043 — Dave Carroll: APIs, passion and trustworthiness. A recipe for Salesforce success!

In this episode of DevOps Diaries, Jack McCurdy sits down with Dave Carroll, a veteran in the Salesforce ecosystem. They discuss Dave's journey from being a Salesforce ISV partner to a key player at Salesforce for 21 years. Dave's mission has been to help develop the tools and practices that empower Salesforce developers to be successful, and has graciously stepped out of retirement briefly to appear on DevOps Diaries.

Jack and Dave's conversation covers the evolution of Salesforce, the importance of customization and integrated solutions, as well as the challenges faced by developers across the development lifecycle.

Dave shares insights on what it takes to build a successful developer evangelism team through experimentation, and offers valuable advice for aspiring developers looking to navigate the Salesforce ecosystem successfully.

Dave Carroll was a Senior Director at Salesforce, managing product development for Salesforce DX, Salesforce Einstein, and was the founding member of the Salesforce developer relations programme.

Learn more:
How to pick the right Salesforce DevOps solution for your needs
What is Platform Engineering and how does it impact Salesforce DevOps?
Salesforce DevOps for Enterprise customers
Improve the quality, performance, and security of your Apex code

About DevOps Diaries:
Salesforce DevOps Advocate Jack McCurdy chats to members of the Salesforce community about their experience in the Salesforce ecosystem. Expect to hear and learn from inspirational stories of personal growth and business success, whilst discovering all the trials, tribulations, and joy that comes with delivering Salesforce for companies of all shapes and sizes. New episodes bi-weekly on YouTube as well as on your preferred podcast platform.

Podcast produced and sponsored by Gearset. Learn more about Gearset.

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About Gearset:
Gearset is the leading Salesforce DevOps platform, with powerful solutions for metadata and CPQ deployments, CI/CD, automated testing, sandbox seeding and backups. It helps Salesforce teams apply DevOps best practices to their development and release process, so they can rapidly and securely deliver higher-quality projects. Get full access to all of Gearset's features for free with a 30-day trial.

Chapters:
00:00 Introduction to Dave Carroll and His Journey
02:54 The Evolution of Salesforce and Developer Tools
05:52 Customizability and Integration in Salesforce
08:59 Developing for the AppExchange Platform
11:51 Salesforce DX and Developer Tooling
17:52 Challenges in Developer Experience and Testing
23:48 The Role of AI and Machine Learning in Salesforce
29: