With the advent of Trailhead, online training such as Pluralsight, and all the free reference material and numerous articles online, why would anyone need an actual book? Because, as it turns out, there are some things that really are best taught in book form. The journey from beginner to expert takes more than trails, documentation, references and articles. It takes practice, work and experience. Books can make that journey easier – if they are done correctly. A book can go into the kind of depth that is not possible in a short article, or in an answer to a question on a forum. Reference material is typically generated by writers associated with the language or platform development team – which is good, because they know the language best. But you also need material written by those who use the language to solve problems in the real world – the more, the better. That’s what you’ll find in “Advanced Apex Programming”. There are no tutorials for beginners. There is no reference material. Just an in-depth exploration of advanced design patterns and techniques, written by someone who has not only been involved in multiple consulting projects, but also in releasing several commercial packages on the AppExchange. Read the introduction and browse the table of contents and you’ll see. Whether you are an experienced developer coming to Apex from another language, or an intermediate level Apex developer, this book will take you to the next level in programming on the Salesforce Force.com/Lightning platform.