New Kid on the Block: Lightning Web Components

Whether you have a background in Salesforce or a knack for software development, this article will introduce to you the new programming framework released by Salesforce. Learn more about Salesforce by joining the TechXplore Salesforce Code Camp on February 29, 2020 at Accenture Uptown 3. Register here if you want to join: www.accenture.com/techxplore

In case you haven't heard of Salesforce, It’s the number one CRM platform in the world. Here are some prominent companies in the Philippines that heavily rely on Salesforce for their processes: Meralco, PLDT, Cebu Pacific, Union Bank, to name a few. And that's just in the Philippines. Salesforce also supports international clients, such as, Adidas, Toyota, Marriot International, etc. So as you can imagine, Salesforce is huge and is still growing. If you're looking for a sign to move to the cloud-- this would be it!

You can check out this link for more companies using Salesforce: https://www.salesforce.com/customer-success-stories/

Each company listed in the link above has its own tailor-fit version of Salesforce. Although Salesforce provides a lot of out-of-the-box tools to cater to client needs, there will always be features that would be too intricate or too complex to be built using these out-of-the-box tools. To address this, Salesforce built Lightning Components --these components are specifically designed to fill in gaps and develop tailor-fit features for its clients.

LIGHTNING COMPONENTS

It is worth noting that Lightning Components and Lightning Web Components are two different things. Lightning Web Components (LWC) is a framework used to build Lightning Components. Another framework used to develop Lightning Components is Aura Framework. You might be wondering why there are two frameworks to develop one component. Aura is the older and outdated framework and LWC is the younger, better and updated one. To better understand their differences, first you have to understand how LWC came into fruition by understanding the gaps of the Aura framework.

AURA FRAMEWORK

The Aura framework was released back in 2014. Back then the web standards--meaning the tools provided by the consortium to develop web applications--were limited, as you can see below. So, in order to build those enterprise-level applications, Salesforce had to adapt; hence, Aura.

Aura was specifically built to fill in those gaps for which features were not yet provided at that time. This made Aura complex, heavily abstracted -- heavyweight. [BMLA1] 

Fast forward to 2019, a lot more features became available in the web standards. This is due to the demand to standardize web development. What does this mean for those frameworks back in 2014? If they weren't able to adapt -- they were visually slower compared to the more recently released frameworks (LWC). This is due to the bulk of code, which is read just to execute a certain function. Rather than executing the command in the browser, it is executed through the framework. Imagine having to go through hundreds of lines of code just to execute a command. Given that our machines nowadays are blazing-fast, execution would only take a millisecond of delay. If you add all of these milliseconds in an enterprise level application, execution could take a while.

LIGHTNING WEB COMPONENTS

Lightning Web Components a lightweight framework built for performance. It supports ES6 and later versions and utilizes web standards--which means if you're a developer with experience in JavaScript development, you could easily transfer to LWC. If you happen to follow the Salesforce Developer page in Facebook, you would have already seen their "Learn Lightning Web Component Development in 1 hour" advertisements. That's the beauty of LWC, it allows the developer to use his skills in different frameworks because they are practicing web standard development. It also opens up documentation references for developers, unlike Aura where the developer solely relies on the Salesforce developer-guide documentation. If you want to learn more about LWC, Salesforce has an engaging learning portal called Trailhead with a lot of content on their wide array of development tools. Here's the link: https://trailhead.salesforce.com/