Salesforce Developer Podcast

Today’s show is going to be a little different. Julián Duque, a Lead Developer Advocate at Salesforce, is taking over the host chair. He interviews Jonathan Jenkins, the Senior Regional Success Architect here at Salesforce.

In their conversation, they discuss Salesforce functions. They also get into Jonathan’s path to working for Salesforce which actually began with electrical engineering and hacking. Tune in to learn from Jonathan’s many insights into functions and more.

Show Highlights:

• What Jonathan’s current role at Salesforce is like.
• The advantages of the advocate role for customers and the future of products.
• What Salesforce functions are and how they save developers loads of work and time.
• What Elastic Compute is.
• The benefits that elasticity provides to Salesforce customers who are doing computations.
• Examples of ways you can use Salesforce functions on your products.
• How Salesforce functions allow a wider range of people to work on the Salesforce platform and on its projects.
• How Salesforce functions provide a great opportunity to learn new languages.
• How to get started using Salesforce functions.

Links:

• Welcome to Salesforce Functions: https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/platform/functions/overview
• Discover Salesforce Functions: https://trailhead.salesforce.com/en/content/learn/trails/discover-salesforce-functions
• Salesforce Functions is Generally Available: https://developer.salesforce.com/blogs/2021/10/salesforce-functions-is-generally-available

Adrian Larson is a Salesforce developer over at Counsel. Today we talk with him about his insights into Apex development.

Throughout our conversation, we also get into some of Adrian’s earliest experiences including working with Python and what the transition from there to Java was like. We have a great discussion about StackExchange and optimizations as well. Tune in and learn from Adrian’s years and depth of experience.

Show Highlights:

• What Adrian’s current role looks like.
• How he got involved in StackExchange.
• What constitutes a good answer on StackExchange.
• How Adrian became a moderator for Salesforce.
• What a fluent pattern is and what it can help with.
• How Adrian and his team use micro-optimizations.
• What fluent query and fluent syntax mean.
• How Adrian utilizes dependency injection for performance increase.
• Why he works out an API first and then writes rigorous tests for it.
• The benefits of having a trigger handler class.

Links:

• Adrian on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adrian-larson-a17a856/
• Adrian on Twitter: https://twitter.com/apexlarson
• Adrian on GitHub: https://github.com/apexlarson

Adrian on StackExchange: https://salesforce.stackexchange.com/users/2995/adrian-larson

Geoffrey Bessereau is a Technical Architect over at Persistent. He founded a Discord community called SFXD which we discuss in this episode. We get into the Wiki for this community, other writings around it, and architectural and developer lessons that have been learned along the way.

In Geoffrey’s current role, he gets to work internally doing training and on projects as a sort of “process evangelist.” He brings a lot to the table so tune in to learn all about his community, flow, and data migration.

Show Highlights:

• Geoffrey’s elevator pitch for SFXD.
• How the community got started.
• How Geoffrey balances guiding his community with just letting it be.
• Why he decided to put a Wiki together.
• All about flow naming conventions.
• Recommendations for testing flow.
• What a data migration actually is.
• Best practices for data migration.
• What the cloud information model is.

Links:

• Geoffrey on Twitter
• Geoffrey on LinkedIn
• Geoffrey on GitHub
• SFXD Wiki

Eric Kintzer is a Salesforce Architect over at Helix. Today I talk with him about FFLib and Apex design patterns. We discuss how his discovery of Andrew Fawcett’s book on the topic changed his entire perspective on architecture and development.

Eric describes himself as an all-singing, all-dancing Salesforce developer, architect, and admin. He has had to identify business needs, architect around them and then develop the solution himself. As a result, he has a very interesting journey and unique insights to bring. Tune in to learn more from him.

Show Highlights:

• Eric’s Salesforce journey.
• His approach to Apex and other complex programs.
• How Andrew Fawcett’s design architecture book changed Eric’s career and life.
• The four key design patterns in that book.
• How enterprise patterns impact testing. 
• What a mock object is.
• How the FFLib project works and its many advantages.
• How to migrate to FFLib well.
• Why FFLib is important if you care about your craft as a developer.
• How Eric got involved with Stack Exchange.

Links:

• Eric on Twitter
• Eric on LinkedIn
• Eric Kintzer SFDC Blog
• Salesforce Lightning Enterprise Platform Architecture book by Andrew Fawcett 
• apex-enterprise-patterns (aka FFLib) GitHub repo
• Apex Enterprise Patterns Trailmix
• Salesforce Developer Survey (through Nov 30th, 2021)

Natalija Pavic is an Industry Solution Leader for Commerce Cloud. Today I talk with her about the digital trends she is seeing in B2C. We also discuss the Salesforce partners who are implementing these trends.

After being “headhunted” by Salesforce for five years, Natalija finally joined us in 2016. Now, she is part of the go-to marketing team and, as her husband says, works on the stuff that doesn’t exist yet. Tune in to hear more about her experiences in this role and learn about where technology is driving the future of B2C.

Show Highlights:

• The correlation between high-performing companies and those that are leveraging digital experiences.
• What contextual commerce is.
• The solutions that Threekit is useful for.
• How to balance in-person sales and human interaction with the ease of digital connection.
• What live shopping is.
• How virtual storefronts work.
• Shout-outs to some of the current digital trends.

Links:

• Natalija on Twitter
• Natalija on LinkedIn

Suraj Pillai is a Salesforce Architect and Senior Developer at Vertex Computer Systems. He has done a variety of projects around Apex and lightning web components in his career. Today we discuss many of them.

Throughout our conversation, you will also hear a lot about using JavaScript with Flow and utilizing constructs like universal mocking. We even broach the topic of how you can get work done really quickly using Neovim. Tune in to learn more from Suraj. 

Show Highlights:

• All about Suraj’s journey with Salesforce and his current job.
• What got him into JavaScript.
• What sparked the idea for his repo and what it does.
• Use cases for using JavaScript and local action to improve flow.
• Real-world examples for using JavaScript buttons.
• What Apex Mocks are and their benefits.
• The tooling he’s been building around Neovim.
• Some of the work he’s done with external services.

Links:

• Suraj on LinkedIn
• Suraj on Github

Kyle Tobener is the VP of IT and Enterprise Security over at Copado. Today we talk about his experience in getting into enterprise security, how Salesforce and cloud computing play into security, and some general advice on security.

On top of fulfilling his role at Copado, Kyle runs a very popular Tik Tok account where he delivers some interesting facts on security.  Tune in to hear it all.

Show Highlights:

• How Kyle became an IT professional.
• What his transition from a support role to an engineering role was like.
• The unique challenges of managing the security of cloud companies.
• How Kyle paved roads at Salesforce for people to do things flexibly but also safely.
• What Copado does.
• Why early developers should learn and integrate security as soon as possible.
• Why it’s cheaper to prevent security vulnerabilities early on.
• What can happen if we ignore SOQL injections.
• What the static code analyzer PMD does.
• How Kyle got into Tik Tok and what he does on his channel.
• What bug bounties are.
• How “Capture the Flag” prepares people for cybersecurity careers.

Links:

• Kyle on Twitter
• Kyle on LinkedIn
• Kyle on TikTok

David Reed is an elite member of the technical staff over at Salesforce.org. Today I talk with him about all things CumulusCI, the open source continuous integration engine that they created and support.  Tune in to learn details about how developers can leverage its many features and companion applications.

David is not only interested in computers but also very into history and classics. He even has a Master’s degree in ancient Greek. Tune in to hear more from him and learn tons of information on CumulusCI.

Show Highlights:

• How David learned Salesforce.
• What he does in his current role.
• What drew him to automation and the DevOps cycle.
• Why CumulusCI can be called portable automation.
• Why it’s easy to reproduce in Cumulus.
• The pain points that it can solve.
• Tasks that it can automate for both admins and developers.
• The advantages of Python.
• How to layer CumulusCI on top of your current process.
• What Program Management Module is.
• Goals for the future of CumulusCI.

Links:

• David on Twitter: http://twitter.com/aoristdual
• David on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidreed-salesforce/
• David on GitHub: https://github.com/davidmreed
• Build Applications with CumulusCI on Trailhead: https://trailhead.salesforce.com/en/content/learn/trails/build-applications-with-cumulusci
• CumulusCI repo: https://github.com/SFDO-Tooling/CumulusCI
• CumulusCI documentation: https://cumulusci.readthedocs.io/
• PMM repo (example CumulusCI project): https://github.com/SalesforceFoundation/PMM

A MetaDeploy instance for customer delivery (runs CumulusCI automation to install complex products): https://install.salesforce.org/

We’ve reached an incredible milestone: 100 episodes of this podcast have been recorded, produced, and released. Today I take a little victory lap to celebrate all that has happened over the past couple of years.

In this episode, I reflect back on the early episodes, talk a little bit about how we got here, and thank a few people who have helped me out along the way. Tune in to celebrate with us and hear some of the background behind our show.

Show Highlights:

• The origin story of the Salesforce Developer Podcast.
• Gratitude for the many people who have supported the show.
• How the format of the podcast came to be.
• Why diversity is so important to us.
• Exciting things coming up for the podcast.

Links/Shout Outs:

• Mary Scotton: https://twitter.com/rockchick322004
• Arabella David: https://twitter.com/darabella
• Ariana Faustini: https://twitter.com/arianafaustini
• Karen Datangel: https://twitter.com/KarenDatangelSF
• Peter Chittum: https://twitter.com/pchittum
• Mike Gerholdt: https://twitter.com/MikeGerholdt
• Gillian Bruce: https://twitter.com/gilliankbruce
• Leah McGowen-Hare: https://twitter.com/leahbmh
• Christophe Coenraets: https://twitter.com/ccoenraets
• Heather Storm: https://twitter.com/iamheatherstorm
• Valerie Um: https://twitter.com/SalesforceVum
• Anthony Tavan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthony-tavan02018
• Nikki Talbot: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nstalbot/
• Reid Carlberg: https://twitter.com/ReidCarlberg
• Danny Ozment: https://twitter.com/DannyOzment
• Emerald City Productions: https://emeraldcitypro.com/

Jeff Douglas is a Principal Member of the Technical Staff for Trailhead. I’ve had our interview in my back pocket for a while now because I wanted to save it for today’s special occasion: our 100th episode. Jeff and I go back a long way and Trailhead has a special place in my heart.

In this episode, you will learn all about Jeff’s experience with Trailhead from its earliest days until now. We also discuss some of the new things coming out with Trailhead including Trail Boss and Trail Tracker.  Listen to this special episode to hear more about the secrets to Trailhead’s success and how the engineering team keep it running and keep improving it.

Show Highlights:

• Jeff’s experiences at Dreamforce.
• How Trailhead challenges work now compared to how they worked in their early days.
• What Trail Boss is.
• The design goals of Trail Boss.
• The tooling that goes into Trail Boss and how much of it is built on the Salesforce platform.
• The features of Trail Tracker.
• How Trail Tracker acts as an upgrade to leaderboards.
• The huge impact Trailhead makes in the world.

Links:

• Jeff on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jeffdonthemic
• Jeff on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffdouglas/

Jeff on Github: https://github.com/jeffdonthemic