Blog

Earlier today in the ColdFusion Programmers forum on Facebook somebody asked (I’m paraphrasing a little) why do some ColdFusion jobs require a Computer Science degree when they don’t teach CFML in college? I have 2 answers...

We’re all impacted by security hacks. Even the smartest devs will have security vulnerabilities in their code. Sometimes as devs we try to chase the idea that we can have things that are perfect but there will always be bugs in code. Not likely that your code will never have security issues but you can’t ignore it. Probably a good time to take action on it if you’ve been ignoring it.

Last month was the ColdFusion Summit 2021 Conference. Like many events lately this one was virtual (as opposed to the usual meetup in Vegas) but I'd say this was still worth attending for anyone near the CFML space.

It's official -- I'm speaking at the Adobe ColdFusion Summit 2021!  It's been way too long, I'm looking forward to seeing all of your smiling faces, even if it's just virtually. :) The CF Summit this year is virtual (stupid Covid) but looks to be a great event with some excellent speakers lined up!

(I posted a smaller version of this on my LinkedIn profile yesterday, and thought I’d expand it a bit here.)

Managers, when you schedule a “surprise” meeting with an employee, and don't put an agenda in the calendar invite…I am here to tell you that the odds of that employee freaking out and wondering if they should start updating a resume is MUCH higher than you'd like to believe.

Want to learn Object Oriented Programming with CFML? Are you still struggling with Components? No idea what they do or how to use them with confidence? Then you’re in luck! South of Shasta has partnered with Ortus Solutions and we’ve just released the “Object Oriented Programming Series” training videos on CFCasts.  This is a collection of 35 videos, designed for the CFML developer that is still struggling with how to use Components.  Each video is a bite-size bit of information about Object Oriented Programming using CFML.

How's 2020 treating you? ;) I haven't been posting much on here of late, for all the same 2020-quarantine reasons that everyone else has. Everything is behind, and going sideways, and all the other crazy things that have been happening. Fortunately I've got a few bits of good news starting to come in that I can share. Like this one:

This week I'm speaking at Into The Box 2020, giving an updated version of my talk "Testing My Non-ColdBox Site With TestBox". If you were at CF Camp last year and saw my preso, this is similar content, but with several updates.

Sixteen hours in planes. Twenty-two hours of overall travel. And a 14-hour nap. I’m now back in Sacramento and somewhat right-side up after CFCamp 2019, the quintessential CFML / ColdFusion conference for Europe!

Gert and Micha kicked off day 1 of CFCamp with several demos of new things planned for Lucee. We saw code, we heard plans. There were demos, there were jokes, and there was lots of entertainment watching people try to use a German keyboard. :)

Greetings from Munich! I’m in town for CFCamp 2019.  This is the tenth anniversary of the conference and should be an amazing event. I was lucky and they selected my talk “Testing My Non-ColdBox Site With TestBox”; this talk was given once for Ortus Developer Week well over a year ago and has been changed quite a bit in the interim; lots more new content for everyone!

Last week was the 2019 ColdFusion Summit in Las Vegas. This year brought the conference back to The Mirage (last year’s event was at The Hard Rock Cafe). and by all accounts was a big success!

Who are these jokers that keep spouting off about how “ColdFusion is dead”? Clearly they’ve never been to the ColdFusion Summit (or any recent CF conference for that matter).

Pro tip: when Brad Wood is giving a talk at a conference, make attending said talk a priority -- you'll learn a lot. But also take notes, because he'll throw a ton of info at you in rapid fire succession interspersed with jokes, delivered just as quickly. I think it's all the Mountain Dew. ;)

SQL performance is important regardless of what type of application you're building. Whether it's written in legacy CFML, ColdBox 5, Framework-1, or even some other stack entirely, every tip Dave mentioned in this talk can be put to good use on your project.

Matt gave this talk at Into The Box a year or two back, and it was one of the stand-out sessions for me. So much so, that I had to attend it again this year and see what new information he'd added to the preso.

Uma has given her talks on testing at several conferences recently, and I've never been able to catch it until now. There's  a reason she continues to get asked to give this presentation: it's packed full of useful info about testing your web applications. FYI, none of the info is ColdBox specific (despite her mentioning TestBox and MockBox in the examples). And several bits of info (such as the portion about JMeter) could be used to test any web application, even if it's not written in CFML.

Modules are one of those ColdFusion things that often get interpreted as ColdBox-specific. While there are advantages to using them with ColdBox, you can build and use modules without having ColdBox anywhere on your server. Eric Peterson did a great job of explaining both scenarios and the pros and cons of each.

Rakshith showed a taste of what's being planned for ColdFusion 2020 and the version coming after that (I'm guessing it will be called ColdFusion 2022). Additionally, new features were added in the Update 5 that recently got released for version 2018, which Rakshith explained as well. There are some nice looking new features coming to the language!