comparison of styles

Examples:

data- attributes

Use data- attributes instead of regular angular attributes.

Avoid:

 <div ng-controller="MainCtrl">

Recommended:

 <div data-ng-controller="MainCtrl">

controller as syntax

Use controller as syntax, which promotes use of dot syntax to indicate where variables come from.

Avoid:

<div ng-controller="CustomerController">
    {{ name }}
</div>

Recommended:

<div ng-controller="CustomerController as customer">
    {{ customer.name }}
</div>

Some of the literature suggests using services over factories. We followed John Papa in recommending "factory for consistency". It turns out that they can both do the same things.

This article recommends services because they make the ES6 switch a little easier. Google seems to agree.

As long as we're consistent either one could work, so I'd like to hear any pedagogical arguments for one or the other.

see https://github.com/johnpapa/angular-styleguide#style-y032

function SomeController($scope, $log) {
    var vm = this;
    vm.title = 'Some Title';

This is likely something that most students won't need, but it is simple enough to do from the beginning. For now I'm putting it at the bottom as an "introduce later" since that's what we discussed but I'd be open to changing that if there are new opinions.