Last year's prediction was that 2016 would focus on consolidation over innovation. Looking back, that's exactly what happened. React solidified position, Angular 2 shipped, tooling matured, and new frameworks emerged without fragmenting ecosystem completely.
2016 wasn't "everything changed again." It was "things settled."
Observables are at Stage 1 in TC39's standardization process, meaning they might become part of JavaScript eventually. RxJS implements them now, and Angular 2 adopted them for HTTP and events. The question is whether Observables are genuinely better than Promises or just more complex.
After using RxJS with Angular 2, I think the answer is: both.
Facebook and Google released Yarn yesterday—a new package manager that uses npm's registry but promises faster, more reliable, more secure installations. The collaboration between tech giants and focus on npm's pain points suggests npm has serious problems.
Whether Yarn succeeds depends on execution and whether developers tolerate another package manager.
Angular 2.0 shipped this week, two years after announcement. The wait was long, the changes are total, and the reception is mixed. Google rebuilt Angular from scratch—TypeScript, component-based, completely different API. Whether this was right decision depends on who you ask.
What's certain: the two-year rewrite gave React enormous opportunity.
Create React App launched this week, and it's the most significant React ecosystem development since Redux. Not because of what it does—setting up React projects—but how it does it: zero configuration, hidden complexity, sane defaults.
This is Facebook acknowledging JavaScript tooling is too complex and doing something about it.
TypeScript has been around since 2012, but 2016 feels like its inflection point. Angular 2's TypeScript requirement, VS Code's excellent TypeScript support, and large companies adopting it signal shifting momentum. But JavaScript developers remain divided on whether static types are improvement or burden.
TypeScript is winning—just not unanimously.
Vue.js 2.0 is in development and coming this year. What started as Evan You's personal project in 2014 has become a legitimate third option alongside React and Angular. Vue's growth, especially in Asia, proves a framework can succeed outside the Facebook/Google ecosystem.
The question is whether Vue's "progressive framework" philosophy is genuinely better or just different.
async/await reached Stage 4 this month, meaning it's officially part of the next ECMAScript version (ES2017). After years of callbacks and promise chains, JavaScript finally gets syntax for asynchronous code that reads like synchronous code.
This isn't hyperbole—async/await is the most significant JavaScript language feature since Promises.
This week, the JavaScript ecosystem had a wake-up call. A developer unpublished a tiny npm package—11 lines of code—and broke thousands of projects including major ones like Babel and React. The incident exposed fundamental fragility in how npm dependencies work.
The technical fix was quick. The implications aren't.
Two years ago, choosing a JavaScript framework felt like Russian roulette. Would it survive? Would it change completely? Would something better emerge next month? Starting 2016, those questions feel answerable. The landscape has stabilized enough to make informed choices.
This isn't declaring winners—it's acknowledging that viable options exist and the churn has slowed.