Wormald, of the Angular core team and a developer advocate at Google. It will feature a template compiler that provides feedback in an IDE on errors in a template, and it will generate 25 percent less code, thanks to improved compilation and changes in the framework’s underlying mechanics.

While more than two years passed between the April 2012 introduction of the 1.0 line and the Sept. 15 debut of the rewritten Angular 2 framework, Angular 3 gets a much-accelerated release schedule. Wormald promised a new major version twice a year from now on. “This is just semantic versioning in action for us and it means that we will every six months have a predictable release schedule,” he stated.

Wormald said he was not aware of any features that would be deprecated in Angular 3, but when features are to be deprecated, the Angular team will let developers know ahead of time and keep supporting that feature for two major release cycles.

Unlike Angular 2, Angular 3 is not a rewrite. “There’s nobody on the team who ever wants to rewrite a framework again,” said Wormald. Using TypeScript, Microsoft’s typed superset of JavaScript, Angular 2 was rewritten to allow decoupling of the framework from the DOM to enable use of multiple renderers.

Paul Krill

Paul Krill is editor at large at InfoWorld. Paul has been covering computer technology as a news and feature reporter for more than 35 years, including 30 years at InfoWorld. He has specialized in coverage of software development tools and technologies since the 1990s, and he continues to lead InfoWorld’s news coverage of software development platforms including Java and .NET and programming languages including JavaScript, TypeScript, PHP, Python, Ruby, Rust, and Go. Long trusted as a reporter who prioritizes accuracy, integrity, and the best interests of readers, Paul is sought out by technology companies and industry organizations who want to reach InfoWorld’s audience of software developers and other information technology professionals. Paul has won a “Best Technology News Coverage” award from IDG.

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