It's important to understand one of the biggest differentiators of Salesforce in comparison to other CRMs. Salesforce provides a lot of tools and features to maximize declarative customization (through point-and-click tools). In fact, while configuring Salesforce to suit your business needs, in 80% of cases, you will be able to solve your requirement with declarative functionality. For the remaining 20% of the use cases, you'll need some kind of programmatic development.
Becoming a certified platform developer does not mean that you solve everything with code. Customers, consultancy agencies, and Salesforce all expect a Salesforce developer to be able to use the easiest tool to achieve a solution and, therefore, most of the exam will assess whether you are able to distinguish what can be achieved through declarative configuration...
