NgModules were Angular's answer to a real problem: how do you organize a large application into logical units, share dependencies, and lazy-load chunks of functionality? The answer worked. It was also verbose, confusing to newcomers, and responsible for some of the most baffling error messages in frontend development. Standalone components — stable since Angular 15, the default since Angular 17 — solve the same problems with significantly less ceremony. I've migrated a production application through this transition and built new ones from scratch with the standalone model. Here's what actually matters. The mental model shift In the NgModule world, a component is a member of a module. The module declares what the component can use. You want to use RouterLink in a component? Add RouterModule to the module's imports. You want to use another component? Either declare it in the same module or import the module that exports it. This creates a layer of indirection that makes components non-portable.…