The Journey So Far
I didn't just wake up one day and decide to build apps in Flutterflow. I've been around the block a few times, learning technologies like Vue.js, Ruby on Rails, and even Flutter. I've been working on a few side projects, and I'm always learning and growing. I've been doing Flutterflow development for a year now and still am when I have some ideas that I want to work on. The latest tech stack I'm using is React, Next.js, and Supabase.
Knowing Salesforce
As a dev, I didn't want to be a Salesforce admin. I wanted to jump right into Salesforce development with PD1. So I looked up some job descriptions on LinkedIn and other job boards and found descriptions that mentioned HTML and CSS, apart from LWC and Visualforce. I thought I'd be building separate apps, not just inside the Salesforce lightning platform. But nope.
I took a course on Udemy called "Pass your Platform Developer 1 certification exam with this course.Learn Apex, Visualforce,LWC, Lightning Aura Framework" and learned how to build Flows and Aura components. I also learned how to build Visualforce pages, which was a bit different from what I was used to. It's kinda like a mix of Javascript and HTML. Then I learned Lightning Web Components too. But none of this is about building an app outside of Salesforce. I thought I could just access data via API calls from Salesforce, which is actually possible to do so, and use it to build a React app. But nope. It's all inside Salesforce.
The gist is, it's all about data manipulation and I'm super new to this way of handling data, like not using a database at all or maybe Salesforce itself is a database if you get what I mean. It's also kinda like a CMS like Wordpress, but in this case it's a CRM. The image above shows how I have fetched Opportunities data without having to use a third party IDE. I also didn't have to style it because of the use of Visualforce tags.
I'm not gonna lie, it's been a bit of a shock to me. But I'm still super stoked to be learning this tech. I mean, I was all about building React apps at first because it offers so much flexibility and it's well documented. But from what I've read online, the market is hella saturated and I don't wanna be just another dev in the sea. I'm not getting any younger, so I figured I'd take a chance on something with less competition - and that something is Salesforce. Plus, the growth potential is huge. It's a bit of a gamble, but I'm hyped to see where this path takes me.
Will I Pursue the Salesforce Admin Certification?
It's premature to make a definitive decision. I'm still in the process of learning and need to assess my readiness for the exam. I've been using Remnote to reinforce my understanding of key concepts. Before taking the exam, I want to ensure that I have a thorough grasp of the material. Ideally, I would like to gain more hands-on experience and have a potential employer sponsor my exam, which would provide me with the necessary resources and support to prepare adequately.
What's Next
Now that I'm done with the course. I'm thinkin' of doin' one of three things. It seems like it'd be smart to learn Salesforce Admin stuff too, since that's the foundation of why there are even Salesforce dev jobs. And I'll probably start tryin' to build my own Salesforce github project so that I have somethin' to add to my portfolio. I've been seein' CPQ a lot in job descriptions and I'm also probably gonna take another Udemy course to learn that.