React Hooks taught me how to code. Angular Signals taught me how to relax. 🧘♂️ I’ve been a React dev for years. I know my way around useEffect, useMemo, and the dreaded dependency array []. But lately, I’ve been diving into Angular’s new Signals, and it feels like a weight has been lifted. In React, mental energy is often spent on: "Will this trigger a re-render?" "Did I miss a prop in the dependency array?" "Why is this useEffect running twice?" With Signals, the mental model shifts completely. You don't tell the framework when to update. You just tell it what changed. It’s fine-grained reactivity. If I update a single value, only that value updates in the DOM. The rest of the component doesn't even blink. No VDOM diffing overhead. No "stale closure" bugs. It feels less like managing state and more like... just writing JavaScript. I’m not ditching React, but Angular is making a very strong case for Developer Experience (DX) right now. For those who work with both—do you miss the "magic" of Hooks, or do you prefer the explicit control of Signals? Let's fight in the comments. 👇 #SoftwareEngineering #Angular #ReactJS #WebDevelopment #CodingLife
Granular reactivity is really the way to go. Vue composition API achieves this to some extent: granular watchers.. granular watchEffects, granular getters etc.. no worrying about references & mutation.. if it's not bound to the reactivity API it's ignored. Signals seems a great step further though
Talha Mahmood
5mo
Remembered once using Charts in Angular, and I was curious about rendering chart upon having fresh data from database, but then came Signals to the rescue, and it was indeed a Magic which handled that scenario of state management like a charm.
You can actually achieve the same effect using the Observer pattern — regardless of which framework you use. Signals feel amazing because they formalize fine-grained reactivity, but the underlying idea is not new: observe changes, react to updates, and avoid unnecessary recomputation. Whether it’s Angular Signals, React Hooks, Solid’s reactivity, or even a custom pub/sub implementation, the pattern itself is what brings the benefits — the framework is just the delivery vehicle.