The sign of an experienced developer is solid design. Novices edit examples
they find on the Net, journeymen figure out how to code something as they do
it, but craftsmen plan their work. Starting out, this can look like wasted
time, but if your app is any good, your customer will want to expand it.
Then, if you need some help, you'll have to explain all that intuitive code
to ten people, all of whom you are paying by the hour. Diagrams would be nice
then, right?
Many development organizations are moving toward more structured development
cycles, involving formal documentation standards, to ensure that code is
maintainable after the developer moves away from the project. For these
organizations, the challenge is to balance the demand for rapid development
with the requirement for clear, solid design and analysis documents.
For developers, it is annoying to go throug... (more)
Early releases of Cold Fusion (under Allaire) focused on the Windows market
and it was common to include example Access databases. It was common for
entry-level developers to take this example to heart and build systems on
Access back-ends. One didn't have to install, set up, admin, or most
importantly pay for anything. With the beta release of ColdFusion 8, Adobe is
providing support for an array of open source databases. Now using
PostgreSQL, MySQL, or Apache Derby (formerly IBM Cloudscape) has been made
that simpler for CF developers since JDBC drivers for all of them are
in... (more)
It's a great problem to have: thousands of people like yourself providing
daily updates from the leading edge of your craft. If you want to learn where
things are going in the world of Web programming, you need to read blogs and
lots of them.
Aggregators help make that easier, but only by reducing the amount of
running around to find new sources. The quantity of content flowing through
these channels is daunting and the quality highly variable. Somewhere in this
big stack of articles, sometimes hundreds a day, are things you need to read
to stay ahead of the curve.
How do you ... (more)
With the introduction of MX, ColdFusion programmers started to move away from
the world of hard-to-maintain reams of scripts with includes, and into the
world of clearly defined libraries with specific responsibilities. CustomTags
were a good stab at re-usable code, but focused on the level of the function
as opposed to grouping functions, which meant the method lacked a good way to
define the return value and had scoping issues.
User defined functions (UDFs) gave us a clear return value, but still left us
longing for classes. For several years now, we've had ColdFusion Components... (more)
The increased manageability, reliability, and opportunities for reuse
promised by a SOA can only be fulfilled with an effective governance
structure in place to coordinate service creation, maintenance, provisioning,
and consumption.
However, many small and medium-sized organizations struggle when starting
their service catalog due to the seeming contradiction between the strategic
benefits of SOA and the often negative impact that governance can have on
individual line-of-business project schedules. How do we get our projects
done while building a service portfolio? This articl... (more)
Over the past decade, Chip Temm moved from North America to Europe and on to Africa where his company anthroLogik solutions provided analysis and development services organizations across seven timezones. He is currently back in Washington, DC where "remote development" means working from home and "wildlife" means raccoon.
Scott Sellers
Anthony Franco
Daniel Morris
Wayne Walls
Niki Acosta
Jereme Hancock
Oren Michels
Marvin Wheeler
Douglas Kim
Ken Guiberson
