When I first started writing the Force.com Developer Certification Handbook (DEV401), Packt Publishing in 2012, the goal was clear—how can you make the Salesforce development easy, accessible, and simple. You don't realize how daunting a task is, until you actually start it. But in the infamous words of Brian Tracy, you eat a large frog one bite at a time. And so the little bites started and the book finally released almost 4 years ago. When the team from Packt Publishing asked me to write a revised edition of the book, we all thought it would be easy.

With Salesforce, it hardly is. The pioneers of cloud computing are known for one thing—they change fast and for better. The exam had changed, the syllabus was different, and there were tons of new features coming in. When it comes to publishing, we cannot always tackle things quickly, not with a book as massive as this. Hence, while working with this book, I had to accommodate as many new features as I could before the book went live. The lessons learned from my previous experience and the feedback received on social media, in person and via e-mails, are all included in this book, and an extra effort has been made to make the book error-free.

One cannot trot forward without the undying support system and I would like to take this opportunity to thank some of those who were there for me. First and foremost, I would like to thank Govind and Shobhana Kabe, my parents and mentors, who insisted very vocally that I take computer engineering as a career. I cannot thank my wife, Deepika, enough and if I start enlisting all the ways she supports me, this acknowledgment will fill more pages than the book itself. My brother, Chaitanya Kabe, for being there with me always.

A special thanks to Doug Ayers for painstakingly going through the content and giving a honest and valuable feedback.

I would like to thank the team at Packt Publishing for being patient and keeping up with me as I kept missing deadline after deadline. A special thanks to the content editor, Mayur Pawanikar, for not losing patience as he kept chasing me for the content. Thanks to the technical editor, Naveenkumar Jain, for helping with the content and to Sonali Vernekar for initiating this project.

I would like to thank the mentors I met on this journey of the Salesforce platform, who helped and guided me at different stages of my career. Without their guidance, I would not be where I am today. No book on the Salesforce platform can be complete without mentioning the amazing developer community and the Salesforce developers team itself; thank you for the great cloud platform and the developer events that have helped us from time to time.