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Comment by jm20 | Hacker News Reader

This could also be a selection bias based on age of company. A company in that revenue range is probably 3-5+ years old. Angular was much more popular back then, and even though it changed drastically with 2.0 there was a much clearer upgrade path than a full rewrite in something like React.

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> even though it changed drastically with 2.0 there was a much clearer upgrade path than a full rewrite in something like React.

Even though Angular2 was released in 2016, there wasn't really an easy-to-follow upgrade path until mid 2018. (ngMigration-Assistant wasn't even released until summer 2018, and people didn't really start releasing in-depth tutorials until around this time.[1])

Since React was released in 2013, it was already pretty popular by 2015 when Angular2 was announced. So a ton of startups migrated from Angular to React in between 2016 and 2019, when it wasn't clear there would ever be a good upgrade path, or that Angular2 would actually develop into a good product.

Now obviously in retrospect there is now a very good upgrade path, and Angular has actually become quite good, but it wasn't at all clear that either of these things would happen for several years. But yeah, I'm sure there is a time effect here, but I think there might also be something more nuanced going on. Like no doubt most of these startups that are selling are 5+ years old, but that still puts us well into the time when React was popular.

[1] E.g.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeQljCLpR04, https://www.upgradingangularjs.com/

> React was popular

By any metric, React is by far the most popular framework in 2021. It has even surpassed jQuery. [1][2]

[1] https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2021#section-most-...

[2] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=react,an...

React isn't a framework. A more appropriate comparison would be Angular vs Next.js:

https://www.npmtrends.com/@angular/core-vs-next

But yeah, I wasn't trying to reply that React isn't still popular.

I don’t think the distinction between framework and library matters that much. People choose between react or angular (or others).

That sounds reasonable, but the comparison becomes an issue if there are vastly more people using React for small hobby projects that aren't meant to be businesses, or for things that aren't even web apps.

Why would that matter?

We are getting into nerdy arguments. React is by far a framework, as every library that you use will be highly influenced by its constructs and rendering engine, be it React Router, Redux, or others from the Hooks ecosystem. Many say it is just a library, but in practice, when trying to bring JS vanilla libraries, there's always that edge case where it conflicts with the virtual DOM.

It's definitely selection bias, influenced by stage, size, and age. My point though is that so is the wider perception that everyone uses React - that's a selection a bias for those who make a lot of noise online, and as I've learnt doing this work, that is actually a much smaller section of the industry than one might think. There are tons and tons of very profitable mid-stage business-to-business software companies out there building stuff in C# and Java, and most of them need some kind of SPA now.

I guess my main point is that I've learnt that there are a lot more companies who find NG a good fit than folks think, but the same factors that make them prefer NG also mean they don't make a lot of noise online. These are firms of principally senior devs in their 30's to 50's, just building shit and taking care of business. I'm not saying they are better, or that NG is better, just that they are out there.

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