In this episode of the Picklist Podcast, I sat down with Peter Chittum, Tim Combridge, and Mariel Domingo to unpack three stories that have real knock-on effects for how we work in the Salesforce ecosystem. First up: Quip is being retired. We talked honestly about why it never really broke through for most teams (too much friction vs Google Workspace/Office 365), what it did well (social collaboration and Live Apps/widgets), and why its fate was basically sealed once Slack entered the picture—especially with Quip living on under the hood of Slack Canvas. Then we got into the meatier debate: Flow vs Apex for record-triggered automation. The big takeaway is that this doesn’t need to be a religious war—there are clear decision points. We discussed Salesforce Architects’ updated Record-Triggered Automation Decision Guide and the concept of “automation density,” which boils down to how many automations fire per DML event, how many records are processed per transaction, and my favorite: “dependency sprawl” (all the knock-on dependencies, loops, async work, and cross-object complexity). We also touched on the guidance around keeping a single entry point per object—either Flow or Apex—so automation stays understandable and maintainable. Finally, for Women’s Month, Mariel shared her experience with RAD Women Code, a community program helping women from admin/declarative backgrounds learn Apex through structured lessons, mentorship, and hands-on practice (including tools like ApexSandbox.io).