Do you remember what inspired you to start coding? Whether you’re a developer by trade, hobby, or maybe you don’t even identify as a developer, there is probably some tangible experience that catalyzed your app building journey. The match that lit my coding flame was a C++ class I took back in high school when I made my first calculator amongst other things like hangman or tic-tac-toe. Experiences like these can change the way a person thinks and what they think they are capable of doing.
Along that same vein, this week was Computer Science Education Week which is an annual program dedicated to inspiring K-12 students interests in computer science. My question to you is, why does this need to stop at kids? Why can’t it also be people looking to change careers, grow their current skill set, or simply gain experience in a new technology? Short answer, it can! And just like happy shouldn’t be limited to an hour, computer science education can far extend just this week…
Point-And-Click App Development
Whether you’re completely new to Salesforce or not, you can very quickly learn how to build apps. One of the most powerful aspects of Salesforce1 Platform is that you can do so much without having to write a line of code–and it just works. No matter what your technical background is, you can build apps on Salesforce1 Platform. How you ask?
Follow along with videos, tutorials, interactive quizzes, and build your own app
If you want to learn at your own speed, but prefer to watch tutorials then learn by doing, look no further. This new class covers the fundamentals of Force.com and shows you how to build a music festival app with the power of Salesforce1 Platform. The key here is not only watch and follow along, but also to start to conceptually grasp how you can leverage the platform in any use case.
Follow a basic step by step guided walk through of how to build apps
Walk through the every step of the app building process from building your custom data model to adding in automated business logic. The Force.com workbook is a good foundation to getting an understanding of the platform by building an inventory management application, and now includes information on how to also simultaneously customize your Salesforce1 mobile app experience simultaneously.
Get a fundamental hands-on understanding of the platform and how to use it
The Force.com Fundamentals book is similar to the Force.com workbook but focuses more on fundamental concepts like motivations, best practices, and abstraction. It also follows a different sample app use case for recruiting to demonstrate how to leverage the platform capabilities.
If you want to tune into tutorials anywhere, on any (*smart) device, then Salesforce U is for you. Again similar to the Force.com workbook, but for those who want not only a visual walkthrough of the concepts, but also more behind the motivations of why you do certain things rather than simply the how.
Build Dynamic Web Pages
If you want to learn how to build web pages natively on Salesforce1 Platform, look no further than Apex and Visualforce. You can build custom user interfaces on internal applications, public sites, and mobile web or hybrid apps with these tools. Think of a Visualforce page as a web page that uses components instead of raw HTML tags so that you, the developer, don’t have to build everything from scratch (ie. CSS styling, component functionality, formatting, etc). In order to dynamically give those components something to display on the page, depending on how custom of a page you are trying to build you might need Apex. Think of Apex as the brains of the operation, or the peanut butter to your Visualforce jelly, that is able to perform the appropriate controller logic to power the page.
Apex
Watch and follow along with this Apex tutorial geared for non-coders
Not a coder but looking to try? Follow along with this hands on training to learn how to start writing Apex classes and unit tests even if you have never learned how to write code before. Note: You will need to download Eclipse and the Force.com IDE to fully follow along with the tutorials.
Learn about the basics of Apex with this overview webinar
This webinar follows classroom-like lecture format and gives a high level overview of what Apex is and how you can leverage it. It also dives into code samples and use cases to help paint the picture more clearly.
Follow written guided tutorials to get oriented and learn Apex fundamentals
Check out this workbook to go at your own pace and walk through various steps while following a written guide. The Apex workbook orients you with how to use Apex and why, gives you an overview of the Apex language fundamentals, and then walks you through how to build things with Apex in various contexts (i.e. Visualforce controllers, triggers, REST Web Services, etc).
Visualforce
Watch and follow along with this Visualforce tutorial geared for non-coders
This hands on training from Dreamforce is a great resource for someone not only new to Visualforce, but also fairly new (or novice) with web development in general. It is a good resource if you need more of a breakdown than provided in the Visualforce workbook.
Learn about the basics of Visualforce with this overview webinar
This webinar follows classroom-like lecture format and gives a high level overview of what Apex is and how you can leverage it. It also dives into code samples and use cases to help paint the picture more clearly.
Follow written guided tutorials to get oriented an learn Visualforce fundamentals
Check out this workbook to go at your own pace and walk through various steps while following a written guide. This book teaches you how to: build custom user interfaces with both standard and custom styling, leverage standard components and create your own, and learn how to hook Visualforce into you various applications.
Build A Mobile App
We’ve reached a point in the advancement of our technologies where you can not only build web apps with point and click tools, but also mobile apps too. No matter where you fall on the development skill spectrum, as long as you have an understanding of platform fundamentals, you can build a mobile app today. Check out these different mediums geared towards different levels of developers.
Non-coders or novice devs: Configure a mobile app by following this step by step (admin) guide
Check out this guide for all the steps, best practices, and more on the point-and-click app building customizations in the Salesforce1 mobile app. You can follow along using the packaged schema included in the book, or try following along with your own custom schema!
Non-coders or novice devs: Build a custom mobile app interface with drag-and-drop tools
This tutorial will walk you through quickly building a mobile web application by following a specific set of steps. Follow-up resources go over how to extend the app further or repurpose it using the same tools.
If you’re new to Salesforce1 platform but not new to JavaScript or web development, this could be the perfect starter pack for you. These quick starts walk you through everything you need to setup and install a web or hybrid application in only 5-10 minutes. You will have a fully functional app that can pull data from Salesforce either on Force.com (in Visualforce) or remotely (on any platform).
Anyone: Configure a mobile app by following this step by step (developer) guide
This guide is contains the admin guide above as the initial chapters of the books, but then goes into the programmatic aspects of customizing the Salesforce1 mobile app as well. You will be stepped through how to configure and customize all of the current developer features available to quickly create a sustainable, integrated, robust mobile app.
This workbook is a step by step guide for creating a fully custom mobile app on the Salesforce1 platform using our mobile platform services and the Mobile SDK.
Anyone: I want to try out Android
Watch this webinar to get an overview of how to use the Mobile SDK to build Android mobile applications that interface with the Salesforce1 Platform. The webinar walks you through the development of a simple native Android application.
Watch this webinar to get an overview of how to use the Mobile SDK to build iOS mobile applications that interface with the Salesforce1 Platform. The webinar walks you through the development of a simple native iOS application that retrieves records from Salesforce, displays them in a master-detail view, updates a record’s details and sends back the updated results.
Integrate Other Systems
Integration is something many developers face when using the Salesforce1 Platform because often they either already have back office systems or legacy applications already in place or they want to build an application in a specific language. Each application can have data, business logic, presentation, and security layers, all of which are possible targets for integration. Thankfully we have a ton of APIs to allow you to explore various integration options.
Peruse this one stop shop for the integration webinar series and affiliated resources
This webinar series covers all of the Salesforce APIs and will present asynchronous integration options as well as how they can be used to access your Force.com data.
This workbook will introduce various technologies and concepts required to integrate Force.com apps with existing applications.
Watch this session to learn an overview or step through this guide for hands on practice
Force.com Canvas is a set of tools and JavaScript APIs that you can use to expose an application as a canvas app. Learn how to leverage this functionality to take your new or existing applications and make them available inside Salesforce.
Try something new, and share this list
So pick a card any card. Check out one of the topics that you are unfamiliar with and share this page with someone else who might want to learn something. Also, we’ve comprised a playlist of all of the beginner sessions that were recorded at Dreamforce this year and our Force.com for beginner webinars on Youtube.
Feel free to reach out to me on twitter if you have any questions or comments. I’d love to hear where else you (and your cohorts) are spending your time learning on the interwebs besides developerforce, StackExchange, etc and all the other jazz clubs under the Salesforce umbrella. Stay groovy.