I can share the pain. I have been using Angular for a long time now and I avoid it as hard as I can now these days because it is so painful to use. When you write Angular applications you're not writing Javascript you're writing decorated HTML. I have actually been building a production application in Rob's newer framework and Durandal successor: Aurelia. The thing I love about it is you're writing ES6 Javascript and using standards based features. I think we are reaching the point where we will see less decoration based abstractions and more of just plain old Javascript in future frameworks. Aurelia is just the beginning of what is to come. I have also been loving React.js + Flux, but Aurelia more so than React these days.