> Imho, 1.x is still the best.

Have you done any serious work in 2+ to make an assertion like that?

I know people are still mad about the rewrite and I was one of them, but I would encourage you to try to look past it next time you are firing something up. 1.x was great but 2+ is orders of magnitude better especially when you throw TypeScript into the mix (I know you can use TS with 1.x but its a first class citizen with 2+). Seriously, its shockingly good. More predictable, stable, and faster with less magic than with 1.x. The angular cli is amazing (code gen, linter, test runner/reporter, auto upgrade wizard... powerful stuff) Being able to do proper component based dev with a sane api is a dream. Observables in 2+ are kind of a mixed bag IMO but, when used right, they offer a lot of benefits for managing streams of data in a functional, composable way. I commend the angular team for continuing to support 1.x but I'd be surprised if you still feel that 1.x is better after spending some time with with 2+.

Agree but I think you need to make the distinction between 1.5 and 1.3. 1.5 was such a radical change that really paved the way to 2.0+ with the component syntax. At that point it was losing it's 1.x identity.

1000% this. For a consulting shop, Angular 1.x specialty was, is, and will be hot for many years to come. From a developer stand point, there is really no need to look elsewhere other than hype.

This isn’t good advise. Angular 1.X is discontinued and uses confusing patterns not used in Angular 2 , React, Preact, Vue etc. specializing in it is a very bad career move.

It is a great specialty. Sure doesn't hurt to pick up others along the way, but having deep Angular 1.x specialty 5 years from now will have you flooded with maintenance, upgrade and conversion gigs, and big ones.

Isn't it abandoned/unmaintained at this point?