This series of quotes from a dev I work with captures a common visceral experience of working with angular.js for the first time:
"I've never been so frustrated with code before"
..an hour later..
"You stare at something broken for 20mins, then the fix occurs to you and the truth of it is just so beautiful."
We switched from backbone.js to angular.js about 8 months ago, and the team is generally very happy.