OK, I’m one of those programmers that started using ColdFusion back before CFC’s. I’m self-taught and was successful early on in life using the “old-school” approach to programming that I never looked back. Then CFC’s came along and I ignored them. I told myself I was fine without them and that the time it takes to teach myself how to adopt them, I could completely build whatever project I was working on at the time
using the old method.
Now, here I am, stuck in a rut and feeling stupid for not seriously considering Object Oriented programming and CFCs. What now? Do I just trudge along the same as usual or do I bite the bullet and try to get my head around a whole new way of programming. I recently integrated a Ray Camden application “Galleon”, open source and available for download here: http://galleon.riaforge.org It’s a nice little forums application that is well thought out and easy to add to any ColdFusion-enabled server. In fact, I bought Ray something off his wish list because I was so impressed. I’ve gone in and modified a few pages here and there and that’s when it really hit me. I don’t know enough about this new methodology to make modifications. Well, I did but not within CFC’s. It’s ugly. I just created a new directory and reference that for all my procedural code. Yuck! I’m embarrassed. I certainly don’t know enough to be able to even contribute to an open source application such as this and I have been writing ColdFusion since 1999! I think it was CF 3.0 for God’s sake! What the heck am I doing?
So, here I am. Feeling sorry for myself and a bit like a 39 year old who is about to watch the young ones pass me by just because I figured you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Well, I’ve had it. I’m not going to be one of those guys. I’ve got to make some major changes and fast. The question now is where do I go from here?
Here are my goals in no particular order:
Read up on some frameworks and see if it really makes sense to adopt one of these methodologies. I’ve never worked with any framework and I’m worried (probably wrongly) that I’ll run into road blocks based on the limits of the framework.
Actually sit down and read a dust covered book I bought years ago by Hal Helms and Ben Edwards called, Discovering CFCs. I went to a class they offered in Las Vegas called Java for ColdFusion Programmers which was a good course except I never ended up writing a single line of Java Code. I should have taken their CFC course instead. Maybe I should consider doing that now…hmmmm.
Come up with a simple application, which requires completion that I can start from scratch on. It must be something that MUST get done or I will most likely shelve it and never come back to it. NHJobs.com is a good example of why I learned the ColdFusion programming language. In 1998 I had the idea of building a local, New Hampshire-based job board. At the time, I only knew HTML. Once I saw that I could use ColdFusion to send and retrieve data dynamically, I realized the power and usefulness of CF. That’s what I’m hoping for this time around with CFC’s and possibly the use of a framework.
Enough talk, I’ve got to get started. Wish me luck!
Vince Collins
