Accessing inherited scope with Controller As approach

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After researching, I came to the following realization:

Controller-As approach is NOT a substitute for using $scope. Both have their place, and can/should be used together judiciously.

  1. $scope does exactly what the name implies: i.e. it defines ViewModel properties on the $scope. This works best for sharing scope with nested controllers that can use the $scope to drive their own logic or to change it.
  2. Controler-As defines the entire controller object as a ViewModel with a named scope (via the controller’s alias). This works best only in the View (but not other controllers), if the View decides if it wants to reference a specific controller ViewModel.

Here’s an example:

var app = angular.module('myApp', []);

// Then the controllers could choose whether they want to modify the inherited scope or not:
app.controller("ParentCtrl", function($scope) {
    this.prop1 = {
      v: "prop1 from ParentCtrl"
    };
    $scope.prop1 = {
      v: "defined on the scope by ParentCtrl"
    };
  })
  .controller("Child1Ctrl", function($scope) {})
  .controller("Child2Ctrl", function($scope) {
    // here, I don't know about the "pc" alias
    this.myProp = $scope.prop1.v + ", and changed by Child2Ctrl";
  });
<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/angular.js/1.4.8/angular.min.js"></script>

<body ng-app="myApp">
  <div ng-controller="ParentCtrl as pc">
     <div ng-controller="Child1Ctrl">
        <div>I know about the "pc" alias: {{pc.prop1.v}}</div>
     </div>
     <div ng-controller="Child2Ctrl as ch2">
       <div>I only care about my own ViewModel: {{ch2.myProp}}</div>
    </div>
  </div>

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