Re: [ACFUG Discuss] Learning Cold Fusion

[Jeremy Allen]

SQL In 10 Minutes seems like a fine book for learning the basics of SQL Syntax. What I don't see is a good grounding in Normalization and database design. The Learn SQL in 10 minutes book focuses on SQL Syntax and SQL Queries.  That is good... you DO need to know all of that and I suppose a structured approach to learning the syntax and basics is required. I also willingly admit that the Celko book is pretty out there in terms of skill level for a lot of the topics covered. You will save yourself a LOT of pain by understanding proper database design and normalization early on. Its not a difficult thing to get a handle on. If your average developer just knew 1NF, 2NF and 3NF better database designs on the whole would be a lot better. You can probably find enough on the normal forms just by searching the Internet.  Once again Wikipedia is a good start http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_normalization. I only bring it up because it is quite often overlooked and it is a critical piece in my mind. Enough on that.

Come to the ACFUG meetings as often as you can and get to know people. Look at all of the open source code out there in CF. There is not a ton of open source CF code but there is enough. Get to know the community, you won't find a much better development community than the CF community. When I started with ColdFusion years ago these lists were the best resources out there for learning things and tackling tough and relatively esoteric problems and they still are today. Chances are whatever problem you are having has been solved many times over and you need but ask. You may ask a question that 100 other people have asked and those of us that have seen the question may groan at it and start thinking, "Jeez" RTFM, however, you will find your question is still answered even if it is a link to ColdFusion documentation pointing out that oh so "obvious" function or tag that solves your problem (that is my way of saying "there aren't usually stupid questions only stupid answers").

And if I didn't impress this upon you well enough in my first post: start writing code! It doesn't have to be perfect. Once you start writing code you can start breaking things and we will have more concrete advice to give you ;-)

Good night all.. sleep awaits.

Jeremy

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