So Many Resources, So Little Time

I found Auntie Pat Tern burying a hammer in the flower bed. When I asked why, she said it was Tim Toady's favorite tool and he needed to learn something new. When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail, so she wanted to make sure he found new ways of doing things. I like to make sure my developers are constantly learning new skills as well, so they don't rely on "golden hammer" practices that may have become outdated.

Become a specialist and then learn even more.

Learning to develop on the Salesforce platform is like finding a magpie's nest full of shiny objects. Where do you start and how do you figure out which gems are most valuable? Here's the path I take:

1. Attend Dreamforce. The keynote and product demos will help you know what you want to learn. The sessions will help you get started on that learning. It offers the chance to talk to people who are on the same learning journey as you are and share tips and interests. I am presenting two sessions on developing with Apex this year: 8 Essential Apex Tips for Admins and Apex Trigger Essentials for Admins.
2. Watch more Dreamforce sessions online. After the event, Salesforce makes sessions available by video online. Sessions you wish you had attended, topics you didn't know you were interested in until after Dreamforce, all are free to watch online.
3. Follow up your learning in the Success Community.  Find your local user group and developer group and follow the online conversations to learn how other people are using Salesforce and the challenges they are overcoming. Even if you don't have a local group, you can join groups online to be part of the discussions.
4. Keep up the learning with Trailhead. Salesforce offers online learning opportunities through Trailhead. Don't be intimidated by the SuperBadges, they offer a well defined path to learning about a particular skill in Salesforce. And if you get stuck the community is there to help.
5. Two places to turn for online help from the community when you get stuck on any of your coding projects are the Developer Community and Stack Exchange. Search the boards to see if someone has already asked about the question you have, and if you can't find a discussion, go ahead and post your question. Once you gain more skills, you should find that you are answering more questions than you are asking.

The resources are there to help you along. Learning to develop, or learning to develop even better, can be fun with all of the resources Salesforce offers. You don't have to rely on golden hammers when there are opportunities to learn new and better ways to work with Salesforce.