Your 1st Step to become a Salesforce Certified Platform Developer 1 [Exam Notes]

Are you one among the many who endeavour to become a proficient Salesforce Developer? Then, this would be your first step after the completion of your App Builder Certification. Even if you hail from a different background, do not worry! All you need is a cup of coffee, a load of enthusiasm and an easy hand with basics in Salesforce platform.

There's nothing you can do that can't be done!!

So, what does it take to become a developer in Salesforce? Good question, isn’t it? To your surprise, the answer is simple and straightforward. If you have the App Builder Certification and some basic coding knowledge/experience, it is just a matter of time and effort that makes it a cakewalk to clear the exam. All you need to know:

Click and configure on Salesforce Platform
Basic Object-Oriented Programming
Writing Unit Tests
Debugging a code

No coding experience? Try completing this Trailhead module to equip yourself with some basic coding nuances in Salesforce Development.

Time to fetch the pointers for this exam!

Pattern – Multiple Choice Questions (MCQ):

60 multiple-choice/multiple-select questions
120 minutes allotted to complete the exam (time allows for unscored questions)
63% is the passing score

What to prepare?

Basic Apex coding structure.
Best practices of Apex coding.
SOQL and SOSL differences
Ways to write SOQLs (optimized approach)
Using custom labels and custom setting in VF pages
Using Lists, Sets and Maps in Apex Code
Using Maps from the List collections
Using Developer Console (learn about each option in Developer Console)
Basics of Lightning Component Framework (learn about the structure of LCF)
Multi-tenant architecture
Salesforce Governor Limits (Apex and SOQL is the key)
Relationships and how they behave during update operation
Debugging/Output the given Code Examples
Code example with null pointer exceptions
Code examples with DML exceptions
Error handling in Apex code
Test class writing and nuances
TestVisible keyword in Apex classes
What is feasible/Not feasible in Changeset deployments
StartTest() and StopTest()
Standard Controllers and Custom Controllers
Configuring the business logic with relationship fields without code (Master-Detail/Lookup)
Apex Triggers and their best practices
Using validation rules with Apex code
Primitive data types and its usage
Know when to write code and when to use declarative
Setting checkpoints in developer console
Rolling back on checkpoints in Apex code
Trigger context variables
Apex classes and interfaces
Best practices about apex looping
Apex order of execution
Data loading basics and external ids
Lightning Event Driven Architecture
Recursive trigger issues and resolution
Types of Sandboxes and its limitations
Using process builder over apex code/trigger
Process builder and their actions

Hope you had an idea of all the areas to cover. In addition, to these go through the Official Study Guide to see the weight of topics for the exam.

Final Tip: Try to eliminate all the wrong answers / unrealistic answers. It will help you boiling down to fewer options to choose.

All The Best! Waiting to hear your success stories! ?Please post your experience/study notes as a blog post so that it can help aspiring developers around the world. Let’s grow by helping each other!