What is a component in AngularJS?

Angular components were introduced in version 1.5.

A component is a simplified version of a directive. It cannot do dom manipulation (not link or compile methods) and "replace" is gone too.

Components are "restrict: E" and they are configured using an object (not a function).

An example:

  app.component('onOffToggle', {
    bindings: {
      value: '=',
      disabled: '='
    },
    transclude: true,
    template: '<form class="form-inline">\
                       <span ng-transclude></span>\
                       <switch class="small" ng-model="vm.value" ng-disabled="vm.disabled"/>\
                     </form>',
    controllerAs: 'vm',
    controller: ['$scope', function($scope) {
      var vm = this;
      $scope.$watch("vm.disabled", function (val) {
        if (!val) {
          vm.value = undefined;
        }
      })
    }]
  });

Further reading: https://toddmotto.com/exploring-the-angular-1-5-component-method/

Coming from an OOP Java oriented background, I was trying to distinguish between the various Angularjs components, including modules. I think the best answer I found about modules was 13 Steps to Angularjs Modularization

In an AngularJS context, modularization is organization by function instead of type. To compare, given arrays time = [60, 60, 24, 365] and money = [1, 5, 10, 25, 50], both are of the same type, but their functions are completely different.

That means your components (controllers, filters, directives) will live in modules instead of wherever they live now.

So yes, for our 1.4x code, components are blocks of resusable code, but in our version 1.4x context, I see the Module Pattern as a recurring structure to these blocks of code in Angularjs, though not considered true components until version 1.5. The way these modules are implemented gives you the type of component, that is, a controllers implementation structure will distinguish it from a service or a provider, if that makes sense. I also think the Angularjs documents should have addressed this.

Here is the basic pattern I see repeated in the Angularjs code:

(function () {
    // ... all vars and functions are in this scope only
    // still maintains access to all globals
}());

Here is an excellent article on the Javascript Module Pattern in depth.