The web is being rewritten.
It's being rewritten around mobile.
It's being rewritten around services. This is the API revolution built on REST and JSON and the strategic need for SaaS solutions to talk to other SaaS solutions.
It's being rewritten around HTML5 browser-based applications that support mobile and talk to services. 95% of your clients are now on great browsers. To not embrace that shift is a huge opportunity loss, in addition to being costly and a poorer user experience.
It's being rewritten around UX (user experience) and the expectation that software be extremely usable. Ugly apps without a backend API and a client-side architecture run the risk of going the way of non-web applications 15 years ago.
Startups are selecting stacks that support this new reality. The MEAN stack- Mongo, Express, Angular and Node- is mobile friendly, built around REST services, and uses data-driven browser applications to deliver the best possible web user experience.
Everyone else is moving their front end to the HAT stack- HTML5, AngularJS (or similar Application Framework) and Thin-servers (or thinner servers) that focus on data and security and not the application logic. Applications written this way are faster to develop, provide a better user experience, and are much more flexible in supporting future features or changes of direction.
AngularJS is the framework that is leading the way. At Rangle.io we specialize in AngularJS and the HAT and MEAN stacks. We do the front-end application engineering for all our clients, building AngularJS applications than incorporate best practices and talk to a REST API (in Node.js if we've written it, in any language if our client has written it).
And its not just about getting the application done, even though that's reason enough to use AngularJS.
A traditional web application may have a commercial lifespan of 5-7 years, but a technical one of only 2-3 (i.e. the point at which you desperately want to rewrite it due to slow incremental feature additions or missing modern capabilities). AngularJS, because of the architectural benefits it provides, has a much longer technical lifespan. New features are easier add, old features are easier to change. HTML5 as the view promises future interoperability with web components and upcoming new web standards.
All in all, it's safe to say that any new web application development that doesn't use AngularJS or a similar framework is immediately taking on a huge technical debt before the first line of code is written. The nature and architecture of the web has changed, and development teams should have an unbelievably good reason to ignore this reality for all future development.