I've just completed a three day "crash course" for training total ColdFusion
newbies in the art of what we all know and love - CFML. Squeezing in eight
years of CF experience in three days, making it interesting, making it fun,
is quite tough.
The two 'victims' were Centrelink (www.centrelink.gov.au) employees (26,000
employees Australia wide - pretty big) who had no web application
development experience - at all - but at least knew about HTML (thank you
lord). They were more the Visual Basic types - but very smart.
1. Pretty much on day one I walked them through what ColdFusion is, where it
came from, the long path travelled, where it is headed, why the hell am I
still using it, etc. They will be stuck on CF5 for a while so it was hard
not to spurt the virtues of just how good MM made CF with RedSky.
2. Day two was probably more boring as there was a less "hands-on" approach
as I tried to explain key issues like application security, code
optimisation, coding practices, FuseBox (example) as a framework, state
management, etc. Now these guys never really had to worry about "state
management" so it was a challenge. The discussion of "race conditions" was
interesting to say the least.
I was hoarse by the end of the day at any rate.
3. Day three I decided to make it more interesting by declaring "I will not
write a single line of code". You will - but I will sit by your right and
explaing what to write, why you are writing it, and how it works - and brag
about "yes CFML is easy to pick up given time".
On this day my two "newbies" added to the application* I built on day one -
some cool features like creating a "register new user" which included input
validation (email address is valid etc), dynamically creating MSSQL 2000
database tables, sending email in CF (easy peasy with MX) and building a
search engine that highlights keywords of their search result anywhere in
the search results. They even decided to change the "highlight" to BOLD text
with a yellow background.
>>Whew!
It was tough as I had never had to train anyone before. ColdFusion - being
such an accessible language - made it easier. Thank god they are still on
CF5 so I did not need to go into web services or ColdFusion Component - but
they were mentioned. UDF's however got a special mention as noone at
Centrelink seems to have... Nope. I will not be critical.
I really like CF and it was great to introduce another two into it's
intoxicating world. With a few more tweaks (and more computers than my own
which I had to drag in from home) I could be on a roll.
I'd also like to mention that CF-Talk got a special mention (as did House of
Fusion itself), Ben Forta "What, did he write this book too?" (yep! he sure
did - here are a few (4.5+) I no longer need), Dave Watts - from FigLeaf -
not Dr David Watts who will be appearing at MXDU 2004 (www.mxdu.com) and
Charlie Arehart (New Atlanta) for Blue Dragon.
Any tips for the next round of training in January would be appreciated!
Merry Christmas!
(basically a web application for storing and retrieving favorites or
bookmarks long forgotten with full text search)
Peter Tilbrook
ColdFusion Applications Developer
ColdGen Internet Solutions
Manager, ACT and Region ColdFusion Users Group - http://www.actcfug.com
4/73 Tharwa Road
Queanbeyan, NSW, 2620
AUSTRALIA
Telephone: +61-2-6284-2727
Mobile: +61-0439-401-823
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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