angular was dead on arrival - to me - because it seems nuts to bolt on full programming language constructs into html attributes. In the same way React easily won because it chose the exact opposite: put the UI constructs inside the full programming language.

Both have their worts, but I'm perpetually puzzled by how angular ever made sense as ergonomic. I suppose people like Vue so there's still some insistence on augmenting templates with programming constructs. Seems inevitable that templates will want more and more powerful constructs... and boom.

I think Angular "won" a lot of users because it confused a lot of people by calling its templates .html files that designers could work in them without needing to know how to program. Then once they were in those HTML files they were trapped by all the nonstandard attributes. It was a fascinating bait-and-switch to watch middle management get trapped in, I saw it play out a couple times in slightly different but ultimately the same way.

With React those sorts of "I'm only comfortable with HTML" (or "I'm only comfortable with Figma but it gives me HTML") designers often know that they don't like JS and don't want to work in JSX files directly. If middle managers are looking for "efficiency and synergy" the "my designers won't work directly in React" problem looks a lot like a "let's use Angular for everything because I'm told it is 'just' HTML" solution, with the trap being set that Angular's template language is complex and confusing and still a template language despite being in files labeled .html. Then once trapped the sunk cost fallacy strikes hard because "everyone already knows Angular" (despite no one actually "knowing" Angular, they know HTML and fight the template language to get something that sort of works some of the time).

At least Vue tends to prefer .vue for its single-file components. It's not directly the same bait-and-switch.