The journey from button-clicker to uber-coder is all about the baby steps. For me, the challenge seemed insurmountable. And when I went to seek advice, most of the answers I got were the same - "Check out the Force.com Cookbook." "Go to the developer site & look at the stuff in the code share." And while I'm sure that's great advice for coders who need to learn APEX, it's still all looked like gibberish to me.
I resigned to the idea that I had gone as far as I could go.
Obviously, seeing where I am today, that wasn't true. Now, I'm not going to say that I've got all the right answers, or that I did it the best way, but for me, the first step was an easy one (and not easy like 'just go write a trigger & see how it goes', it was actually easy) -- I got a developer account.
I know what some of you are thinking - "As a button-click admin, I already have one of those." Well, I didn't, and I'm betting I'm not the only one. Sure, I had heard of them, but I wasn't a developer, so what did I need one for? Duh! To become of a developer.
So here's the quick 411 on a Dev org: You can do all the development work that you want without messing in your org's sandbox. It has all the different clouds in there, including the partner and customer portals, so you can try out stuff you may not even own. The best part for me is that it comes with dummy data already in the org, so you can start playing right away. You even get a second user, so you can collaborate on projects. (Side note -- Am I the only one who feels like this when I hear that word?)
This may be the tiniest of baby steps, but if you haven't already done it, go get your free dev account.
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step ~ Lao-Tzu