Angular v19 Makes Standalone Default; and Devs Sound Off on AI

Angular v19 will make standalone:true the default for components, directives and pipes, according to Google software engineer Alex Rickabaugh.

“In v19 we’ll take the next step, and flip the default of the standalone flag in components, directives, and pipes, so you’ll never need to type ‘standalone: true’ again,” Rickabaugh wrote on Angular’s blog.

The standalone feature can be used to build an application that doesn’t rely on NgModules, which, until now, has been a fundamental building block in Angular applications. NgModules encapsulates related components, directives, pipes, services and other assets, which helps keep code clean and makes maintainability easier.

The standalone feature was introduced in v14 as a developer preview feature.

“Since then, standalone has been stabilized, and has become the recommended way to write Angular code by the Angular team,” Rickabaugh wrote. “The CLI generates components with standalone: true by default, and the Angular docs teach standalone first to all new Angular developers.”

Standalone makes Angular easier to learn, he noted. It also enables some new features, including:

• loadComponent, which simplifies route-level lazy loading and relies on standalone functionality;
• The Directive Composition API, which enables better composition model for component behavior by allowing standalone directives to be applied in the declaration of host component or directive; and
• Deferrable Views, which transparently lazy-loads standalone components and directives at the template level to make it easier to optimize Angular apps.

Those still using NGModules will be glad to read that they’re not deprecating the standalone option or NGModules, so developers will still be able to write NGModule components by specifying standalone: false in the component decorator.

As part of the ng update for v19, Angular will apply an automated migration that will:

• Remove standalone:true for existing standalone components, as it will be the new default.
• Add standalone:false to existing NgModule components so they continue to work.

Developers also have the ability to set the strictStandalone compiler option to enforce that only standalone components are written in an application.

Developers Use AI to Upskill, Survey Finds

Developers are leveraging AI to learn a new programming language or understand an existing codebase, according to a recent GitHub survey.

In the U.S., 71% said these tools make it “easy” to adopt a new programming language or understand an existing codebase, according to the survey, which queried 2,000 software developers at enterprises in the U.S., Brazil, India, and Germany about their use of AI.

The survey respondents were primarily users of AI, with 97% saying they had experience with AI coding. A larger 2024 developer survey by Stack Overflow found that only 63% of developers reported using an AI tool somewhere in the development process — a number that includes all GenAI use cases, such as information gathering, according to The New Stack Analyst Lawrence Hecht. Only 32% of professionals agreed when asked specifically about the use of AI-assisted technology tools, Hecht added.

“Many respondents appear to be wearing rose-colored glasses,” Hecht stated, noting that one limitation of the GitHub study is the definition of what an AI coding tool is.

For instance, the GitHub survey found that 99% believe that AI coding tools will at least somewhat improve code security, which Hecht categorized as “wishful thinking,” theorizing that respondents may be conflating the use of AI in security tools with the security of code generated by AI.

Vue 3.5 Releases

Vue 3.5 is a “minor release” that “contains no breaking changes,” Vue and Vite creator Evan You wrote in a post this week. The release does include some new features, including:

• reactivity system optimizations that yield better performance and improved memory usage with no behavior changes. It also optimizes reactivity tracking for large, deeply reactive arrays, which makes these operations up to 10 times faster in some cases, You wrote.
• Receive Props Restructure, which is stable and enabled by default. It “significantly simplifies declaring props with default values by leveraging JavaScript’s native default value syntax,” he wrote.

It also incorporates some long-requested improvements to server-side rendering (SSR), including lazy hydration. Lazy hydration means async components can now control when they should be hydrated, by specifying a strategy via the hydrate option of the defineAsyncComponent() API.

A full list of changes is available on the GitHub ChangeLog.

Android 15 Releases

Google’s Android team released Android 15 this week, with big boosts for collecting app telemetry data. It will be available on supported Pixel devices in the coming weeks.

Android 15 gives developers new insights and telemetry to “further tune your app experience,” the press release noted. A full list of the new features:

• The ApplicationStartInfo API, which helps provide insight into app startup including the startup reason, time spent in the launch phases and start temperature;
• The Profiling class within Android Jetpack, streamlining the use of the new ProfilingManager API in Android 15. This lets apps request heap profiles, heap dumps, stack samples or system traces, thus enabling a new way to collect telemetry about how an app runs on user devices;
• The StorageStats.getAppBytesByDataType([type]) API, which provides insights into how an app is using storage, including apk file splits, ahead-of-time (AOT) and speedup related code, dex metadata, libraries, and guided profiles;
• A new OpenJDK API that includes support for additional math/strictmath methods, many util updates including sequenced collection/map/set, ByteBuffer support in Deflater, and security key updates.

The update also incorporates improved typography, internationalization, camera and media features, as well as privacy and security enhancements.