Salesforce coding lessons for the 99%Finally, Apex tutorials for point-and-click admins! Written by a self-taught Google engineer.
Salesforce coding lessons for the 99%
This year’s Dreamforce completely changed my outlook on the industry and my life.
Yes, it was that big and eye-opening. Every Dreamforce is. But 2015 was the boldest.
Let me share with you my thoughts and what this means for your career:
Earth-shattering changes
Before Dreamforce 2015 even started, everyone already knew about the new Lightning UI. It was uncharacteristically the worst “reveal” of any Dreamforce I’ve ever been to. Heck, I’ve known about the new UI for months – Salesforce brought me to their headquarters to help design it!
But I had no idea how earth-shattering this new UI would be to the Salesforce industry. Going to Dreamforce and experiencing the keynotes immediately revealed to me the gravity of this change – and I don’t think any of our careers are ever going to be the same from here.
Let me put this in perspective for you. In 16 years of Salesforce’s history, they have never done a UI change even remotely close to this. And for good reason – you can imagine how difficult it would be to launch this sort of thing while keeping in mind the infinite customizations that have been built around the world.
That’s why the new UI is such a big deal. It’s not a new UI – it’s a completely different way of building Salesforce. The old UI had extremely limited customizations that we’ve worked around for years. The new UI unlocks essentially unlimited customizations using a new “component” system. Basically, the entire layout can be customized down to the pixel, with or without code due to AppExchange components. Oh yea, everything looks 2015 modern as well, including reporting/dashboards, which got a complete UI refresh that matches it with Wave.
Take a moment to let that sink in before I tell you why it’s so important to you…
My outlook on future of the Salesforce industry
The new Lightning interface introduces more than just a UI change – it’s a completely new way of designing and building Salesforce orgs. Previously, it was so expensive and time-consuming to build custom UIs in Salesforce that few orgs even attempted this. Most would use 90%+ standard UIs, with minor Visualforce here and there.
Now, Salesforce has democratized UI. Components can be added anywhere in any dimension. With the AppExchange, you’ll find pre-built components that you can immediately add to your pages. Unlike embedded Visualforce, components are built to and encouraged to interact to each other. The possibilities here are endless and Salesforce is almost forcing you to try radically different UIs inside your org.
With these changes, I expect Salesforce orgs to be even bolder with their customizations. The introduction of components on the AppExchange will open up a whole new “open source” community on the platform that’ll take the UI/UX to far greater heights than could be achieved with Salesforce classic. It will take time for companies to adjust to this new framework but Salesforce has already put the pieces in place for this to happen.
Changes to the admin/developer career landscape
I’ve talked about how major shocks to industries can open up huge new opportunities for people. Think Tesla and the introduction of the electric car. Now, think Salesforce and the Lightning framework.
Some people think that the gap between admins and developers is shrinking, especially with the introduction of Process Builder. I actually think the gap is widening, and here’s why:
Yes, automation that used to require triggers can now be done declaratively using Visual Flow or Process Builder. There’s plenty of automation that still requires triggers, but, the gap here is closing. This is just one small piece of the pie however.
The bigger picture – Lightning components. These are now the fundamental building blocks of Salesforce orgs, the “Legos” you could say. They open up a whole world of possibilities in orgs that we once could only dream of. And with great power, comes great responsibility. Because Lightning components are more powerful, they require more code to build. I know – I’ve been playing around with them.
What I’m trying to say is the Salesforce world needs a new generation of developers that can code Lightning components. Being a new technology, no one has mastered these and there will be a steeper learning curve. The level of customization is now significantly higher than the average admin is willing to handle. The gap is bigger than it has even been, and I believe it may get bigger as Lightning matures.
Final thoughts
This is probably scary, exciting, and intimidating for you at the same time. It certainly is for me.
But remember, since there are no Lightning “masters” in the world right now, this is an opportune moment to become one. You are now at the same level as advanced developers around the world when it comes to Lightning components… absolute zero.
Use this to your advantage in leap-frogging your Salesforce career. Changes like these are the best thing that could ever happen to people looking to break into an industry. If you’re a newbie developer – you’re in luck! If you’re a seasoned Salesforce developer… time to hit the books and start learning again!
Lots more work for me but I’m excited to start learning again – this time a brand new technology!
David out!
Little worried about this change and new addition.. I have started to explore on Lightning on trailhead, and I am getting more nervous.
Are you having any plan to add tutorials about “Lightning” in SFDC99 ??
Hi David
This article is very positively written its like opening a new window to existing developers at the same time opening a new portal for new guys to get in with a new mindset. Great to see the way this great platform is evolving its like there something for everybody only needs to get in and spend some time learning.
Time to hit the books , you have given me a rejuvenated feeling
Thank you very much for this insight. I know what I’ll be doing on trailhead today, LIGHTNING! *I want to be the very best, like no one ever was,,,” :D
Thanks for sharing. Great post!
Inspiring as always!
I’m totally in this boat now too David. Oh boy…
As an Advanced Admin, I had already decided to dig into your site upon my return from DF15 and start my own personal developer track, along with the Trailhead info. But Lightning Components changed everything in my mind, too.
As soon as the light went on I ran around the Dev Zone asking for all kinds of guidance, and then it dawned on me – there isn’t any yet (!) because WE will be the ones to determine what happens next. I don’t know if it’s even possible to leapfrog from non-coder into Lightning Components, but I’ll definitely be a guinea pig on this topic because the time to strike is right now. I really look forward to your notes here as you also jump in with both feet :-)
Great post david
Nice and detailed explanation.. as usual… Thanks David for sharing your thoughts on Lightning… This will really guide to rest of the folks… Cheers !!!
Very good analysis. Thank you for that. I am also taking it as a wise advice regarding Lighting development. I will get my Service Cloud certification and immerse myself in Lightning :). Appreciate it.
What you are thoughts of scalability of lighting framework, I see better approach would be writing separate UI components that uses React/Polymer UI and call Salesforce only for services by limiting apex,. If enterprise services are orchestrated in Apex through some design pattern, then components are useful.
I see Lighting Framework do not make use of Virtual DOM, which is big time limiting factor, and strong learning curve required for changing perception of Apex developer to javascript at same time syntactically (you might have seen that), I also see lack of proper tool (sublime/atom) supporting lighting components, and how about meta-data transportation and release management ? I need clear picture of application lifecycle management (APM).
Excited to hear future of component driven model that Google/Facebook/Salesforce are pushing to, but I am more aligned towards scalability and backward compatibility for visualforce page code that is pre-written.
Clearly this is signal of lot of rewriting, but I see problem in architecture, still the code is tightly glued to controller, that is bothering me with Lighting components approach
SLDS : I believe they used react on back (again guessing this) because as you re-render the component in SPA, they are not rendered, that will take some time to mature and to scale
I am excited for vision that salesforce have supported too, but ill wait for framework to mature more and write a library supporting that a I grow with it !!
-Excited and positive about for components driven but in right engineering fashion.
Spot on.
Well put – this is exciting new territory. I need to dive deeper into native components they may release to see what you can do without laying down some lines of code. Either way, methinks Salesforce will play friendly with many of our favorite front-end frameworks (i.e. – bootstrap, JS, etc), and this will open up a gigantic new world. Your analysis is spot on, and the point is resoundingly clear – now is the time to learn & get on board.
I agree with Jan and Suku! The scariest thing about a new technology is limited amounts of sample code and learning resources (and limited APEX learning resources is what inspired you to build SFDC99!) and that can really dampen spirits. We need you David!
Love your excitement and enthusiasm. Good thing about lightning framework is that it opens up the platform for a wide array of web developers as it uses the well known web technologies (aka, HTML5/JS/CSS). So, it is fairly easy for someone very new to the Salesforce ecosystem to quickly pick this up if they have web development skills. The so called ‘Lightning Masters’ may very well include not the usual suspects but developers from other platforms. Gap between admin and developer won’t shrink, rather both admin and developers will progressively deliver more complex functionalities in their own right. As admins will roll out functionalities with immersive UI and process automation, developers will move towards developing reusable components and complex integration etc. Keep up the good work!
Nice post David! I too am excited about lightening components presented at Dreamforce and the possibilities available. Thanks for the post. Sorry I missed you at Dreamforce. I looked for you but couldn’t find you.
Thanks for the update. Maybe it will give those technical folks who are quick learners who are having trouble getting a Salesforce job a chance.
Amazing and inspiring post..
Thanks David…!!
Really nice post David. Can we expect to learn it with you as you go on learning developing Lightning Components now please? Like you said, it’s far more difficult for an admin to learn to create good components and understand how they are composed. I’ve just learned apex and visualforce mostly through your site and finally got the hang of it and now everything changes and gotta start all over again. I’m up for a challenge and already did the trailhead module on creating components, but I have to say I found it much more complicated that the Visualforce and Apex modules ;-)
Please start some tutorials on Lightning.
Hi David,
Please hold the torch for all the people who follow your website as the Mecca for learning Salesforce, while you learn Salesforce lightening, give us also the opportunity to learn with you!!!!