tl;dr Shipping a major product with revolutionary potential

You guys did it.

Shipped a solid release of Ionic 2.

Pop some bubbly and enjoy. You’ve earned it.

I’ve watched Ionic grow over the past year or so. Watched the beta builds come hard and fast. Tested each release candidate with excitement. Posted on their forums, StackOverflow and even wrote a blog post or two. A 2.0 final release is huge news.

I first saw Ionic back in 2013 when I was looking for a way to create a hybrid mobile app on a shoestring budget and a web developer background. I ran across Dojo, jQuery Mobile and Ionic 1. I bet on jQuery Mobile. I thought, “Hey, I know jQuery, this has got to be fairly easy to pick up and use, right?”. I was wrong.

jQuery Mobile was a fine platform but just didn’t have the ‘it’ factor. Three years later, when exploring the ecosystem again, it was easy to see that I made the wrong bet. Ionic 1 was set and helping to release a million apps and work on a completely overhauled version 2 was well underway. I was still nervous about the learning Angular and Typescript (at the time, Typescript was optional…so glad they embraced it fully), but I knew that I had to get on the train before it left the station.

Ionic 2 is an amazing piece of software, but it’s made exponentially better by the team that created and supports it. Reading helpful posts by @brandyscarney and @Justinwillis96, reading insightful blog posts by @maxlynch, seeing the interaction between @danbucholtz & @mhartington and the community makes using Ionic such a pleasure. Yes, the code is easy to use and makes things awesome- but it’s the people who will make sure Ionic is a force in the programming community for years to come.

“We’re here to put a dent in the universe. Why else would we be here?” ~ Steve Jobs

You’ve enable a whole generation of web developers to diversify their skill sets, bring more value to the organizations they work for and helped make the convenience of mobile apps available to those who would otherwise not have the resources to do so. If that doesn’t count as a “dent in the universe”, I don’t know what does. (And I can’t wait to see what they bring to PWAs and desktop apps…)

Thanks again for all the work you do, Ionites! The world is a better place because of your efforts.