The 1.5 release of Angular JS is a release you should take a close look at if you, like me, still have some Angular 1 work to do. The new component based programming model simplifies application development with Angular by providing a cleaner API and sensible defaults when compared to programming with ng-controller and custom directives.

I was so impressed by the new addition to Angular 1 that I made a Pluralsight course covering how to program with components, and how to use components with old routers as well as the new component based router. The last module of the course looks at a variety of compositional patterns you can follow for building sophisticated pages using simple components.

In short, with components you’ll never need to use the ng-controller directive again. Components also replace most custom directives leaving only a few special case scenarios where you need to drop down to the lower level API of a directive.