CF and OO and blogs, oh my (a flush of CF-OO blog tutorials)
Note: This blog post is from 2007. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.Step right up ladies and gentlemen, get your CF-OO tutorials here. :-)
I've noticed a sudden flush of multipart CF-OO tutorial blog series being done, to help people make the leap to using CFML in a more Object-Oriented way. I thought I'd point them out for those who may have missed them:
- Adrian Moreno started his multi-part series Aug 22
- Charlie Griefer started his multi-part series Aug 23
Don't know if there's a connection between the rather simultaneous releases, or if it's just pure coincidence. Charlie clarified that there indeed was no connection between the two.
And for those who want to get their CF-OO freak on, there are still more resources on the topic.
- Nic Tunney's cfoop.org site
- Doug Boude's "OO TERMS IN A COLDFUSION CONTEXT"
- Steve "Cutter" Blades has a series on "Making the View"
- Brian Rinaldi has a variety of blog entries he's done. See the comments below.
- Adrian (mentioned above) also has other entries in a CF-OO series, and here's the URL to his blog category for all of them
And there are certainly many more. I'd welcome hearing of those to add to the list. And there may well be more multi-part CF-OO blog series' created before or after now. Feel free to make note in the comments here and I'll update the list for posterity.
Maybe we're starting to reach a tipping point. Of course, there are some who will lament a push to OO (too complicated for them), while others will say you're a hopeless loser if you don't get with the program.
I don't want to debate that here, nor do I really want to see it blow up in my comments, please! :-) Feel free, instead, to point people to where else it may have taken place so that they can evaluate the discussions there instead.
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up until reading it here, i was completely unaware of his blog. looks like i was missing out, because what i just saw skimming over his OO part 1 entry looks very very nice.
i'll say that the main difference seems to be his is more of a "i know stuff and i'm going to teach it to you".... where mine is "i have no idea what i'm doing, so i'm going to 'learn out loud', and you're welcome to try and learn along with me if you'd like, but you may just end up being more confused". :)
I did a series of tutorials a month or two ago that I know a number of people have said were helpful (and which I mention often but I did spend a lot of time on them :). Here they are, to add them to your list.
Objects and Composition series:
No Framework - http://www.remotesyn...
Using ColdSpring - http://www.remotesyn...
Using ColdSpring and Transfer - http://www.remotesyn...
Connecting to Flex - http://www.remotesyn...
http://blog.cuttersc...
Hey Brian, I'd really rather not start creating a long list of individual entries, preferring instead to point to one URL for a given series of CF-OO related entries per blogger. For now, I've pointed folks to the comments for yours. Any chance you'd consider creating a category in your blog to tie together those and any others you may do? I'll understand if you don't want to. It would also just help to keep this list from becoming out of date (whereas with a series URL, people can see all that are related).
Actually, same for you, Charlie. It would help if you had a category for all these entries in the series. For now, I didn't mind pointing to your first one, since it was obvious that it's a series and people could go find the rest. But a single URL would help.
In fact, I did the same for Adrian's but just noticed that he does have an OO link for this series and another he did, and I'll add that to the list of resources separately.
i did create a category for these entries. "going OO".
http://cfblog.griefe...
:)
That said, I'll say it's a shame that category links (in most blogs) always show only items from newest to oldest. Sometimes, especially when viewing a series like this, it would be useful to have it oldest to newest. But that's a broad problem to solve (certainly not unique to yours, Charlie), and usually out of our hands. :-) Something to consider for the cf-bloggers google group. :-)
Head First Object Oriented Analysis and Design
http://www.amazon.co...=pd_bbs_1/103-1832222-0773416?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1188500598&sr=8-1
At first I started with HF Design patterns as suggested by so many people. However, I might as well have been reading greek. Now I'm ready Design Patterns and actually understanding where they are coming from.
It really breaks it down nicely and demonstrates OOP principals. Implementation is in Java, but it's easy to understand. It really helps to make all those CF implementation tutorials above lot more helpful.
I was intentionally focusing on CF-OO resources. Goodness, if I tried to make it an OO compendium, it would be a huge resource. :-) That said, there are indeed a few classics worth mentioning. Yours was one. Again, the others are mentioned in the other resources. Thanks, though.
And the CF people say ColdFusion isn't OO and most people don't code like this. Perhaps this will be fuel for more OO features in the future.
Mainly
Constructors and Overloading based on a survey I ran recently.
http://www.surveymon...
the fact of the matter is that while cf can be coded in an OO manner, it can also be coded in a non OO manner. so does that make it OO in and of itself?
i'd suggest that your survey results are somewhat flawed. your survey was taken by a small subset of the coldfusion community... mostly, those that read blogs. those that read blogs are arguably more advanced than others (again, arguably). that alone would skew your results as those who voted are not a representative sample of the community as a whole.
ben forta blogged (fairly recently) that most (yes *most*) coldfusion developers don't even use CFCs.
so while a majority of a random sampling of blog reading cf developers may have voted in favor of constructors and overloading... that's hardly enough evidence to suggest that adobe should invest in adding additional OO features to the language.
bear in mind, i'm not saying they shouldn't. i'm just saying that the survey isn't really strong enough evidence to support the argument :)
I should have just offered the link myself. :-) Here it is now:
https://www.blogger....
I don't think you need to be too advanced to get on a mailing list. Sure it's a small sample, what % who nows, but still this in relation to the number of posts on OO stuff leads me to believe that the adoption of OO techniques is increasing with CF developers.
I agree that CF isn't OO it's self, but allows OO code, and that OO is the way to code, people get taught OO techniques, so getting things done that way makes more sense, and unless some other thing comes along that is better than OO. I think the uptake will only increase.