Application Generation - ColdFusion

New ColdBox Book Available

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 12:45:00 -0400

I know I'm a little late with this, but I just wanted to mention that Luis Majano's book "The Definitive Guide to the ColdBox Platform" is now available. I'm also honored that Luis asked me to write the forward, so look out for me just after the contents page :-)

The Importance of Putting Invalid Data in Business Objects

Thu, 21 May 2009 11:08:00 -0400

I know that there has been a fair bit of discussion about whether business objects should ever exist in an invalid state a while back. I strongly believe that in most cases you *should* allow invalid data in business objects. Here's why. [More]

Validate What?

Thu, 21 May 2009 09:30:00 -0400

Validation. Client side, server side, it's one of these things we all have to deal with on our projects. I finally got a chance to sit down with Bob Silverberg to check out his ValidateThis fromework at cf.Objective() and I liked what I saw. You describe your validation rules in XML, it supports multiple contexts so the same object can have different validation rules depending on (for example) the form being used, security permissions or state of the object. It seems to have a clean interface, it does a great job of handing client and server side validations and it seems to be a pretty elegant solution to a really common problem. I know we've all got our own little validation libraries and approaches, but I'd strongly recommend anyone to check out what Bob's been working on. I haven't had a chance to work with it on a project yet, but I'm hoping to use it on my next project and to get quite involved with the framework as I think it would be great for us to have a nice, elegant validation library that we could then put into larger frameworks for building full stack solutions more quickly while still being able to use it on its own for projects that don't need the other bells and whistles. Expect to see more about ValidateThis on my blog as I get a chance to play with it. In the meantime, check it out and join the Google group to become part of the conversation.

Mark Drew comes to NYC!

Tue, 05 May 2009 11:46:00 -0400

Mark Drew will be presenting at the New York CFUG on Tuesday of next week. He'll be presenting on "How I Stopped Worrying And Learned To Love The ORM (Object-Relational Mapping)". Should be a great presentation!

CF Drinks with Joshua Cyr in NYC - Monday May 4th

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 11:14:00 -0400

Joshua Cyr (of Savvy and the organizer of the RIAdventure) will be in New York on Monday May 4th. A bunch of us will be getting together for drinks at Slainte at 304 Bowery (between Bleecker & Houston) at 6.30pm. No formal presentation, just a chance to get together and meet some other local CF programmers and to catch up with Joshua. So, who's coming?!

Resigning from Adobe Community Expert Program

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 09:35:00 -0400

I just wanted to say that (perhaps not surprisingly given my recent announcement) I am stepping down (effective immediately) from the Adobe Community Expert program. I just wanted to thank Rachel Luxemburg and the entire team at Adobe for selecting me for the program and for all the great help and support that they provided while I was involved with the program.

Railo: Enough Already!

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 09:35:00 -0400

I've been posting quite a bit this week about why I chose to head up Railo US, but I want to sum up some of the key points. Next week I'll be looking at some of the awesome features that Railo provides. [More]

Railo: The Bigger Picture - CFML on the JVM

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 10:35:00 -0400

I'd like to see more adoption of CFML for scripting on the JVM. Here is how I think the jboss.org announcement *might* facilitate that goal . . . Disclaimer, this is my vision - not necessarily that of Railo or JBoss [More]

Railo: What Shouldn't We Do?

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 09:35:00 -0400

There has been a lot of discussion within Railo as to what we *shouldn't* do as a business. The answer (for me) is "nothing". Here is why . . . [More]

Railo: Expanding the Community

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 11:35:00 -0400

There are two ways Railo can expand the community. One is by attraction of new developers. The other is by cutting down on the attrition of CFML developers . . . [More]

Railo: What Will Railo do for Adobe?

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 10:35:00 -0400

I am convinced that Railo will be good for the CFML community. But I also wouldn't be surprised if it ended up being good for Adobe. Here's why . . . [More]

Railo: The Security of Alternatives

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 09:35:00 -0400

Part of an ongoing series explaining why I decided to head up Railo US starting this month . . . I remember (too) many years ago when I started my first business. All my college friends thought I was so brave to take the risk of starting my own company. I saw things differently. Pretty soon I had 20 clients, no one of which made up more than 15% of my income. I thought *they* were braver to depend completely for their income on a single company that might fire them, close their department or go into bankruptcy at any time - irrespective of their job performance! I think it's time we critically reviewed the relationship between what is best for Adobe and what is best for CFML developers. I'm not sure that the two are always exactly the same . . . [More]

Railo: The Future of Web Development - Easier or Faster?

Mon, 06 Apr 2009 11:35:00 -0400

Part of an ongoing series explaining why I decided to head up Railo US starting this month . . . What is CFML Good For?
There are two ways you can look at CFML. One is as a set of training wheels that allows someone with little programming experience to build working applications while they learn enough to port to a "real language". The other is as a RAD application development language that allows any programmer to build compelling web applications more quickly and cost effectively than they could in any other language . . . [More]

Railo: What do You Give a Sh*t About?

Mon, 06 Apr 2009 10:35:00 -0400

Part of an ongoing series explaining why I decided to head up Railo US starting this month . . . Stu Halloway made a really interesting comment at a "Languages on the JVM" BoF I attended at No Fluff Just Stuff in Boston the other week. His argument was that when choosing a language you shouldn't look at the language features, libraries or frameworks currently available as those change way too quickly to be meaningful. Rather you should ask "what does this community give a sh*t about" as that is a much better predictor of whether it'll continue to meet your needs over time. The question I want to ask is, what do we give a sh*t about as CFML developers, and is that a sustainable position? [More]

Railo: An Announcement

Mon, 06 Apr 2009 09:35:00 -0400

I've been thinking a *lot* about CFML recently. It is a language that I've been using for over a decade to build web applications quickly and cost effectively for my clients. And the community has also been very good to me, giving me the chance to present around the world at CF conferences on topics ranging from requirements and estimating to practical code generation and RAD OO. However, recently I've found projects and situations where ColdFusion *should* have been the right choice, but wasn't. And given that I've been programming in it for ten years, I find that very sad indeed. I think for too long we've sat back and waited for Allaire/Macromedia/Adobe to add the features we want to our favorite language and that has given the open source JVM language alternatives like Groovy, JRuby, Scala and Clojure a real edge in terms of speed of development, frequency of release cycles and relevance to developers. Adobe has to focus on adding "manager features" to each release (hey, they want to sell your boss something for $7500 a server, they have to give them a reason to write the check!). Many of those "manager features" are also great for us as developers, but with the best will in the world, Adam and his team in India can only do so much in a given release cycle (although I believe Centaur is going to be the best developer release in years - and that is saying something after the last couple). I decided that rather than complaining or just leaving the language entirely, I'd try to do something about this and Gert Franz offered me an opportunity that I couldn't resist when he suggested that I head up Railo operations in the 'states. This month I will be founding Railo US and will head up all business operations for Railo in the US. Throughout the week I'll lay out in more detail why I think that Railo is the best thing that has happened to CFML in a long time and why I chose to be involved with it. Here's to interesting times :-)