Force.com / Salesforce - is it WTFy?



  • Thinking of applying for a job using it ... involving web services or something (job spec not overly clear).

    Had a google and played with it a bit, seems quite logical and time-saving, but obviously I've only scratched the surface. The tutorial i followed was basically an extended advert, so yeah.

    Has anyone here used it? Is it by any chance completely shit? It kind of seems like it must be.



  • @token_woman said:

    Has anyone here used it?
     

    I guess you have your answer. :)  :\



  • It's not completly shit - it has some serious WTFs though.

    You can code triggers in a language they call APEX. It's Java syntax (mostly) with a few changes: Variables are not case-sensitive. Strings go into single quotes.

    They have a eclipse plugin to code your triggers etc - but syntax check is server side. Saving a file? 3 - 20 seconds - depending on which instance you work on and if the US is awake or not.
    Checkboxes have 3 values (the value is a boolean - w/ 3 values): True, False and Null.

    The trickiest part with salesforce is getting around/working within the "limits" (google spring 11 governor limits) - for example you can only execute a few DML statements within a trigger (150 I think).



  •  Thanks!

     You've confirmed my impression that APEX is not as bad as PHP (if it was you'd have had more to say about it). Using something Java-like attracts me after a few years of that foul woolliness.

     I don't much fancy waiting many seconds to save a file, but as for the limits, I don't think I'll mind that so much. Having some discipline imposed on one's code can be good ... i often think about doing a project on small or old-fashioned hardware so as to impose limits of ram or cpu power, so maybe this will be similar ...

    Anyway, as you can probably tell by my hopeful optimism, I accepted the job a few weeks ago - starting soon - let's see how much posting i do about it once i start ... !

     



  • Well I don't consider PHP bad - but then I never coded PHP for a living.



    For me, the language, APEX in this case, is almost never the issue. APEX doesn't make your life too easy though - you cannot step through your code, as you could with some Java framework. So you might see a lot of System.debug('this is the spot') statements, which write into a debug log.
    Or: APEX does not have namespaces and it only has very, very basic XML support. And no real support for out-bound SOAP-based webservices.



    It depends very much how the company you'll be working for (congrats btw) handles development - salesforce makes it easy, so easy that some sales people start to do data modelling... If your company has sales people doing that... good luck. If not, you'll be alright - people are able to do WTFs in any language. Be sure to post them :-)



  •  Here's my first WTF moment regarding Salesforce:

    Their website, at the time I looked at it, used a shitload of images consisting of a "Not" symbol over the word "Software". (As a developer, I don't see anything good about that, but I digress.) Presumably they're appealing to business-types' hate of software by saying their product has none of it? Or something?

    At the same time, a certain "freelance project portal" site had what must have been 5% of all projects asking for people to code custom "Salesforce plugins". Among salesforce users, there is apparently a huge demand for... software!

    That was a real head-scratcher. Disclaimer: I have no idea about what Salesforce actually is.


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