I'll engage because I'd like to get to the bottom of this.
> The reason is because Angular 2 merges Angular Dart and AngularJS into one framework.
One technical reason for a seismic marketing change does not inspire confidence. Is Angular, Angular JS 2.0? Is AngularJS, AngularJS 1.0? Incoherency at the starting gate will not win new converts.
> Can't say I have first hand knowledge, but I have heard that Angular dominates internally at Google.
Company wide usage is fine; the real test is in production outside of the company. Unfair, but if the framework wants to dominate the front-end, then that is its lot in life. FB probably realized how fast that moving goal post would be and resolved limit their scope with React.
> UI Bootstrap is also separate from Angular
It's not the Bootstrap that is bad, but how they use it. At the time in 2013 (and even now) the presentation of the Angular website is pretty ugly. Yes, there are coders who don't care for little UI flourishes. Yes, a pretty framework with bad code is still a bad framework. Yet, when comparing AngularJS's website with competitors like React or Ember or even Backbone, it seems their developers care more for making their software look good. Design as a lagging indicator of quality, perhaps.
> I am currently the lead developer of the project, and not once in my tenure have I deleted any comments
You probably joined after this debacle. Strange that you don't know about it:
The reason for removing all the comment threads was ostensibly for easing concerns of moderation. Yet, interestingly, the documentation was not updated for several months after the comments removal. This means that, for several months, all the fixes, suggestions, and the like were no longer viewable for the current version of AngularJS. The solution put forward by the developers for this long interim was to... use Stackoverflow.
Needless to say, Angular users were less than enthused. That the devs didn't seem to engage with the community before or after regarding the sudden change, made me question a number of things about the project.
Sorry, I was mistaken on the bootstrap comment - UI Bootstrap is separate from Angular and has little affiliation with Google other than the creator of the project being a part of the core Angular team.
I can't speak to the online interactions as to the comments, but I do recall the comments being outdated and not useful in a bunch of cases.
The Angular team is very professional and pleasant to interact with in my experience though. Igor once told me that open source is hard - I was skeptical at first, but being in charge of a major project myself now, I wholeheartedly agree. It is challenging to keep development going at a good clip, manage the team, and satisfy developers using the product, who are a ruthless bunch.
> The reason is because Angular 2 merges Angular Dart and AngularJS into one framework.
One technical reason for a seismic marketing change does not inspire confidence. Is Angular, Angular JS 2.0? Is AngularJS, AngularJS 1.0? Incoherency at the starting gate will not win new converts.
> Can't say I have first hand knowledge, but I have heard that Angular dominates internally at Google.
Company wide usage is fine; the real test is in production outside of the company. Unfair, but if the framework wants to dominate the front-end, then that is its lot in life. FB probably realized how fast that moving goal post would be and resolved limit their scope with React.
> UI Bootstrap is also separate from Angular
It's not the Bootstrap that is bad, but how they use it. At the time in 2013 (and even now) the presentation of the Angular website is pretty ugly. Yes, there are coders who don't care for little UI flourishes. Yes, a pretty framework with bad code is still a bad framework. Yet, when comparing AngularJS's website with competitors like React or Ember or even Backbone, it seems their developers care more for making their software look good. Design as a lagging indicator of quality, perhaps.
> I am currently the lead developer of the project, and not once in my tenure have I deleted any comments
You probably joined after this debacle. Strange that you don't know about it:
http://angularjs.blogspot.com/2013/11/farewell-disqus.html
The reason for removing all the comment threads was ostensibly for easing concerns of moderation. Yet, interestingly, the documentation was not updated for several months after the comments removal. This means that, for several months, all the fixes, suggestions, and the like were no longer viewable for the current version of AngularJS. The solution put forward by the developers for this long interim was to... use Stackoverflow.
Needless to say, Angular users were less than enthused. That the devs didn't seem to engage with the community before or after regarding the sudden change, made me question a number of things about the project.