UPDATED 08:00 EDT / MAY 29 2019

APPS

Salesforce open-sources Lightning Web Components for application development

Salesforce.com Inc. is taking its developer embrace one step further by open-sourcing its Lightning Web Components framework.

Lightning Web Components is, as the name suggests, a component-based framework that’s designed to simplify application development for regular business employees who lack programming expertise.

It comprises a collection of tools that can be pieced together to build all manner of workplace applications easily, including the Experience graphical user interface; Lightning App Builder, which provides drag and drop capabilities to facilitate app creation and customization; and the Lightning Component Framework, which includes tools and extensions to enable the development of reusable components and standalone apps.

Salesforce’s decision to open-source Lightning Web Components is undoubtedly driven by a desire to boost the popularity of the framework, but the company today insisted it’s also trying to promote the use of more open-source software in general. For example, it points out that although open-source software is expected to reach parity with that of proprietary software within the next two years, there are still significant barriers around compatibility and trust that prevent more widespread adoption. Making Lightning Web Components open source should help to eliminate some of those barriers.

“By open sourcing Lightning Web Components, Salesforce begins to bridge that gap,” the company said in a statement. “Developer teams can now recruit from larger talent pools to code and rapidly iterate on apps, and businesses can count on those apps to run at enterprise levels of trust, scale and performance.”

In other words, developers can now use Lightning Web Components to build applications for any platform, not just Salesforce. They can also explore its source code and customize it to suit their own purposes, which is something that wasn’t possible before.

“The benefits include writing better code and accelerating innovation, hiring and onboarding,” Chris Kelly, Salesforce’s director of open source, said in an interview. “Code that’s intended to be open source typically exhibits qualities we associate with good software design: It has to be modular, well encapsulated and extensible, and it has better documentation and is written with clear and stable interfaces, allowing other teams to rely on it with confidence. And better code equals better products.”

Not only that, but open-sourcing Lightning Web Components should also lead to new features being built for the platform faster than Salesforce could do by itself.

“Developers can leverage the collective effort of the community to build new features faster,” Kelly said. “And as projects are put into production elsewhere, companies will often realize a spike in performance, and more readily adopt new security and usability features.”

Salesforce said the open-source Lightning Web Components are available now on GitHub.

Image: Salesforce

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