Salesforce Developer Podcast

Sue Berry is a Senior Director of Product Management here at Salesforce. She started her career in cardiology but as soon as she was introduced to computers she was hooked. Now she gets to interact with every side of Salesforce in her current role: the developers, the customers, and everything in between. 

Today Sue and I are talking about the many different features and benefits that Salesforce Mobile SDK brings. We also discuss some new things coming out with mobile development. Tune in to hear our insightful conversation.

Show Highlights:

• How Salesforce release cycles affect mobile development.
• Everything Mobile SDK takes care of for you.
• What mobile sync and smart store are and how they assist with offline syncing.
• The platforms that SDK is for.
• How paneling multiple windows works.
• Improvements Sue and her team have made to landscape and portrait modes.
• The benefits of the Cordova platform.
• What React Native is.
• How to build lighting web components with mobile in mind.
• What the Visual Studio Code experience is like.
• Mobile developments on the roadmap.

Links:

• Sue on Twitter: https://twitter.com/suzetteaberry
• Sue on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sue-berry/
• Mobile SDK on Trailhead: https://trailhead.salesforce.com/content/learn/modules/mobile_sdk_introduction
• LWC Mobile Developer Center:  https://developer.salesforce.com/developer-centers/lwc-for-mobile
• Mobile SDK Developer Center: https://developer.salesforce.com/developer-centers/mobile    

Mitesh Mistry is an Associate Partner over at IBM. In this role, he works with design architecture and helps customers understand how best to use the Salesforce platform to deliver their core use cases. 

Today I am talking with Mitesh about his long journey to becoming a Certified Technical Architect. In our conversation, he shares some great tips and tricks that he learned along the way. Tune in to learn from this developer turned architect who has been with Salesforce for years.

Show Highlights:

• Why Mitesh transitioned from pure development to broader technical architecture.
• The career value of working on user-centric projects.
• What pushed Mitesh to become a Certified Technical Architect.
• Why the journey to CTA is so long.
• The nine domains of Salesforce.
• What the CTA exam day looks like.
• Why the exam isn’t knowledge-based.
• Mitesh’s best tips for studying and preparing for the exam.
• The importance of practical experience in the journey to CTA. 
• Resources to help you on this journey.
• Why study groups are so important.

Links:

• Mitesh on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mitesh-mistry-3a288718
• Mitesh on Github: https://github.com/miteshmistry86

Big Family Cooking Showdown on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/80186090

James Hou is a Salesforce Technical Architect at Google. Today I’m talking with him about his long history with JavaScript and Lightning Web Components. Specifically, we’re discussing a repo he has out there called LWC Utils.

In his early years, James started learning object-oriented programming and spent a lot of his time poring over Help Docs and Google search results. He is now no stranger to complex solutions and specific microservices. Tune in to learn from his incredible expertise and the great utility code he has created to help working with LWC.

Show Highlights:

• How James transitioned from reading Help Docs to working for Google.
• How he learned jQuery.
• How he left Visualforce and picked up Aura.
• What inspired him to start learning lightning components.
• The gap between lightning message servers and full state management libraries.
• What full state management libraries offer application layers. 
• The problems James is trying to fix with LWC Utils.
• How the SOQL data table component works.
• The other data tables James is working on.
• What makes a good leader.

Links:

• James on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jameshou/
• LWC Utils on Github: https://github.com/tsalb/lwc-utils/

Presentation on Leadership: https://tsalb.github.io/ncd/leadership-influence-2019/slides.pdf

Amanda Nelson is the Senior Director for Comms and Community over at Salesforce AppExchange. In this position, she spends her time helping customers solve their challenges with apps. She listens to their pain points and then creates content to solve their problems.

In this episode, Amanda and I talk about Demo Jams. We discuss what they are, their long history, and most importantly what they can do for you. Demo Jams are one of my favorite things so tune in to hear all about this fun way to learn about apps.

Show Highlights:

• What Demo Jams are and how long they’ve been happening.
• How Amanda and her team kept them going during the pandemic.
• Why they give participants three minutes to pitch their app.
• How they coach their partners to perform well.
• Why they don’t allow people to use slides.
• How they do live voting.
• What a Mega Demo Jam is.
• How Demo Jams benefit partners.
• How the community can repurpose Demo Jams.
• How to sign up for Demo Jams.

Links:

• Amanda on Twitter: twitter.com/amandanelson13
• Amanda on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amandanelson13/
• SalesforceLabs Github: https://github.com/SalesforceLabs
• Register for the Demo Jam/watch past Demo Jams: www.appdemojam.com

Nadina D. Lisbon is a Systems Capability and Salesforce Architect over at Tradeshift. Having started back in the Visualforce days, she has had the chance to work with wide range implementations and integrations.

In this episode, I’m talking with Nadina about her long experience working with developers, architects, customers and partners.. She explains what she does in her current role, how she accomplishes projects for her clients, and her business interests. Tune in to hear some great insights on architecture, automation, and coding.

Show Highlights:

• The experience that made Nadina realize she wanted to be an architect instead of a developer.
• What she does in her current job.
• The challenges of working with people from so many different regions.
• How Nadina ensures that there is functionality that’s reusable across her many client projects.
• How she decides if automation is necessary when working with clients.
• What you should always try to automate.
• Why code needs to be user-centric.
• Best practices for junior developers writing code.
• Nadina’s experience joining RAD Women.
• Leading a user/developer group during COVID.

Links:

• Nadina on Twitter
• Nadina on Linkedin
• Nadina on Github
• More on Knitforce

James Simone is a Senior Software Engineer here at Salesforce. He has done a lot of work around engineering for Agile teams which we are talking about today. Specifically, James and his team develop applications on the Salesforce platform with the goal of increasing the Agile health of software development teams.

James also has a blog called Joys of Apex which we are discussing in this episode. On his blog, he provides much-needed clarity for developers who are trying to work within Apex. Listen in to learn more about it and other great tips for working within Apex.

Show Highlights:

• What James does in his position at Salesforce.
• What made him want to write a blog about Apex.
• What test-driven development is.
• How James designs a failing test with no Apex to compare it to.
• The benefits of using a mock system for testing.
• Tips for making testing easier and quicker.
• What inversion of control means and what it does.
• What Invocable Apex is and how it works with Flow.
• What a Singleton is and how it helps developers.
• The benefits of using factory patterns.
• How James and his team are keeping the joy in Apex.

Links:

• James on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mrwordsmith
• James on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mrwordsmith/
• James on Github: https://github.com/jamessimone
• Joys Of Apex: https://jamessimone.net/blog/joys-of-apex/

Emmett Chen-Ran is an Associate Product Manager here at Salesforce. Today I’m sitting down to talk with him about the upcoming Pub/Sub API. We also discuss what will be required from an infrastructure perspective to make it work and work without breaking things.

The Pub/Sub API is a brand new API for developers to allow them to do bidirectional streaming events.  Based on gRPC, it offers new features and has an updated messaging protocol from traditional clients like CometD. Currently in pilot, tune in to find out how you can leverage this API for your solutions.

Show Highlights:

• What drew Emmett to pursue the people-centric side of development.
• How the Associate Product Management program works.
• What Apache Kafka is and how Salesforce is leveraging it.
• Why we’re expanding the infrastructure on Salesforce’s Streaming API.
• How to move tons of events to a new runtime without a failure.
• What the Pub/Sub API is and the benefits it brings.
• Why gRPC is more efficient for developers.
• How the Pub/Sub API works with and complements CometD.
• Resources to help you learn about and start using this new API.

Links:

• Emmett on LinkedIn
• Emmett on Github
• New Salesforce Event Bus Blog Post: https://medium.com/salesforce-architects/the-new-salesforce-event-bus-f82165cb0585
• Pub/Sub API Blog Post: https://developer.salesforce.com/blogs/2021/07/pub-sub-api-building-event-driven-integrations-just-got-even-easier.html

Alba Rivas is a Lead Developer Evangelist at Salesforce and former Salesforce MVP. While in the past, Alba has presented frequently on migrating to Lightning Web Components  (LWC) - today, she talks about data security on the platform. We chat about some best practices to prevent leaking data or creating dangerous app security vulnerabilities when coding with Apex and with LWC. She also shares some tips and tricks for handling secrets in encryption.

Alba believes any developer should think about data security right from the very beginning and that applying best practices is crucial for having a high quality application to prevent vulnerabilities and attacks, which could be a big issue for any company.

Show Highlights:

• Moving from Visualforce to Lightning Web Components (LWC)
• Creating a Trailhead Module 
• CRUD field level security vs. record level security
• The importance of Apex and how it works within SQL queries
• How to use schema to check if somebody has access to a record
• What the Apex recipes project does and what functions support security
• What Apex’s pilot user mode does and what the SOQL injection is for
• An example of a successful injection attack and what it does to a web application 
• What is a cross-site scripting attack?
• Lightning Locker vs. content security policy (CSP)
• How to enforce security in LWC
• Some edge cases LWC developers need to worry about
• Tips for securing data back in the database itself and protecting custom metadata

Links:

1. Migrating Visualforce to LWC
2. Alba on Twitter: @AlbaSFDC
3. Alba on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alba-rivas/
4. Alba on Github: https://github.com/albarivas
5. Alba's post on security: https://developer.salesforce.com/blogs/2021/07/security-for-salesforce-developers.html

Bonny Hinners is a Senior Member of Technical Staff at Salesforce. In this episode, we sat down and talked about our shared love for test-driven development, what it is, how you can utilize it, and how it can improve your developer experience. After many years in the community and having been introduced to Salesforce with her work on a nonprofit, Bonny is now working at Salesforce. Her team works in conjunction with internal teams and Agile coaches with primary focus on process, improvement and experimentation.

Bonny discusses the importance of teamwork – learning about the code base together and preventing the silos – as there shouldn't be any one developer who knows more about any part of the code.  

Listen to the show to learn from Bonny’s experiences that can help any developer process.

Show Highlights:

• How mob development works
• What test-driven development is
• How to consider the role of unit tests
• Test-driven development vs. acceptance test-driven development
• The user doing the acceptance testing
• The 3 basic ways an application can have a bug
• The benefits of testing and retesting your debugging process
• How to own your own Agile process
• Why consider taking Bonny’s Pluralsight course

Links:

1. Bonny on Twitter: http://twitter.com/SNUGSFBAY
2. Bonny's Pluralsight course: https://www.pluralsight.com/courses/salesforce-admin-essential-testing-techniques
3. Salesforce Saturday/Forcelandia presentation "Think Like a Developer" : https://zoom.us/rec/share/wf1UAa_w5FJIQonG7Rr-U4UYLLy4eaa81SRK_vEOz0tjH4VhJTaM6m9ThgSk_cod Password: 1Y*d=Le@
4. Github account https://snugsfbay.github.io/df18/

Chris Stolt is one of the original founders of Enterprise Heroku Support and the co-founder of Elm Insights. Today we are sitting down to talk with both him and his fellow co-founder, Phil Ripperger. In our conversation, we talk through the early days of Enterprise Heroku Support including some of the horror stories they’ve been through. We also discuss their current product, Platform Experts, over at Elm Insights.

These two men were a part of the original customer support team for Heroku when it was first bought by Salesforce and have worked together ever since. Tune in for an incredible conversation between us three.

Show Highlights:

• How Chris and Phil built the customer support department for Heroku during its acquisition.
• The benefits of engineers going into customer support.
• The unique technical challenges Heroku presents.
• How the Enterprise Heroku Support team had to practice transparency.
• How Shaq boosted their traffic.
• How they plan for big events like Shaq’s Twitter announcement. 
• How they supported Trailhead’s success.
• Why they started Elm Insights and what Platform Experts does for developers.
• Why Slack was their tool of choice. 

Links:

1. Platform Experts: https://platformexperts.dev
2. Platform Experts Heroku Add-On: https://elements.heroku.com/addons/platform-experts
3. Chris on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopherstolt/
4. Phil on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pdsphil/