A Full Stack Dev’s First Impressions of the Salesforce Platform, Part 2

Introduction

In Part 1, I completed an overview of Salesforce, the Salesforce platform, and its no/low-code options. Now, let’s get to the meaty part (at least for developers) — developing with code! After that, I’ll share some overall impressions of the platform.

What does it look like to develop with code?

There are quite a lot of Salesforce-related packages and frameworks, but the first two trailheads introduce you primarily to the fundamentals: the Lightning Component framework, Apex, and Visualforce.

The Lightning Component framework

The Lightning Component framework is defined as a “component-based approach to UI development.” The framework is responsive, mobile-ready, and made to integrate quickly with Salesforce APIs and business data. There is a selection of pre-built components, and you can also create your own custom ones.

As a React developer, the mention of components immediately made me think that this would be similar; however, the reality is somewhat different. It certainly is component-based, but not in the way I am accustomed to from React. For example, see the screenshot of the Salesforce IDE below: