Trailhead - Learn and have fun

Trailhead is a learning platform introduced in the last year by Salesforce.

And sure enough, Trailhead is getting its share of positive marketing through a variety of means. After all, we are talking about one of the coolest learning platforms for the largest CRM company.

If you are not remotely related to salesforce (what exactly are you doing here?), or you are too absorbed in your own technology well , here a rundown of what Trailhead will do.

• Trailhead is a cool way to learn salesforce technology - all nuances included

• The learning platform is great to use. You not only get to “read stuff” but also do that hands on. You need to do the configuration changes in your salesforce developer org that the system validates and graciously showers you badges and points

• You can choose tailor made learning paths that collate courses. These paths can kick you up the chain in increments and make it easy for yourself to see the current & target states in your learning plan
  

  

• You can also find stand-alone projects that provide you hands-on experience to implement stuff. For e.g. you can build a “Conference Management” app using Apex and Visualforce.

• And, I repeat myself - the system actually makes you configure stuff and get it validated. This is absolutely important while learning new technologies

With a mix of easy-to-use learning materials, audio visual aids, DIY projects, Trailhead just “feels right” to learn a technology like salesforce.

So, should Trailhead really interest you. In one word - yes!

What keeps me coming back to Trailhead is not all this - not the badges and the promise to “learn it by doing it” philosophy. What really gets to me is that Trailhead is *indeed* a cool way to learn technology and the finer aspects of it. Trailhead does not take itself seriously (and seriously is boring).

Let me start with a simple example.

Event monitoring is not the coolest of the jobs that one can do. Though I sometimes see myself as  a ‘debugger elitus’ - it does not always translate into the love for the job.

Trail Head seems to differ with the this conventional wisdom. Get Started on Event Monitoring starts with the following text -

And, here’s another example from the Lightning Experience course.

If this is not cool, what is.

The great thing is the pattern does not stop at these examples. There are bits and pieces of entertainment sprinkled across learning courses.

It is indeed sheer awesomeness if you can have all that fun while learning one of the hottest technologies of our time. To quote an anonymous creator (which may be me) - “isn’t that worth living for?”.