Lightning Web Components (LWC) is Salesforce’s implementation of everyone’s favorite cool new web technology, namely web components. That’s right: Salesforce, that bastion of enterprise-y, not-invented-here, walled gardens has clambered onto the web standards bandwagon and embraced web components with open arms. Who would have thought?
Not only can Salesforce ISVs now write the frontend for their apps using web components, but they can also use LWC’s library of pre-built UI components, which provides implementations for the “blueprints” defined by Salesforce’s design system, which goes by the snappy name Salesforce Lightning Design System (SLDS). What’s more, the framework has now even been open-sourced, making it available for anyone to use in any environment. Watch out, LitElement/Stencil/Hybrids and friends, not to mention Angular and other stalwarts now pitching themselves as web components compilers!
What is the “Lightning” part of the name “Lightning Web Components”? Well, as anyone who knows anything about Salesforce knows, Lightning is the name of the reboot of their platform, launched about four years ago, which involves a new “Lightning Experience” user experience, a new component architecture, a new look and feel, and a new programming model. (Actually two new programming models, if you count the original “Aura components”, a clunky…
