If you’re about to kick off your first Salesforce Platform project, congratulations! You’re joining a vibrant community doing interesting work. But you might be wondering where to start. I recently asked my fellow developer evangelists this very question.
Here’s what everyone said. I think you’ll start to notice a theme.
- Raja Rao DV — Go through the workbooks, understand the system, then start developing.
- Ryan Upton — Workbooks. Force.com first, then Apex. Hang out on the developer boards.
- Pat “Metadaddy” Patterson — Do the workbooks, read the multitenant white paper.
- Samantha Ready — Get a Developer Edition org, hang out on Stack Exchange, and remember to Google.
- Peter Chittum — Get to know how our metadata (api overview) and security settings work.
- John Stevenson — Go to your local Force.com developer user group and build relationships with other developers.
- Josh Birk — Developer edition: get it, love it. Get to know developer.force.com and watch Force.com Fridays.
- Sandeep Bhanot — Bookmark developer.force.com & follow the @ForceDotCom Twitter account.
- April Nassi — Do the workbook, talk to Dave Carroll and attend Force.com Fridays and other webinars.
And me? What’s my advice? I have a few.
- Get to know the technical docs. They’re very good. The Apex, Visualforce and SOQL references are the ones I visit the most.
- You can find a complete standard object data model in the SOAP API docs. (REST API docs are great too!)
- Explore the Dreamforce and Developerforce YouTube channels. There’s a lot of great content available.
- Like everyone else said: do the intro workbook. It’s worth your time.
- Stop in to the Salesforce IRC Channel for a little old school chit chat.
Questions? Comments? More advice on how to get started? Post below or @ReidCarlberg.
