qomponents.github.io

My first computer learned me to program in Z80 Assembly Language and 4 kB memory.

Over a decade later; Email, UseNet, ListServ, FTP, Archie, Gopher and Veronica had been my professional tools for 4 years before I fell in love with HTML and The Web.

The Web ruled, and became Behemoth.

In the past decade I saw the (Front-end) development world change into a for ‘rocket-scientists’ only profession.
Tools have become more important than programming.

And then I learned about native Web Components and fell in love with HTML, and my job, again.

Developing Web Components requires a different mind-set, it is totally not Framework development.

Standing on the shoulders of giants who answered my questions on StackOverflow and GitHub;
it took me 5 years to unlearn what I had learned in those many WWW years. And re-learn HTML back to basics.

It is 2021, I am slowly getting comfortable with Web Components, but know it is still early days.

Where frameworks deliver (semi-) finished products, Web Components are atoms.. or maybe we should say quarks, because, like many developers, a lot of scientists do not understand those either.

And yes, Web Components can built (semi-)finished products like Design Systems.

I foresee a future where Web Components are used like we use Libraries and CDNs today. NPM is Evil!
But contrary to libraries, Web Components won’t have a plethora of functionalities.

• Good Web Components do one or two things very well

• Good Web Components, like Lego bricks, can be joined together to create more functionality

• Good Web Components can (IMHO) be extracted (and re-used) from the ‘finished’ product

• Good Web Components will be as free as the <div> tag you wrote today

• And yes, Lea, we need something to find those Good Web Components,
  because there already is a lot of shit out there.

This is not a novel idea. This is how Tim Berners-Lee envisioned the Web to be when he wrote the paper in 1989

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