Over the past 6 years, I've been lucky enough to meet so many great people of different skill levels working with salesforce.com. By far, the largest contingency were those similar to where I was at a year and a half ago. The best button click admin they could be, and still wanting to do more.
Since starting this blog, I've had a lot of great feedback. One thing I people ask me over and over is how I moved into dabbling in development. Like so many other, I don't have a technical background. It was incredibly frustrating trying to move to the next level with Salesforce, and it felt as though I was trying to jump over the Grand Canyon. And I don't claim expertise. I barely claim proficiency, but it's a base & I'm building on it every day.
So you may be expecting a super complex answer, but I attribute it to just three things.
Training - As I've mentioned before, I was lucky enough to take the DEV 531 class. And if you have the time & resources to do this, I couldn't recommend it more. I would go so far as to say it'd be worth missing Dreamforce once to take this class (only once though). If the class isn't an option, then I recommend the Force.com Workbooks. The workbooks provide step-by-step tutorials to a variety of the Force.com technologies, and for the most part they assume no prior knowledge.
Force it - I know, I know. We don't want anyone to "Get Forced", but what I mean by this is forcing yourself to try out your skills. I made a decision that I was going to get my first trigger to work & that I wasn't allowed to give up on it. Plain & simple.
The community - And I can't lie, I got stuck a few times. But instead of giving up, I got on Twitter and the Force.com dev boards, and asked for help. Please don't go there & just ask the community to write your trigger for you. You won't make friends that way. But show some effort & ask for assistance, and there are plenty of people out there to help you.
It is possible. You are capable. And don't worry, there's a safety net below you.
