And it is a dream in more ways than one. You see, common mythology suggests that new ventures are either wildly successful, or total failures – the dreams are either the best dreams you can imagine, or nightmares. But in reality, most dreams are just – dreams. Ordinary and usually pleasant stories we barely remember when we wake up.

And so it is with entrepreneurship – some are wildly successful, some total failures, but a great many are ordinary and pleasant outcomes – individuals who make very nice livings in small or medium size companies, with greater freedom and income than they would ever have at a real job.

I’ve spent almost my entire career at small companies and start-ups, so I suppose I’ve lived that dream in a sense, and have learned a great deal along the away. And you know how it is with me – when I learn something, I like to share it – usually in books, but increasingly now in courses on Pluralsight.

So I’m pleased to present my new course “So you want to be an entrepreneur?”

This course is the sequel to my Career and Survival Strategies for Software Developers course – a guide to those who are curious about the possibilities of taking that particular career path of entrepreneurship, or who are already on that path and are looking to fill in some gaps in knowledge and perhaps avoid a mistake or two along the way.

For more information, check out Pluralsight’s  blog post announcing the course.

What I’ve tried to do is put in one place, all of the “stuff” about being a software developer that we want to know or need to know, that are rarely discussed, or that we’re sometimes afraid to ask about.

You know what I mean – those times in your career that you had no idea what to do – which job offer to accept? What to learn next? Is it time to change jobs? Maybe you ask a friend, or post an anonymous question on a forum. Or more likely, just take a guess and hope for the best.

Or the times when you wonder if you’re the only person who is feeling stressed about keeping up with technology, or the fact that the executive team has been locked in a conference room for three days with bankers coming in and out….

Mostly, it’s all the stuff I really wish someone had told me back when I started out. Hopefully it will save you some grief.

Here’s the official announcement and a better description:

http://blog.pluralsight.com/2013/01/10/new-course-career-and-survival-strategies-for-software-developers/

Apex is the native language of the Force.com platform, and there is a huge demand for skilled developers in this space. The Java/C# like Apex language looks familiar enough that experienced developers often expect a short learning curve, but the platform is actually radically different, and requires use of a unique set of set of design patterns. In this course, you’ll learn the core concepts that are essential for every Apex programmer to learn, and a roadmap to further resources to help you quickly become an expert in this rapidly growing space.

You can read more about it on the AdvancedApex.com blog.

To understand why, I need to take you back over 20 years.

When Visual Basic 1.0 came out (I participated in the original beta program), the reactions to the product fell into three categories:

• Most professional C++ programmers dismissed it. VB was a “toy language” or a “glue language” for components – not for serious software development.
• Increasing number of software engineers embraced the language because, to put it simply, when it came to desktop applications you could be an order of magnitude more productive in VB than in C++. It may not have had the stature and features of a “real” professional language, but it sure was profitable to work in it.
• VB was easy enough for anyone to use, so everyone did. Doctors, lawyers, students – millions of VB developers sprang up out of nowhere and wrote a lot of code. Much of it was very bad code, but that’s what happens when a bunch of amateurs get in the game. Entire book, magazine and training industries grew up to help them get better, and many of them did and built entire careers around the platform.

By the time VB6 came around, it was the most popular software development language and platform in the world. Simply because it was easy, and it was productive.

Why was it productive? Because VB put an abstraction layer over the Windows API that was infinitely easier to use than coding to the native API or other available frameworks such as MFC or ATL. You couldn’t do everything in VB6, but you could do most of what you needed, and could call the API directly if you really needed to. Having a rich set of available components to purchase didn’t hurt either.

Microsoft did a lot of things right building the VB community. They had great developer and ISV relations. They supported several conferences. There were books, documentation, whitepapers and so on. They really set the standard on how to build a platform.

Then they created the .NET framework.

There was a lot of negative reaction from the original VB6 community towards VB .NET, some calling it “VB .NOT” or VB.Fred (coined by Bill Vaughn). Some programmers made the transition. Some switched to C#. But two things were clear. First, VB .NET was indeed a powerful, serious, professional language and platform for software developers. Personally, I love it, and still use it all the time. But it was equally clear that VB .NET is not easy. In fact, the entire .NET framework is robust, powerful, sophisticated and complex. It’s a great platform for software developers, but is it a platform that makes it easy for non-programmers to write line of business applications? Not even close.

Both VB .NET and C# are native languages to the .NET framework – the Windows API of today’s software. Missing was the magic of the original VB – that layer of abstraction that made it easy for anyone to write software.

I’ve been searching for that magic for a long time. I kept waiting for it to appear out of nowhere the way VB 1.0 did. I sure didn’t expect it to sneak up on me from behind.

I wrote my first Apex trigger about 5 years ago to help out a Salesforce consultant. At the time Apex was really not much more than a scripting language for the Salesforce.com CRM application. It was just one of many technologies of which I had a working knowledge. As time went on, I spent more and more time on it, recently working with some brilliant marketing folk at Full Circle CRM to develop a major application that is essentially the Holy Grail for marketing performance management and analytics. I even wrote a book on advanced Apex programming to help other developers learn how to write applications on the platform. I knew that Salesforce had started calling what they had a “platform”, but to some degree I attributed that to marketing hype – after all, everybody has a “platform” these days.

It was only at Dreamforce that the pieces truly fell into place. And I’m not talking about the entire 90,000 person strong Dreamforce conference. Many of those people are sales and marketing people – I don’t even speak their language. I’m talking about the Developer Zone that filled all of Moscone West. That’s where I finally had a chance to really talk to people, and sense the passion and excitement in the community. Here’s what I saw:

• A web based GUI environment that provides a high level of abstraction for developing real applications that seamlessly integrate core features like database, email, reporting, the web, chat and mobile.
• An environment that lets you do a great deal without code, but provides the language and “hooks” that allow serious programmers to go much farther.
• A flood of non-programmers who are using the environment to solve real problems, and who are stumbling into actual programming.
• Lots of truly awful code being written, so there’s a huge need for training and a thirst for knowledge on how to do things correctly.
• A language and platform that doesn’t seem to get much respect from the “real” programmers doing Java, C# or other languages, even though the demand (and pay) for Force.com and Apex programmers is huge.

After speaking, attending sessions, and talking to the consultants and the Salesforce team, I realized that I had entered a constant state of Déjà vu.  There was excitement. There was community. There was technology. There was productivity. There was fun. There was magic. It was just like the early days in the VB community.

In a sense, it’s not surprising that it took me this long to realize it. There’s so much noise and marketing positioning in our industry that it’s hard to filter out the reality. Also, Force.com isn’t the mature VB6 that was wildly popular – it’s still early, maybe equivalent to VB2 or VB3, and they have a lot of work to do. There are still roadblocks to truly widespread adoption of the platform. But the signs are present.

Quite a few people came up to me during the conference and expressed surprise to see me there, and even greater surprise to see I’d written a book on Apex programming (at least they were polite enough not to express surprise that I’m still around – I’m not that old!)

But now that I think about it, it’s not surprising at all that I was at Dreamforce. My favorite times during my career were being part of the Visual Basic community – developing code and components, and writing books and articles to help self-taught programmers to become great developers. When that went away, so did a lot of the fun, and I drifted to other interests. But I always missed the magic.

I didn’t know what to expect at my first Dreamforce. But what I did not expect was that I would find my old friend Visual Basic (or rather, that it would find me). Only this time, it goes by the name of Force.com, and the underlying language is called Apex. It was fun. It was magic. I was home.

(Cross posted to AdvancedApex.com)

As many of you know, I do enjoy writing books. Which is a good thing given that I’ve written quite a few of them. I’m proud of all of my books, but there are a few that fall into a special category – and that includes my latest effort.

If you’ve looked at the book market, you’ve probably noticed that a lot of books are very similar. Most subjects offer dozens of competing books that have pretty much the same content. Personally, I’ve always felt that if a good book exists on a particular subject, I shouldn’t waste my time writing another one. As a result, most (if not all) of my books have been either unique, or the first one in a given space. For example: my original Visual Basic Programmer’s Guide to the Windows API was the only book for a long time that dared to teach Visual Basic programmers to use the Windows API. My recent book on teaching leadership skills to teens is nothing like anything else on the market.

Which brings us to Advanced Apex Programming.

As I mentioned in my previous blog post, I’ve been spending more and more time over the past few years working in Apex – the native language of Salesforce.com. I’ve learned a great deal in the process and… well, you know how it is. Sooner or later, if I learn something, I end up writing a book to teach it. In this case, I was astonished to find that nobody has written an advanced Apex book yet. There’s lots of great reference material, a good selection of articles, and plenty of beginner’s texts out there. But there was no book to help the intermediate developers take the next step, and give the advanced developers something to geek out to. Even the domain, AdvancedApex.com was available!

I couldn’t resist.

You can read about the book at AdvancedApex.com. I’m as excited about it as I was that original VB Programmer’s guide. As with that book, I think it’s going to help a lot of programmers write a lot of great code and become more successful. And as an author, hearing from readers that a book I’ve written has helped them build their careers is what really makes it worth the effort.

Has it really been over a year since I last posted? Wow. The main reason things have gone quiet is because, somewhat to my surprise, I’m doing another startup, and we’ve been in that mysterious state of being known in the industry as “stealth mode”. And now, it’s finally possible (even advisable) to write about what I’ve been up to.

In some ways, it’s a rather “boring” startup. We must forgo the drama of wondering if we can develop a prototype into a real product, if that product will find demand, if we can recruit an executive team and if we can find a business model that works or a way to monetize the business.

We have a great executive team. We have a product (and believe me, I know the difference between a product and a prototype). We have a simple business model – providing a solution to a business problem that companies are willing to pay for. And we have paying customers.

Of course there’s still plenty that needs to be done, but I think we have a pretty good foundation to grow on.

So what do we do? Our team calls it “Moneyball for Marketing” – it runs on Salesforce.com and provides a way for companies to accurately figure out the value of marketing campaigns, understand their sales and marketing funnels, and market to existing customers as easily as to new leads. I’ve been assured by my co-founders (and customer responses) that these are all good things and very exciting.

As a software developer, I’m much more excited by the product itself. It represents the culmination of another unexpected twist in my career. As many reading this know, I’ve spent most of my career as a developer, author and speaker on Microsoft technologies. Well, about 5 years ago, I was called in by a friend to help write some triggers for a Salesforce.com organization. As time went on, I found myself doing more work on the platform, including some larger customizations and applications, to the point where I was actually doing most of my development work in Apex (the underlying language of the Force.com platform). I still do .NET code of course, but now it includes Force.com/.NET integration as well. I find writing Apex to be a uniquely interesting and challenging experience, and (to be perfectly honest) a great deal of fun.

Full Circle CRM Response Management (that’s the name of the product), is one sweet piece of code. I’ll be writing more about that shortly – there’s more to this story. But for now, suffice to say that I’m quite proud of what we’ve built. It’s reliable, scalable and even innovative (and yes, I do consider reliable and scalable to be as important, or more important, than mere innovation).

I invite you to check out the company profile at http://angel.co/full-circle-crm, and visit our website at  fullcirclecrm.com

And stay tuned. I promise my next post won’t take a year.

Specialization is for Insects

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

I can only do about half of these myself, but I’ve always agreed with the sentiment. Back in college my advisors all explained why it is important in one’s career to specialize. But I’ve always chosen breadth over depth. My ideal has never been the specialist, but rather, the synergist – someone who can combine multiple skills and talents to come up with creative and unique solutions to problems.

Some would argue that when one tries to do many things, it becomes impossible to do any of them well. This is not true. What is true, is that if you do not specialize, it becomes impossible to be the very best at something. I know this, because for a time in my career I did specialize in a specific area of technology and became one of the best at it anywhere. Now, I can safely say that I am not the best at anything. But it does not mean I don’t do a lot of things very well.

What might Heinlein add to his list if he were writing for today’s technical society?

A human being should also be able start and run a company, speak in front of a group (any size), write a book, film and edit a video, plan an event, write and place an ad, teach a class, read or write a financial statement, manage investments, work with spreadsheets, write production quality code (on several platforms and in multiple languages), handle a TV or radio interview, mentor a kid, build a computer, wire a network, play an instrument, configure a firewall, architect a complex software system.

Ok, that might not be his list, but it is at least part of mine. It turns out that if you spend time doing a lot of different things over enough years, you can actually become surprisingly good at them. You can even find connections – ways different knowledge sets overlap – that a specialist might never see.

So if you are still early in your career, I encourage you to create your own list. Don’t limit yourself to the confines of what you are taught in school or at work, or what you think you are supposed to be learning. And please don’t limit yourself just to technology – there’s a lot more going on out there.

And if you’re visiting this site to gain some insight into my background, suffice to say – it’s a long story. I like to think that were it possible for me to meet Heinlein today, he would, after some conversation, judge me to be a human being. Coming from him, I would consider it the highest of compliments.

In addition to my technical career, I’ve spent over 20 years volunteering as a youth group advisor with a group that emphasizes youth leadership.

I really believe that in today’s world, academic success is not enough to achieve success in a career or in life. It takes more. Call them social skills or communication skills, or initiative or the ability to plan and execute a task… All of them fall into the category of leadership skills.

Over the years I’ve learned a thing or two about how to teach these skills, and have just published a new book on the subject. Like my technical books, it is a practical “how to” guide – not an abstract theoretical tome. Unlike my more technical books, it’s an easy read and, I hope, entertaining as well as useful.

Whether you are a coach, scoutmaster or youth group advisor, a teacher, or even a parent of a teen – I’m confident that this book will offer both insight and practical strategies to help you become more effective at teaching leadership skills, and better able to help teens prepare for an increasingly complex future.

You can read more about it at TeenLeadershipBook.com.

I wanted a shopping cart that had really good extensibility – one that could connect to our licensing server not just to allocate keys, but to perform custom operations like allowing purchase of additional installations for existing keys.

What I found was largely disappointing. Not that there weren’t some great packages out there. If I wanted to set up a large online store with many products, it was clear that setting up my own Amazon.com equivalent would not be hard at all. There are any number of powerful online stores with numerous features available. But none of them had exactly the right features, and none had the extensibility I needed.

What I really wanted was a shopping component – some ASP .NET controls that could be dropped onto any ASP.NET page and would somehow work together to implement a shopping cart. There would be a control that would “add to cart” a single product – and a page could have any number of these control to display multiple products. There would be a shopping cart page that would allow modification of quantities or deletion of items from the cart. And there would be a checkout control.

In my ideal solution checkout would be handled by an external processor such as Paypal, and once the order was confirmed my code could issue license keys, download links, send out customer Emails and so on.

After searching through and installing trial versions of numerous packages, I came to realize that none of them came close. The truth is, I didn’t want an online store – I wanted an online store component.

So I wrote one. The excuse I used to justify the time was that it would make a great application note for the latest version of our licensing system. But in truth, it sounded like a lot of fun – and it was. I ended up using authorize.net for the credit card integration (they have the best online documentation for developers of any of the card processors I found other than perhaps Paypal).

There’s still some work ahead to turn it into an application note for distribution, but the store is now live at http://desaware.com/purchase/store.aspx.

Above all, the experience confirmed to me the rightness in the way we decided to extend the licensing system for the newly released version 2. Instead of piling in features, we focused on enhancing the extensibility model. Our licensing system is not so much a licensing application as it is a licensing component – and right now it’s hard for me to imagine a licensing scenario that it can’t implement.