Angular is too abstract / has a steep learning curve. You need to learn too many design patterns at once (factory, provider, service, singleton, pipes, directives, observable, component, container, dependency injection). Trying something simple is trivial, but trying something more complex is overly difficult.
True, but you are learning ubiquitous programming concepts in about as well conceived of an implementation as you will get in a frontend scripting framework.
While none of the extra complexity is crucial to making a dynamic website, it earns its keep when you try to build a big online application. Why not just learn that stuff.
I think all the bundled pre-built functionality, like reactive forms, is the hardest part of Angular. That can be tedious to learn. But then again, so is 3rd party library X, so it's a wash.
