Angular in 2026: what you can skip

Hi there,

If you learned Angular a few years ago — or you're learning from a tutorial written a few years ago — a surprising amount of what you're studying no longer applies.

Here's what you can safely skip:

NgModules. Gone from new applications. Components, directives, and pipes are standalone now. You import what you use, directly in the component.

*ngIf, *ngFor, *ngSwitch. Replaced by the built-in control flow: @if, @for, @switch. Better performance, better type inference, and no import needed.

RxJs, as a prerequisite. This is the big one. For years you couldn't write an Angular application without understanding Observables. Today, signals cover component state, and resource() and httpResource() cover most data loading. RxJs is still excellent for complex async work — but it's no longer the entry fee.

Zone.js. New applications are zoneless. Change detection is driven by signals now, which means it's explicit and easy to reason about instead of being something that mysteriously happens.

NgRx, until you need it. Signals handle most of the state that used to justify reaching for a store on day one.

What to learn instead

The short list: signals, computed, effect, signal inputs, the new control flow, and resource(). That's the core of modern Angular, and it's most of what you need to be productive.

All of it is covered in the free Angular For Beginners (Signals Edition) course you already have. If you want to jump straight in, these three lessons are the heart of it:

• You Have Been Using Signals All Along (6:00)
• Derived State with computed (5:46)
• Fetching Data from a Server with httpResource() (6:29)

In the next email I'll give you the order to learn these in — it matters more than most people expect.

Vasco
Angular University