A Review of Pair Progamming with Ben - and the Recording
Stephen Moretti just wrote up a nice review of the pair programming session Ben and I just did for the Scottish ColdFusion Users Group (including a link to the recording) . . .
Got my Battery Geek!
Well, after a bit of a wait (supplier problems, I believe), I just got my external battery from Battery Geek.
I have always been a big fan of spare batteries for traveling. However, after moving from a MacBook to a MBP and being left with three spare batteries I couldn't use, I figured I'd like to find a better solution . . .
XP 2008 - When Six Conferences Just Aren't Enough!
I'm presenting at or attending six conferences in May/June, but I was talking with Tom Poppendieck the other night after Mary's talk @ Google in NYC. I got the impression that the XP conference in Limerick Ireland was just the conference I needed to hang out with the people who "really get" Agile/Lean/XP.
Checking my diary I saw I would just be finished with Scotch on the Rocks, and could just fit the XP conference in before flying back to the US to present at CF United.
I'm really excited about the conference. There is an excellent line up, and I really feel that Agile/Lean/XP/SCRUM along with Metaprogramming/Language Oriented Programming/Domain Specific Modeling is one of the best ways that developers can maximize the business value they can produce.
Looking forwards to lots of learning this year!
Next DDD Meeting in NYC
The next Domain Driven Design meeting - hosted by Vladimir Gitlevich will be on Wednesday May 28th - 7-9pm. If you'd like an invite or to know more, please just drop a comment below and I'll email you with more information.
It's really a great group of people, and I'm looking forward to fitting the meeting in during a few days back in NYC between conferences.
Web Maniacs Coming Up Soon
I'm really excited about getting a chance to present at Web Maniacs in DC. I'll be presenting in the ColdFusion section - covering RAD OO development and Practical Code Generation.
The conference is a blend of two days of ColdFusion training and then three of Flex (you can sign up for either section - or both). It's got a lot of the best ColdFusion and Flex speakers and I'm really excited about the chance to learn (and network) some more.
It's not too late to sign up!
ColdFusion Isn't a Programming Language?!
Just saw a tweet from Brian Meloche made last night. I'm sure that I am way late to this party (although I've not seen any postings - damn MXNA being down), but WTF? On the tiobe page it now says:
"Richard Bremner pointed out that ColdFusion is not a programming language. It is a framework comparable to JSP and ASP. As a consequence, ColdFusion has been removed from the TIOBE list. All its history has been deleted, which means that the history of the index has changed a bit as well. "
Further down, a programming language is defined as follows:
"A language is considered a programming language if it is Turing complete. As a consequence, HTML and XML are not considered programming languages. This also holds for data query language SQL. SQL is not a programming language because it is, for instance, impossible to write an infinite loop in it. On the other hand, SQL extensions PL/SQL and Transact-SQL are programming languages. ASP and ASP.NET are also not programming languages because they make use of other languages such as JavaScript and VBScript or .NET compatible languages. The same is true for frameworks such as Ruby on Rails, ColdFusion, Cocoa, and technologies such as AJAX. Finally, we have also excluded assembly languages, although Turing complete, because they have a very different nature."
ColdFusion is Turing complete, and you can write entire applications using CFML (as with any other web language, HTML will usually also be required). I have a hard time seeing how CF is just a framework. It's true that it is compiled down to Java (or the CLR for Blue Dragon.NET), but Ruby is compiled down to C - doesn't mean it isn't a programming language. Of course, whenever you try to define things you can get into tricky edge cases (I don't understand why classic ASP wouldn't be considered a programming language), but I look forward to finding out more about the precise definitions used for this discussion.
On the bright side:
(i) Tiobe actually noticed ColdFusion. With its recent rise in popularity it's good to see it is being paid some more attention.
(ii) The index is more of a distraction than anything else. While I disagree with the reason it was removed, I'm not convinced it is a bad thing for ColdFusion just to "not play this game".
I got a quote to get out and meetings all day so this was a quickie. Looking forward to something with a little more research from someone else later today.
cf.Objective() Rocked
Well, despite a rocky start personally, I've got to say that cf.objective() was amazing. It's still really the one "can't miss" ColdFusion conference for anyone interested in the latest ideas entering the ColdFusion community . . .
cf.o() Flickr Stream
Want to feel like you're at cf.o() without the airfare? Andy Powell has the solution! His cf.o() flickr stream app is up and available. Pretty cool!
Groovy 1.6 Beta 1 Released
Just having a look at the announcement. I like the idea that you can apply transformations to the abstract syntax tree (it's about half way down the page). Could allow you to do some very interesting things - especially if you were writing a framework.
I must say I like a lot of what Groovy has to offer. Main consideration at the moment is adoption. Wonder if it will ever really take off, or whether it left it too late and will always be "another scripting language" on the JVM compared to JRuby (and of course the grand daddy of scripting languages on the JVM :->).
Thoughts?
My First Day at cf.o()
Well, unfortunately, the only session I made today was my own (and I wasn't sure whether I was going to make that one for a while!), but thanks to live blogging (or at least "near real time blogging"), I got a sense of what I missed.
Had really wanted to see Brian Koteks talk on code generation. Oh well, gonna get an early night, throw this off and enjoy the rest of the con.
