Posts

I’ve been thinking about languages a lot lately. Mostly the kind I encounter in my work, programming languages, but also human languages and the intersection between the two. My thinking runs parallel to what I talked about bringing from my Drupal experience to my Salesforce work. I have been considering what I’ve taken from work on one programming language that made me better in others. A few weeks ago I asked some friends in various professional circles about their thoughts on programming languages. “What’s your personal theory about learning new languages? Have you ever learned enough? How often should you learn a new one? How do you count languages you last used 5+ years ago? What’s reasonable to expect of other developers?” ...

If you look over this blog, or know me, you will see that I’ve now have reasonably significant experience as both a Salesforce and Drupal developer. The last couple weeks I have been thinking about what from my Drupal experience supports my work as a Salesforce developer. I think there are three parallels that are encouraged in Drupal developers that helped me learn to be a good Salesforce developer quickly. ...

I consider listening to good podcasts to be part of my ongoing liberal arts education. We all can benefit from being conversant on many topics, understanding their interplay, conflicts, and mutual inspiration. That broad understand allows us to be more informed voters and more flexible contributors at work. It also just makes me happier. I make a point of mostly listening to things outside my field of work. I study my work 40+ hours a week already. In my spare time I like to learn other things. Right now my rotation includes shows like Hidden Brain, People I Mostly Admire, Freakonomics, Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, and more. ...

Last month the Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling overturned Roe vs Wade, and ended the right for millions of women to get critical medical care (that care being blocked includes, but is not limited, to abortions) and threatening additional rights all Americans currently enjoy. In the days that followed I joined a small but vocal group of people from Aiken calling for protection of the rights of women’s and others. It’s taken me a few weeks to get these pictures off my camera and posted, but I did want to get them up for anyone who is interested. There are people in South Carolina who dissent. ...

For memorial day weekend my wife and I went camping at Price Lake for a few days. I took a couple hours one afternoon to hike around the Boone Fork Trail. In a moment when the country is in another downward spiral about all I can think to offer are a few images of a place worth being. ...

A little over a year ago I started work on Salesforce2Sql to help support people doing data work with Salesforce. Salesforce2Sql is a simple Electron app that allows you to clone the schema of a Salesforce org into an SQL database (currently supports MySql/MariaDB and Postgres). These mirrors are useful when you want to stage data during migrations in or out of Salesforce. When is Salesforce2Sql useful Salesforce2Sql is a tool dedicated to doing one thing very well: mirroring Salesforce schema. It does not attempt to extract data or convert data in any way. ...

During a recent department event my wife introduced me to the sister of one of her students. The event was an award ceremony for some of the history and political science majors – the student’s sister was along to support her brother (and as a smart college student get a free meal outside the dinning hall). As a CS major, this student is trying to understand her options for what kind of programming she might be interested in. As a good professor my wife introduced us so the CS major wouldn’t have to pretend to be as excited about history as everyone else present. Listening to me talk about what I’ve done in my work she commented that maybe she should be a web developer – my reply was that she should do the work with problems she finds interesting. ...

This week’s Salesforce Developer Podcast featured an interview I did with the host, Josh Birk, the end of last year. As much as I still don’t like the sound of my voice on recordings it was a fun interview and I am really excited to see it come out. We talk about Snowfakery, Salesforce Open Source Commons, the evolution of PHP, Drupal, my career in general, and even a bit about spinning. I’d love to hear what you think. ...

For a little over two years I’ve had the privilege of helping lead the Data Generation Toolkit Project for Salesforce. In general, Open Source projects are not known for their inclusive and supportive communities. I believe it is fair to say our project demonstrates that building a supportive community can yield great results. ...

Now and then something happens to us all that reminds us we’re not perfect. I’ve written about the strengths of B Students before, and well last week I proved that sometimes I still have room to improve. When I started this blog I set the goal of posting once a month. I have stuck with, or exceeded, that target except for two months since 2016. I missed September 2019 and last month. Last time around I set the goal of four posts in the following month, so that is my established case law. ...