can I start using angular 2 without node?

Question

I want to try angular 2 for VS 2015 but the first prerequisite is node.js.

If I understand correct, I need node.js as webserver and npm to download package?

Can I do the same with IIS and VS nu-get?

Answer 1

You can develop Angular 2 apps just fine in Visual Studio (with some configuration, which can be painful). You can also serve Angular 2 apps in IIS (or any other web server for that matter). However to manage the packages Angular 2 uses, and to provide a light-wight web server you can use in development, using NodeJs is the easiest and the recommended way.

NuGet and npm are similar products in the fact that they both provide a way to package files and create software packages. NuGet runs separately through the command line or inside VisualStudio, while npm comes with NodeJS and is Node's built in package manager that you cannot run without having NodeJS.

Here is the Visual Studio Quick Start provided by the Angular team: https://angular.io/docs/ts/latest/cookbook/visual-studio-2015.html