Today is the Angular version 20 release and I think it is a good idea to review what direction Angular is taking with its latest releases, and this post is especially oriented to devs who are not used to being up to date with new features in each new version that is released.
Angular is the most popular technology for frontend development… or this is what I would like to say, but every year React is increasing in popularity among developers because of its simple learning curve and quick implementation. Devs want to escape from TypeScript by default, modules, and complex structures in code.
We could mention signals, partial hydration, and many performance improvements as the most important features implemented in Angular in the latest versions, but there is a thing we could mention that indicates where Angular is trying to go: Standalone Components.
Angular has implemented Standalone Components since version 16 (And I’d like to take a moment for developers who haven’t yet tried standalone components). This transition was fully completed in version 19, where standalone is default to true for every object you can create (components, pipes, etc). Now, in Angular latest versions, if you just create a project, component or pipe it will be created as standalone and you don't have to specify by a flag in the object that it's standalone.
No more application module in your project, no more routing modules, you will have just Standalone Components. And maybe many of us are aware of these changes since Standalone Components were added to Angular features, but most Angular developers working in companies are still using the old modules paradigm, because that is the main reason many of us decided to choose Angular as our frontend framework; Angular modules structure looks cleaner, more solid, and offers a well-structured way to build large-scale business applications.
But there is always a reason behind changes. Even if Standalone Components can seem weird to old Angular developers, with things like too many imports in the same component and no parent structure to group by, they improve usage for frontend trends like small apps and microfrontends. It precisely will help to reduce the learning curve for new Angular adopters and will reduce the complexity of the project's initial structure.
Anyway, modules are still present in new versions and are a good option when you are trying to build large-scale applications, or when you are trying to create shared functionalities.
Angular has also dedicated a lot of time to improving its server-side rendering (SSR) by implementing partial and incremental hydration, which acts like lazy loading for SSR. Also signals, which are designed to improve performance for async events execution, are features that hint at Angular’s roadmap for future releases.
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