Having spent nearly a decade in the Microsoft eco-system, I decided it was time for a change.
I've developed a range of web applications and too...
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Certainly an interesting opinion! In my case, it's been directly the opposite way: After a few years developing on the Salesforce platform, integrating against multiple services and having the fullstack experience of Apex and Lightning Components, I grew tired.
On the one hand, it's true that Salesforce does A LOT for you and that with very little code, a lot of business value is achieved. That, in my opinion, is the true power of the platform. It has frameworks for the frontend that couple perfectly with the backend with little to no work and deployments are much less of an impact than on other platforms.
On the other hand, the development experience is terrible. Debugging long integration queues or triggers which call queueables which make callouts and then trigger other triggers is very complicated. You have to go through long debug logs and place traces everywhere. And then, even the tooling is starting to be better, it is not abundant. I use Illuminated Cloud with IntelliJ, but it's still not the same as Visual Studio. Now, with SFDX, the future looks brighter, but it is not yet mature enough.
At the end of the day, I do agree that it is a very good platform, but for the true developer, it falls short. It's the reason why I started to move towards .NET. The control you have over the application is different :)
Anyways, great article nonetheless! I enjoyed the read :)
Hi Chris,
I get the promotion of Salesforce. Its a very valuable tool and even more powerful when coupled with tools like Mule ESB. However its behooves me to consider that MVC, WebAPI, SqlServer and Powershell are "defunct". Maybe Framework MVC, WebAPI considering the move towards Core. But .NET as a whole and SqlServer has a very robust ecosystem with a large enterprise footprint. I would be cautious of introducing bias when those frameworks and dbs are how many organizations interface and organize with Salesforce.
Hey Dan,
Maybe I worded that badly, the only defunct, maybe I should have used "outdated" areas are Windows Forms / Silverlight. Everything else I consider still to be completely current and relevant. I'm not mocking the suite or tools, I was just trying to show to breadth of options available to a .Net developer. And with .Net Core and the move to containerisation options are getting even larger.
Whereas I have struggled to adapt to the Salesforce framework, where everything is packaged under one roof! Once again, nothing wrong with that... just more of an interesting change of scene from what I've been used to.
I've loved learning how you can do things a "different" way, whether or not that different way is better or worse I can't quite comment on yet. Gimme a few more months!
P.S - I'm not trying to promote Salesforce, this was my decision, and one that came out of left field, sorry if it came across that way.
Hi Chris,
How is it going?
Still happy with your move?
Hey, thanks for the comment. Haha, yes still happy with the move.
Salesforce is a large, confused, convoluted platform that has many benefits for specific use cases including rapid development and deployment. The emergence of sfdx and lightning web components shows promise in the future. But oh my it still grinds my gears most days!
Hi There, Chris. And now, here we are in late 2019. Almost 2020. What's your outlook on SFDC these days?
I'm a full-stack developer with a heavy NodeJS / ASP.NET MVC / Blockchain background. I'm considering a move in Salesforce myself; with a long-view of going for Technical Architect. At the same time, I don't want to completely abandon my "real developer" roots.
Your last comment indicated that you might be a little frustrated with the platform. Are you no longer enjoying working with it? Are you currently exercising your SFDC skills on the job?
Hey Mike, Wow yeah it's been a while since I wrote this. After some time with it, I think SFDC development is a doubled edged sword. Javier's comments above still ring true, but Salesforce is still growing.
Lightning web components which super cede Lightning is a step in the right direction (Another FrontEnd JavaScript framework, but more proprietary), SFDX (The developer experience, i.e. Tools/CLI etc) is also getting better, the shift to VScode throughout and 2nd Generation packaging definitely simplify the framework. The problem is, I wouldn't class all these things as fully complete yet.
If moving to Salesforce for greenfield work you'll have a much better experience, but there are a lot of hoops to jump through in general. Quick to develop, but relatively arduous to release. If you need to interact with the CRM backend you have no choice, if that's where the data and customers are, then this is all necessary. I see a lot of people using it predominately as a backend though, using it as a database. This removes a lot of the benefits of this type of ecosystem.
It's fascinating to see how this is growing and changing and how they improve things. Salesforce developers are in high demand, and understanding another framework is always good in my opinion. Coming from the open source nature of blockchain development though, you may feel constricted as your options will be limited in contrast.
Thank you very much for your quick reply, Chris. Your feedback is insightful and invaluable. Wish you all the best. Hope your projects in-flight are going well.
BTW, strange to hear that some are using SFDC predominately as a backend, or even just as a database. Why not just use Oracle or SAP in that case?
Cheers!
Thanks. By backend, I mean, not developing on the platform itself. A lot of people use Salesforce as their CRM of choice, and there's a big market for integration. If that's the case, and you don't want to write "Salesforce" code you can simply read and write via API's and then use whatever platforms you want. It works, but as I said, I don't think it's the best use case for the system.
👍Great read, Chris! It's interesting to see your transition from .Net to Salesforce and how you've navigated the challenges. Your insights will be helpful to others considering a similar move.
🔍 Recently, I found an interesting article What Nobody Told You About Salesforce,It sheds light on the origins and significance of Salesforce terms, which is a topic that is often overlooked.🌟 A must-read for for those who are considering a transition into Salesforce. 💼
Hi Chris,
thanks for this post.I am also same path. want to learn new technology in 2020 and thinking about salesforce. your post inspired me. take my small step on this path.
Thanks for this article I am working as .NET developer and supporting apps. I think .NET is growing very fast and I am planing to catch up on Salesforce as it looks promising.
Do we know the job environment and tech challange if I plan to move from .NET to Salesforce.
As per my understanding one should start with Salesforce Admin and then move to dev area is it right ? or moving to Sales force is not a good idea!
Salesforce development is all about adding functionality to the existing CRM platform. It really requires buy in of the Salesforce domain and all that entails.
I wouldn't move to an admin position, with your .Net experience moving straight into developer role is more than feasible.
Thanks calcualting the effort any estimations I can go for sales force developer certification. As per trailhead it seems around 2 months say 2hr per day.
Thanks in advance