If you're learning Angular there's no shortage of tutorials and videos and books to get you started. Where should you start?
I've compiled a list of the most valuable Angular resources to save you some time. If you think I missed something really awesome, let me know over on Twitter and I'll see about adding it.
Books
I've read three, and I can recommend these two.
ng-book
All of the Angular books I read are giant desk thumpers, and this one is no exception. But that's not a bad thing. You're going to need a reference book, and it should be this one.
One of the big struggles with learning Angular is the docs are a bit tough to work through. I found having this book combined with docs made it possible for me to wrap my head around a few different concepts that would have stymied me with just the docs alone as a guide. And when I have a question, I go to ng-book first before the docs.
Mastering Web Application Development with AngularJS
You should buy this book for one chapter: chapter 11, Understanding the inner workings of AngularJS. There are plenty of other goodies in this book which go way beyond Angular and dives into incorporating Angular into a frontend workflow. They also do a fantastic job of explaining other advanced concepts, like transclusion and building your own directives.
But in my opinion, they should have opened the book with chapter 11. Until you understand what they explain, (quite well too), in this chapter, there's too much magic in Angular. Yes, you could "just read the code". Or you could save yourself a ton of time, buy this book and read Chapter 11.
Egghead
The best videos on Angular are the Egghead videos. You can snag most of these videos for free. I suggest starting here. There's plenty of stuff worth your time behind the paywall too.
Articles and Tutorials
Stackoverflow
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Misko Hevery, the creator of Angular, answers Angular questions on Stack Overflow from time to time. There's some gold here.
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Once you've made your way through some basic tutorials, it's worth skimming the Angularjs tag to fill in gaps in your understanding.
Blog posts
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The best explanation of scope.$apply I've found.
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If you are wondering what Angular looks like on large projects, get a glimpse of what you're in for here.
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My friend Joel Hooks put together his own list of articles and tutorials in his blog post, Learn AngularJS This Weekend. I also enjoyed his post on modeling data and state.
Code
Bootstrap directives
Once you get to the point where you are designing your own directives, you'll want to see how other people do it. The Bootstrap directives are really great examples to learn from.
Angular itself
Last but not least, Angular itself is one of the best written and well commented javascript codebases I've ever read. If you're ever wondering how something works, don't be afraid to dive into the code. It's really not that terrifying.
Training
And of course I have to mention my own Angular training. :-) I've taken all of the resources above and put it into a compact, one day video course so you can get to work on your Angular project quickly and avoid many of the common pitfalls.
Drop your email into the form below and I'll send you a bunch of freebies.
