Best Served Cold

Well, tonight I attended the Bird's of a Feather session for CFCs that Ray Camden was good enough to set up for us. It seemed to be a more diverse group than last year and more people seemed to be interested in how things are done and why. It wasn't the gripe session that last year tended to be, and instead questions of "How do I learn how to use components?" were more important. We tended not to focus on what they could not do and instead reflected on different solutions to similar problems.

One person suggested starting with database queries and moving them into components one at a time. Really, the available documentation and body of knowledge since last year has changed quite a bit as more CF developers have embraced OO techniques using CFCs.

We also covered the need for good code generation capabilies similar to those in existance for Java developers--especially for writing boiler-plate code like database CRUD functionality.

Tom Schreck demonstrated a phenominal tool that will create a CFC, database tables that map to that CFC and the form for dealing with that CFC all in one place. He's spent quite some time on it, and it is something worth looking at and investing time and support in.

I also inquired within the group to see if anyone was using cfcUnit and if so what they thought of it. A couple of people in the room were familiar with it and liked it. Once again, I was reminded of the need for even more and better documentation... something I will have to work on.

Anyhow, it was a great session and I hope to get a chance to follow up with some of the attendees later on this week.

I spent the day at CF_Underground today, and I'm glad I did. There were great presentations on using CF with Flex, e-commerce security, extreme programming, creating personas, and software architecture and design patterns. Hal couln't be there, but Michael Smith and Shlomy Gantz did a good job of filling in at the last minute. Lots of good ideas floated around in the many discussions of the day.

There were also a lot of familiar faces from the last CFUN and MAX conferences. Hopefully the guys from Interakt will have more beer opening tricks to share before the week is over!

Anyhow, it's Halloween and the French Quarter should be interesting... I'll add more comments later.

Well, I'm off to MAX tomorrow morning and should be arriving in New Orleans tomorrow evening. This year should be good for us CFer's since Blackstone is just around the corner, so I'm really looking forward to this next week.

Should anyone want to to talk about cfcUnit, or possibly the OpenXCF, please corner me--I'd be glad to hear whatever you have to say.