Learning From The Web

Nowadays it's commonplace to self teach yourself by navigating the web and getting quick and free access to the information one needs. There is a problem with this approach often overlooked and I wish to address it today in this writing.

Fake news

As a technology writer, I wouldn't dare to walk into political grounds and this is not about publishing for the sake of getting more votes. But, still, you want to understand the level of correctness of the content you are about to access and reuse. It has to come from a trustable source and, in my experience, nothing comes closer to the software vendor itself providing you do navigate away from the marketing blurb.

People, like me, don't have access to the internals and so we do publish information based on testing or experience or reading in between the lines etc... It might be useful but, still, be very careful.

It can also be made of incorrectly understood instructions or incorrect writing. Again the author approach and reputation will help you identify and avoid risky areas.

Old content

That's the most common issue and the actual reason for me to write this post. If like me you're part of the vibrant Salesforce ecosystem, you do need to be warned in particular. Three times a year, Salesforce releases a bunch of new ways to work with the platform, commonly called new features packaged in a new version. It's great and everybody is waiting for what is coming next. The thing is that you cannot say that Salesforce is "this good" or "this bad" in any area forever, simply because "forever does not exist".

I did some research a few years back in the context of a talk I was doing at London's Calling. It was about "Salesforce's Person Account". There is some controversy in the ecosystem about this feature and, as an evangelist, I was feeling I was going against the tide, I thought I should speak up and defend my cause ("do create Person Account based solutions, don't reinvent the wheel"). So, I researched on the web for anything related to Person Account. I couldn't believe what I was reading! It was full of criticisms that did not match my own tests. How could it be? I later realised that "online content stays online forever, independently of how false is it or it has become". And that's the thing with fast-moving technology like Salesforce: what is a day-to-day platform advantage can turn into an issue when it comes to researching this very technology...

When doing online research always...

(1) check the date of writing and

(2) test the results if unsure.

Always prefer vendor's maintained resources.

Summary

Learning from the web is not just about searching, and accessing information. It's also about studying the information you're finding and making sure that the content is ready for consumption. Learning from the web is an art that needs to be mastered a bit like drawing a paint seems easy at first but requires a lot of practice to turn the result into a masterpiece.