In the world of web development, mastering Angular can significantly enhance your coding skills and the quality of your applications. Here are 5 essential Angular techniques that can help you transform your code into gold:

1. Modular Architecture: Break your application into smaller, manageable modules. This not only improves maintainability but also enhances scalability.
2. Dependency Injection: Utilize Angular's built-in dependency injection to create more testable and reusable code. This technique streamlines your application logic by separating concerns.
3. Lazy Loading: Implement lazy loading to only load modules when needed, reducing initial load times and improving performance.
4. Reactive Programming: Embrace the power of reactive programming with RxJS to handle asynchronous data streams effectively. This leads to cleaner code and better user experiences.
5. Custom Directives: Create custom directives to encapsulate and reuse functionality across your application. This promotes code reuse and enhances readability.

Optimizing performance in your Angular applications is crucial for providing an excellent user experience. Start by leveraging Change Detection Strategies. By utilizing the OnPush strategy, you can limit the checks Angular makes by only updating the component when its input properties change or when an event is emitted. This approach can significantly reduce the number of checks, resulting in improved rendering performance, especially in large applications. Additionally, use trackBy in your *ngFor directives to optimize the rendering of lists, ensuring that Angular tracks changes to items efficiently.

Another essential tip for optimizing performance is to implement Lazy Loading for your modules. By loading only the necessary modules when needed, you can decrease the initial loading time of your application. This not only enhances performance but also improves the overall user experience, as users will interact with your application faster. Furthermore, consider utilizing the Ahead-of-Time (AOT) Compilation feature, which compiles your application during the build time rather than at runtime, thus speeding up rendering and reducing the size of your application bundle.

When developing with Angular, it's crucial to be aware of common pitfalls that can hinder your code success. One major issue is forgotten dependency injection. If services are not properly injected into components, it can lead to undefined errors, making debugging a frustrating experience. Additionally, not using trackBy with NgFor can cause performance issues as Angular re-renders the entire list rather than just updating necessary items. To mitigate these problems, familiarize yourself with the Angular concepts and ensure you are following best practices.

Another common pitfall is neglecting to unsubscribe from Observables. Failing to clean up subscriptions can lead to memory leaks, which negatively impacts application performance over time. It's essential to manage subscriptions proactively by using operators like takeUntil or implementing the OnDestroy lifecycle hook. Finally, inconsistently using styles can disrupt the visual coherence of your application. Stick to a consistent styling approach, whether using CSS, SCSS, or Angular's built-in styling methods, to create a more maintainable codebase.