How to Become a Salesforce Developer
Salesforce has become an in demand skill and offers a variety of different career paths, including Administrator, Business Analyst, Project Manager, Functional Consultant, Technical Consultant, Developer and Architect. Although the Salesforce mantra is 'clicks not code', the reality is that complex requirements will often require Salesforce development and programming skills.
In order to become a Salesforce Developer, it is important to take some time to understand the platform and the declarative capabilities, so that you can understand when requirements can be solved with a declarative configuration solution and when code is required. Even if you are an experienced developer from another platform or language and would like to jump straight into learning Apex, Visualforce and Lightning Components, you should still start with the basics.
Start with understanding the base objects in the Salesforce schema, such as Leads, Accounts, Contacts, Opportunities and Cases and their capabilities. Then understand the options for constructing and extending the data model with the various relationship types and also the role of external objects. Then understand how object, record and field access is controlled using features such as profiles, permission sets, organization wide defaults, sharing rules and field level security. It is vital to understand the business logic that can be implemented declaratively, using features such as validation rules, record types and roll-up summary fields. When it comes to process automation, understand the capabilities of workflow, process builder, approval processes and visual workflow. You will find that increasingly requirements that used to need code can now be satisfied with process builder or visual workflow, so make sure you have a good understanding of these tools. It is preferable to build a configurable solution over a programmatic solution to allow for easier maintenance, deployment and eliminating the need to writing test classes to deploy code into production.
I wanted to become a certified Salesforce developer. There were many ways to get motivated, one of them was by learning more about the technology and how easy it is to implement new solutions relatively fast. Coming from a pure Java background, one of the biggest challenges is learning the subtle differences between APEX and Java programming languages. Also learning to overcome the governor limits of Salesforce is a challenge, as it can change the way a solution is designed and implemented. If you are already a Java/.net/C developer, it’s easy to learn Apex. Open a developer sandbox and start playing around. There are great resources online, like trailhead that allow you to start learning. The Developer Meetups are great places to meet other Salesforce Dev people.
Chris Valdivia
My goal when I first started to work with Salesforce was just to survive. I’ve been in a Microsoft dot net stack environment for the past decade , so jumping into Salesforce was a bit of a paradigm shift, but it wasn’t my first time around the block and I had a really good co-worker/mentor, he really helped me out, gave me a lot of good instruction, told me what to look out for and basically kind of showed me the Salesforce way of doing things. The Focus on Force study guide and the practice exams were great. I walked through the study guide pretty much from the front to the end and I went through the tests over and over again. What you guys have done is really good as each question in the test references the study guide, so it was a great mix.
Salesforce Developer Certifications
In terms of certifications, there are 2 certifications for developers, Platform Developer 1 and Platform Developer 2. There are no prerequisites for Platform Developer 1, however it as mentioned above, it is important to understand the basics and the declarative capabilities and options, and completing the Admin and App Builder certifications first, will help with that and add to your certification achievements.
To prepare successfully for the certification exam, we recommend to work through our Platform Developer 1 Study Guide and Platform Developer 1 Practice Exams and then Platform Developer 2 Study Guide and Platform Developer 2 Practice Exams.
Platform Dev 1 Study Guide
Every topic objective explained thoroughly. The most efficient way to study the key concepts in the exam.
Platform Dev 1 Practice Exams
Test yourself with complete practice exams or focus on a particular topic with the topic exams. Find out if you are ready for the exam.
Platform Dev 2 Study Guide
Every topic objective explained thoroughly. The most efficient way to study the key concepts in the exam.
Platform Dev 2 Practice Exams
Test yourself with complete practice exams or focus on a particular topic with the topic exams. Find out if you are ready for the exam.