While learning Angular, it pays to really understand how the $scope works, when $watch'es are fired, and when you need to explicitly call an $apply, etc. What are some examples where things just don't work? While I was learning angular, a lot of times I had assumed things were available in scope when they were not. Some built-in directives like ng-repeat will create local copies of scope so I would try to change a variable directly expecting the parent to pick it up but it won't. Now my issues are simply misuse of the APIs. Eventually you will "get" the way angular works and instinctively know how to write with it.