My Salesforce Toolkit: A 2018 vs. 2026 Reality Check
Waking up today after a coma since 2018 makes your Salesforce blog a historical artifact. I looked back at my old posts. I realized my “modern” toolkit from back then belongs in a museum. Here is how the world changed while we were busy debugging.
1. The “Flow-pocalypse”
Back in 2018, we used Process Builder. It looked like a friendly flowchart but secretly loved hitting CPU limits. Today, Salesforce sent Process Builder and Workflow Rules to a farm upstate. Flow is the undisputed heavyweight champion now. It handles tasks that once required 200 lines of Apex. Become a “Flownatic” now, or the platform will leave you behind.
2. Aura vs. LWC: The Breakup
Remember Aura? The framework made you feel like you were writing code in a dark room wearing oven mitts. Lightning Web Components (LWC) finally showed up and brought modern JavaScript with it. We went from asking “Why is this so slow?” to realizing it works like the rest of the internet.
3. Change Sets: The Final Boss
In 2018, “Deployment” meant clicking through a 500-item list. We prayed to the gods that we didn’t forget a single Permission Set. Today, you must use SFDX, VS Code, and DevOps Center. Anything else is essentially tech-support penance. We traded “Refresh and Pray” for “Commit and Deploy,” and my blood pressure is much lower.
4. From “What’s an API?” to “Everything is an API”
We used to treat integrations like scary special projects. Now, MuleSoft is baked in, and Data Cloud ingests every data byte. The “siloed” Salesforce org is a myth. You are no longer just a Salesforce dev. You are a data plumber wrangling a firehose.
5. AI (The Buzzword that Ate the World)
In 2018, “Einstein” was mostly cute icons and some predictive lead scoring we occasionally trusted. Now, you need Agentforce or an AI assistant writing your unit tests. Otherwise, are you even working? We moved from “The computer might help” to “The computer will write the boilerplate first.”
The Verdict:
The 2018 toolkit was a Swiss Army knife with rusted blades. The 2026 version is a lightsaber. It is way more powerful. Just try not to cut your own arm off.
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