Python’s 2 to 3 transition is years ahead of Angular’s 1 to 2 transition, but the premise is the same - a backwards incompatible break. Well the Python leads did a lot to spackle (BritishEnglish: plaster) over the cracks with some back-ports work, and it is only holdouts left now. However it is not fun Googling for Python2 know-how today and getting search results for Python3 (or vice versa). We’re not there yet with Angular, but will be in a year’s time.

Thus I am interested in seeing how Angular’s search-fu changes over the next few years. I’m hopeful that search technology improves progressively over time to have greater semantic understanding of search intention and matching/mismatching results.

Google Trends

Major AngularJS search trends

(as of June 2016, I’ve clarified the TypeScript legends (was “t…”))

The squiggliy blue for Angular shows there are other terms that are nothing to do with AngularJS. Apart from anything else, AngularJS was stealth-launched in 2009 (my first Angular blog entry was 2009, six months after Misko nudged me to look at it), and not prominent until 2011/12.

Link that made that so you can compare

After removing ‘angular’ and ‘angularjs’

… and adding in some other low-hit angular terms that could be popular in the future.

(as of June 2016)

Link that made that so you can compare

StackOverflow Tags

The most popular tags on StackOverflow that have Angular in their name:

If I was in charge of StackOverflow, I’d unilaterally rename the ‘angularjs’ to ‘angularjs1’ today.

Python

Just for reference, Python3 vs 3:

Practicing What I Preach

I’ll rename my ‘Angular’ tag to ‘Angular1’ where applicable over the weekend.

Dec 31st, 2016: update

The Angular team have recently said they want to continue with a simple ‘Angular’ for v2, v4 and onwards (v3 is being skipped). Stack overflow has not been adjusted yet:

Indeed, Angular2’s text on StackOverflow says AngularJS, when really it is AngularTS (TypeScript) although there is a tiny community using Angular2 with plain JavaScript too.

Jan 28th, 2017: update

The Angular team reinforces prior decisions - Angular 1.x is to be known as AngularJS and Angular 2+ is just Angular. I’ll redo my tagging AGAIN.