I had the same experience as well.
I redid a relatively trivial CRUD interface from backbone to Angular. The amount of code that I didn't need in Angular was ridiculous. Most of the code in backbone was moving stuff from the DOM into JS. Like var x = $('#elem').val(); kind of things over and over just did not need to be there in Angular.
I think that these kinds of interfaces hit a really good sweet spot with Angular and other databinding frameworks.
Re:Angular 2.0
by chucknelson on Tuesday March 18, 2014 @12:12PM
(#7422760)
Agreed - data-binding and "magic" automatic updates to the view when the model changes are key to what make Angular attractive. The focus on testing is nice too, though.
As a learning exercise, I wrote a page using just jquery, rewrote it in backbone, and then rewrote it in angular. Backbone helped me separate concerns; Angular helped me do that while writing _way_ less code, since I didn't have to manage keeping the DOM and the JS model in sync.