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If you want ColdFusion to be more alive, then *you* have to commit to taking some small personal action today.
Waiting for megacorps, the IT press, or the “programming fashion” to change toward CFML doesn't cut it in 2020.
Here are 7 small steps that we, as improving CFer developers, could do today. Some only take a minute. Pick one, or more, up to you. And share below what you are going to do with the rest of the world.
- Educate others
- Reach out to a new developer and show them something cool
- Always be learning
- Social share a cool CF feature
- Talk up CF in your company
- Give back
- Try out a new CF tool today
- I said 7 ideas but this space is for your own idea to help out. Be creative!
A microtask is fine. Could just be downloading that new CF tool you have been lusting after for months in your dreams 🙂
“Remember this, young jedi-coder: With a single step a journey of a thousand miles begins.” – Yoda
Educate others
Educate others about the power of ColdFusion – show them an app you built or look at an open-source CF project such as ContentBox.
Take the initiative and start putting the information out. Work on improving yourself and your fellow CFers. Share your knowledge with other CF developers, and you will also start learning through the CF community. This will also motivate the younger developers to dig deeper into ColdFusion. Remove the stigma of being “boring and uneventful,” that is so often related to developers.
Reach out to a new developer
Reach out to a new developer and show them something cool in CF such CFscript, CommandBox launching a CF server in seconds, or CF running in Docker on your laptop.
Always be learning
Always be learning. I wish we could go to a CF conference but until they return from lockdown, we can continue educating ourselves using the recent Adobe webinars, the Into The Box videos, or the CF Alive podcast videos on YouTube. Or read a book. Or review LearnCFInWeek (lots of new stuff in there).
Did you know there is an open-source CFML? The Lucee project is a free open-source software that uses a dynamically-typed scripting language for the Java Virtual Machine to allow for the rapid development of web apps. These then compile directly into Java bytecode. Lucee is compatible with current CFML and configurable for legacy CFML.
Social share a cool CF feature, something new you have learned or a CF question. It doesn't have to be earth-shattering news either – different small wins shared by many CFers makes a big effect. TW, your own Blog, FB, LI, YT, are all good.
Talk about ColdFusion in your company
Talk up CF in your company. Show how you saved time with CF. Or how it took way less code to make your app than another language would have done.
Give back
Give back. Add some code from a CFC you wrote to ForgeBox to share with other CFers. Open-source lets others learn from your work and also they will improve it. Plus these days a strong ForgeBox and GitHub presence is the new resume.
Try some new cool ColdFusion tool or app
Try out a new CF tool today. Such as
- CommandBox, which lets you run scripts written in CF, launch any version of ACF, or Lucee.
- Other tools to try include
- Fixinator code scanner,
- Code Checker,
- FusionReactor ,
- CF server monitor,
- ColdBox framework,
- LogBox logging tool,
- TestBox unit tests, and
- CBElasticSearch text search.
Together we can make ColdFusion and the CF community more vibrant and alive this year! What can you do today to help?
Michaela Light is the host of the CF Alive Podcast and has interviewed more than 100 ColdFusion experts. In each interview, she asks "What Would It Take to make CF more alive this year?" The answers still inspire her to continue to write and interview new speakers.
Michaela has been programming in ColdFusion for more than 20 years. She founded TeraTech in 1989. The company specializes in ColdFusion application development, security and optimization. She has also founded the CFUnited Conference and runs the annual State of the CF Union Survey.
