Brute Force

Hi, thanks for stopping by.

You're probably asking yourself "What does this guy have to say I want to hear?"  The answer...  Maybe nothing.  Or maybe, like me, you are doing application development and you keep searching for help, answers, or simply a glimpse into "How the heck do I do ______?"

I have relied on site documentation (usually way lacking), guesswork or searching the net for a clue on how to do what I want to get done.  Many good blogs have given me ideas, clues, or great insights into what I needed to get done.  But, too often, I come up short and just have to get through it by trial and error.  

As you may have guessed from the title, I am a ColdFusion developer.  I have been developing on and off in ColdFusion since version 1.1.  But, somewhere around version 5, or 6 I drifted away.  Now, here I am back again and playing "catch up" with the new ways; OOP, CFCs, Frameworks, Ajax, ORM, CRUD, IoC, etc.  

The one thing I have struggled with in wading through all of these is the common thread that almost all of the doc's, posts, forums and other resources assume that you have a basic background knowledge in the area of the very thing you are trying to learn!  Well, I for one usually don't!  Hence the "Brute Force" part of the title.

So I decided to use my own blog to try to share with others out there who may be struggling like I am.  I am going to document my path to better understanding and hopefully, competence, and eventually expertise with yet more of these current methodologies.

If you have some interest along these lines, drop a comment and let me know.  If you have any suggestions those will be greatly and gratefully accepted also.

So, where am I going to start?  Right smack dab in the middle of a big one!  In the past, the applications I created were done long enough ago that all there was to use generally was your own organization and methodologies.  But when CFCs came along and the Bean, DAO, Gateway concept got into my head, I knew I had to move forward.  

I now find myself at the beginning of the development cycle for a large application completely from scratch.  I get to decide everything; the methodology, the structure, the whole thing.  I have been researching for weeks trying to decide exactly ehat "tools" I want to add to my kit and use for this project.  After much self-debate (and very few obvious winners), I have decided on:

• Transfer talking to a MySQL database
• ColdSpring to handle my CFC dependencies and configuration
• ColdBox framework for my code structure

Since I have never used any of these, my learning curve is looking more like a "learning mountain".   So as I start to chew my way through these I plan to post here about my challenges, and hopefully some insights that may help someone else just a little along the way.

So check back and follow along if any of these are on your plate also.