Abstract: On September 15, 2016, the final version of Angular 2 was officially released, which caused widespread concern in the industry. As the full-platform successor to Angular 1, the final version of Angular 2 has many disruptive changes and is revolutionary. The pure front-end UI control set Wijmo supports the official version of Angular 2 for the first time. In this issue, Open Source China interviews Mr. Chris Bannon, the global product manager of Wijmo products, and listens to his experience in technology development and the story of how Wijmo supports the official version of Angular 2.
Mr. Chris Bannon is the global product manager for Wijmo products of GrapeCity (Chinese name is Grape City). He developed a keen interest in computers as a teenager, started playing graphics programming in high school, and determined to become a certified internet administrator. From web design to web development to product manager, he is well versed in front-end and back-end development techniques. As the lead web developer for Grape City, he rewrote all front-end and back-end code for the company's website. During this process, I found that front-end development was very creative, so I focused on front-end technology development.
The following Mr. Chris Bannon shares with you his years of technical development experience and how Wijmo took the lead in supporting Angular 2 .
Pictured is Mr. Chris Bannon
1. Please introduce yourself first (technical background, working experience, learning experience)
Chris Bannon ：
Hi, my name is Chris Bannonn, Global Product Manager at Wijmo. I entered the industry as a web designer and then moved into web development so I could create what I imagined. Before I joined ComponentOne Corporation (now Grape City) as lead web developer, I was working as a senior web developer in the government sector. When I was the lead web developer for Grape City, I rewrote all the front-end and back-end code for the company's website. After that, I started the Wijmo product line and worked as a product manager. We originally created Wijmo as an extension to JQuery, but then we decided to completely rewrite Wijmo with new ECMAScript features. Wijmo is now a leading set of controls for JavaScript application development and the first to fully support Angular 2. It contains the famous FlexGrid control, which was originally written in Visual Basic and is now written in TypeScript.
2. Currently, front-end development is more popular. How do you view the development trend of front-end technology?
Chris Bannon ：
I have always been interested in front-end development, and I also believe that front-end development is the best way to achieve dynamic experiences on web applications. I am happy to see that the industry is very open to front-end development for a variety of reasons. I think in the future, most web developers will use front-end technology. The front-end technology revolution is only just beginning. At the same time, we cannot ignore the importance of the backend. We will find more and more advanced tools to bring the front and back ends closer together. Front-end tools are developing and improving rapidly. We created Wijmo, a professional JavaScript UI control set, because we saw a huge demand for front-end tools. To be able to develop more efficiently, developers need more powerful tools.
3. What advantages do you think Angular 2 has compared to other front-end frameworks?
Chris Bannon ：
I don't think any single framework can be the best. There are many frameworks now, and each framework has its own advantages. We prefer to learn Angular because it provides us with a more familiar and similar platform, like .NET. Angular 2 and Silverlight are closer.
The main advantage of Angular 2 is that it is aimed at the development of large-scale applications and can provide support for large-scale teams to develop large-scale applications.
One of my favorite things about Angular 2 is TypeScript. Wijmo is written in TypeScript, and we benefit a lot from the benefits of TypeScript. TypeScript really helps us write stable code. JavaScript is a wonderful language, but can become unmanageable when working on large codebases. When developing, TypeScript has good organization and error checking so that you can catch problems before the program runs. Using TypeScript inheritance, refactoring, etc. also makes us more efficient.
Another great benefit of Angular 2 is the component model. Everything in Angular 2 is a component, so you can create awesome modules for your application. This also helps maintain a good structure. While this advantage is not unique to Angular 2, it is certainly its advantage.
4. How did Wijmo take the lead in supporting the official version of Angular 2?
Chris Bannon ：
The Wijmo team decided to be the first to support Angular 2 when Angular 2 was still in alpha. We made this decision because we thought support for Angular 2 was well-received.
Angular 2 support is a big challenge, but we have the ability to keep up with the Angular 2 team. Since our controls are pure JavaScript, this also makes Angular 2 support easier. We can do a very simple wrapper to support Angular 2 so that our UI controls can also work independently of the Angular 2 component wrapper. It's a lot of work, but we're the first to support Angular 2.
5. How does the Wijmo development team work closely with the Angular 2 development team?
Chris Bannon ：
First of all, the Angular 2 team's development and roadmap are very open, which ensures that we can follow in their footsteps.
Second, the Angular 2 team was happy to support us when we hit a roadblock. We have developed a great friendship with the Angular team. We also enjoyed working with their team. I appreciate their openness and support.
6. What are the problems in the component integration process when Wijmo supports the official version of Angular 2? How to solve it?
Chris Bannon ：
We also encountered some challenges when it came to providing support for Angular 2. The biggest challenge is the need to provide deep integration. Since we created the wrapper, we also needed to figure out how to balance the role of Angular 2 components with declarative markup, so we wrote a lot of code to make our controls fully configurable in markup. We've also created Angular features like cell templates in FlexGrid. This allows customers to write custom tags to be used in each column of the table.
In order to do this, we need a deep understanding of how Angular works, and we must use its built-in APIs. We worked with the Angular 2 team, using public APIs, to solve this problem. In fact, they also added a few things for us to use.
Another biggest challenge was keeping pace with the rapid release of Angular 2. This does pose a bigger challenge as we have many incompatible changes in the preview version we are using. We even completely rewrote our controls for a version. Originally we inherited TypeScript classes directly as Angular 2 components, but when Angular 2 made an incompatible change in beta, we had to go the other way. Our only solution was to spend a lot of time migrating our controls. In order to get these codes to customers in a timely manner, we need to build nightly so that they are available to all customers.
7. How do you feel about TypeScript being used to develop Angular 2.0?
Chris Bannon ：
We love TypeScript. Wijmo has been written in TypeScript from the start. We have embraced and benefited from TypeScript. We are happy to see that the Angular 2 team chose TypeScript as the language for Angular 2. At the same time, I also think it's interesting that Google chose Microsoft's language for development. The more open and willing a company is to work together, the more profitable it will be, a hallmark of a new era in the ecosystem. In the long run, I think this will benefit everyone. Angular 2 gets better with TypeScript, and TypeScript adds features to Angular 2 (like class support for metadata).
8. How do you see the future of Angular 2?
Chris Bannon ：
We have seen the growing popularity of Angular 2. In fact, we already have customers developing products with Angular 2. I think Angular 2 will grow in popularity and become one of the top front-end frameworks on the market. At the same time, Wijmo will continue to support Angular 2 and other frameworks that customers require. We're ready for Angular 3 to roll out.
9. Can you talk about your views on HTML5, JavaScript, and technology trends?
Chris Bannon ：
If you want your application to be liked by the widest range of customers, then HTML5 and JavaScript are the best technology choices. They run on any computer and device at near-native speeds. They are becoming general-purpose programming languages. We've looked at them in depth, and we've seen great success with HTML5 and JavaScript. We are seeing great success with our clients migrating legacy desktop applications to HTML5 and JavaScript.
10. As the global product manager of Wijmo products, what experience can you share?
Chris Bannon ：
Chris Bannon: Of course. I was interested in computers when I was in high school. I started playing graphics programming in high school and loved using it to create art. I was in a hurry to start work, and instead of going to college, I decided to become a certified internet administrator. After that, I got hired by the government to develop large applications and use HTML and CSS to make the application more beautiful. At that time, I was immersed in college every night in order to better learn and expand. I was frustrated that I didn't have a good experience with my design work, so I learned to program so I could design and develop things completely. I'm very interested in front-end development, I found front-end development very creative, so I joined ComponentOne company. At ComponentOne, I worked at the company for 10 years before becoming the lead web developer. I spent time rewriting the company's website using SQL, C# and ASP.NET. I also beautified the front end using HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Ultimately, I wanted to create products for other developers, so started Wijmo and focused on front-end development. Wijmo's work is all my own, using most of my previous experience. I initially prototyped our controls and defined the requirements. Now I'm more focused on our Wijmo customers and development path, and promoting Wijmo as much as possible. I like to be more creative and I'm doing this kind of work in a different way. Now, I make development tools and love to see our customers using them.
11. Talk about your understanding and views on open source technology and community?
Chris Bannon ：
Open source is really fun. For the development ecosystem, open source provides tremendous value. In development systems, open source provides developers with free tools and code, making them more productive. Open source also connects tens of thousands of developers who would otherwise not have intersected. I love open source, and open source makes a huge contribution to the development of technology. I am grateful to have open source frameworks like Angular 2.
At the same time, we also sell commercial controls. Some people don't like commercial controls, but I need to stress that we're just selling our code, they're selling their time writing it. In fact, we are all writing code in real time. One thing that cannot be denied in the web industry is that whether it is commercial or open source, they all symbiotically and benefit from each other. Our Wijmo also benefits from many open source projects, such as Angular 2.
12. What would you like to say to Chinese developers?
Chris Bannon ：
Chris Bannon: Ni hao! (Hello!)
I have been to China many times, such as Xi'an, Shanghai and Beijing. Grape City has a branch in China. I enjoy my time traveling in China, and I also welcome Chinese colleagues to come to the United States. I am very impressed with Chinese developers, they are very similar to American developers. Although we are geographically different, we are similar. We use the same development language: JavaScript.