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.
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.
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.
Angular 2 has been in development for over a year, and beta just landed. The reaction is mixed: excitement about modern architecture, frustration about breaking compatibility with Angular 1. Google chose to rebuild rather than evolve, and that decision will define Angular's future.
The question is whether the improvements justify abandoning millions of lines of Angular 1 code.
The JavaScript ecosystem has a problem: fatigue. Not the concept—the actual exhaustion developers feel trying to keep up. A new build tool every few months. Frameworks rise and fall in a year. Best practices change before you finish reading the blog post explaining them.
This isn't healthy. It's not sustainable. And it's actively harmful to teams trying to build production applications.