TL; DR;
Marek shows you can re-train to be a Salesforce Developer successfully from a completely unrelated field. Even then you should not solve every problem with code.
Intro
When I was in elementary school we got our first computer but I didn’t know what to do with it. So my father showed me MS Excel and said “Do at least something useful”. At that moment my programming career began. Of course, I didn’t know what programming was, but I started to create my first database and reports, or as I presented it at that time: Personal Finance Overview
As a teenager I had chosen the path of accounting, financial management and controlling. When I joined AIESEC during my university studies I slowly switched my focus from accounting to leadership and management. Three years later I realised we needed to update our financial management and accounting tools, so I created them – of course in MS Excel. At that moment I realised I like building systems more than finance and accounting.
A few years later I was looking for literally any remote job (it wasn’t that cool – before covid), because my girlfriend wanted to study in Atlanta for a semester and I am not a long-distance-relationship person at all. I didn’t think much about starting programming, but my friend asked me if I wanted to try Salesforce development. I tried and it worked.
So without any previous programming experience, I started with development on the Salesforce platform. I learned by completing Trails on Trailhead. I travelled to the US thanks to some crazy people at Enehano who hired someone with no experience and were willing to let them work from abroad for half a year.
So yeah… learning how to Excel was useful 🙂 Thanks dad.
Books
Which “professional” books have you read that you liked or would recommend others to read. Great if they are Salesforce (Developer) related but they don’t necessarily have to be.
I read just a few books related to programming from which I can recommend Apex Design Patterns written by Jitendra Zaa and Anshul Verma and Robert C. Martin’s Clean Code. In my first months/years those books helped me to understand how the programming works.
Courses & Events
Did you follow any online (or in person) courses? Are there any that you would recommend? Do you participate in Meetups or organised User Groups?
I have attended a few Salesforce onsite events in Prague and one in Atlanta. The more I know about the platform, the more interesting those events are. Maybe because you know what those people are talking about. And from Courses – I helped to deliver a Women In Tech course for Salesforce Admins. It was amazing to see how fast a person who never saw Salesforce became fully capable of working as a junior salesforce admin. Totally, from zero to hero in 15 hours.
Blogs
Give a shout out to any (Salesforce) Blogs that you follow are are fan of. You don’t need to be a regular reader, or maybe even just one post that may have got your attention.
Definitely salesforceben.com, apexhours.com, unofficialsf.com and also pragmaticbear.eu :). But the problem is there is too much interesting content so I still have a full backlog 🙂
Socials
Do you use Social Media for your work or personal development? Which ones, how and why? Any creators that you would recommend others follow/check out?
I started to follow a few people (some of them salesforce MVPs) on Twitter and LinkedIn, but I do not remember anything interesting from the last weeks I read from them. So I would rather go with the blogs above.
Forums and Discussion Channels
Where do you look for help or answers to problems you can’t solve yourself? Do you spend time answering other peoples’ questions? Where?
Mostly Google. If you do not find anything relevant through a Google search, check the results on the second page. It sometimes works for me. From my point of view, the best source of information is personal experience, so I try to ask people around me if it is possible. Failing that I take advantage of the experience of people I don’t know (the google search).
GitHub
Do you use GitHub as a social platform? Or maybe follow some open-source repos that are interesting and relevant?
Ehm, no. Lately, I started building my own library and it is already paying me off. So I will give it a chance and try to look at some repositories others have shared on this platform 🙂
IDE and Extensions
What’s your setup? Specifically when doing Salesforce Development work. Any features or extensions you would recommend.
Nothing special I would say. Using VS code with Git Graph extension. ORGaniser for logins and Salesforce Inspector for… everything it covers (queries, imports, exports)
Other Tools
Any other software that you can’t do without?
I am using standard apple apps such as mail, notes and reminders, keychain and safari. I do not think those are the best, but I like the “connectivity” between those apps and devices. Everything everywhere – love it. And also Postman is quite useful 🙂
Anything Else
Anything else you wanna add that doesn’t fit above? What else do you do or use to be a good Salesforce Developer?
For me, Salesforce is an amazing platform that does not require deep tech knowledge from developers so literally everyone can start from zero. On the other hand, I believe a good Salesforce developer needs to understand the whole platform and primarily solve the business problem efficiently (which does not mean using code every time).
Plug Yourself
Would you like to share your profiles and websites? Any public repos or project/work that you wanna share?
My LinkedIn profile, sometimes I like something or share something I find interesting. And all the time replying to job/project offers :-).
Tabs of Spaces
For a bit of light entertainment, my favourite “controversial” topic. What’s your preference? Do you care? I love to pretend to care more than I do, though I am genuinely looking for someone to convince me my choice is wrong.
Love your enthusiasm about this topic… but I couldn’t care less what whitespace is better “ ” or “ “ (yes one is a tab and the other with spaces) :D.