TeraTech

The ColdFusion Experts: Develop | Secure | Optimize

cf.Objective 2017 interviews, summary and slides (14+ links of ColdFusion goodness)

November 29, 2023 By Michaela Light Leave a Comment

Overview

CF.Objective has finished a few days ago. I usually wait a few days for my impressions to settle down before writing a follow-up. For those of you not very familiar with it, cf.Objective() is an annual programming conference originally hosted in Minneapolis, MN, with content geared toward mid-to-advanced-level developers. The conference is focused primarily on ColdFusion/CFML, but has grown with its audience over the years and now features talks on JavaScript – with a dedicated conference track affectionately known as js.Objective(), Java, Git, Groovy, the JVM, SQL, NoSQL and other related technologies as well.

This is noticeable right away since the name of the conference used to be Dev.Objective. cf.Objective definitely states that it is again more ColdFusion centered.

The conference session list typically includes topics by speakers from companies such as Google, Adobe, Mozilla, Netflix, and IBM.

I wasn’t able to attend it this year, but I interviewed most of the speakers for the CF Alive Podcast and followed it closely online.

 

cf.Objective Facts

CFO had 45 speakers and 23+ sessions on ColdFusion alone. It promised to be of high quality & very informational right from its announcement. However, it was smaller than the last year. I’ve heard and read comments that a lot of DC stationed CFers didn’t come to the conference.

Dfsr2Sswaaiaxjq

  Jul 21

Just some awesome people at that come to my talk!

 

 

At this post, I am summing up all the slides and notes from the speakers’ presentations. Plus CF Alive podcast interviews that I did with most of them. Enjoy!

The Speakers Slides and Presentations

Anant Pradhan was also very interesting to hear. His presentation “CREATE A DESKTOP VERSION OF YOUR CF APPLICATION WITH COMMANDBOX” explains how CommandBox allows us to very quickly spin up a local ColdFusion server with no installation needed.

Here are the slides and demo code from the presentation.

Brad Wood is always full of interesting new things to talk about. I’m really happy to see the energy he puts into keeping the ColdFusion alive. At CFO he talked about programming design patterns. Learn what programming design patterns are, how they got their start and reviews common design patterns and antipatterns. Here are the slides from the presentation.

Brian Klaas had a presentation “LEVEL UP YOUR WEB APPS WITH AMAZON WEB SERVICES”. The main points were:

  1. Get super fast, infinitely scalable file storage with Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3)
  2. Invoke on-demand Node.js microservices through AWS Lambda
  3. Tap into AI to manage and search images with Reflektor
  4. Utilize a high-throughput NoSQL datastore with DynamoDB
  5. Plan for common problems when dealing with cloud service providers

For the fool presentation and slides follow this link

Eric Peterson did a presentation on the topic of “MAKING MODULES: UTILIZING REUSABLE CODE THROUGH COLDBOX MODULES”. It showcases some common module types in ColdBox, provide tools for quickly scaffolding shared modules, investigate testing modules (both with and without an embedded ColdBox application), and sharing your modules with the world.

Here's the link to the full presentation and the slides.

Gavin Pickin gave an “AN EXERCISE IN CLEANER CODE – FROM LEGACY TO MAINTAINABLE”. The 5 main points:

  1. What is clean code
  2. Reading vs Writing Code
  3. Don’t suffocate your code, let it breathe
  4. Simple & Self Documenting Code
  5. Lower the Cognitive Load

You can download the slides here

Dfrg8Fmxuaeomfd

 

 

 

 

  Jul 21

talking about in production at

 

The second presentation was on the topic of “3 WAYS TO TEST YOUR COLDFUSION API”. here are the main points:

  1. How to use Testbox to test your CFCs 2 different ways
  2. Different types and ways to test JavaScript
  3. Overview of client/server side testing tools
  4. Building testing into your workflow
  5. You are one of many that are not testing your APIs thoroughly

Slides are on this link

Luis Majano talked about “COMMANDBOX + FORGEBOX: CODE, PACKAGE, SHARE, GO!“ How to create packages, understanding packages and dependencies, How to find them, and finally, publish on ForgeBox. Here is the full presentation link.

Another presentation Luis gave was ‘AUTOMATE THYSELF”. The advanced ColdFusion session covers all the ways that you can automate your testing processes with TestBox and many CI and automation tools. From Jenkins integration, Travis CI, Node runners, Grunt watchers. Luis explains very deeply the value of continuous integration and how to apply it with modern tools and technologies. Here’s the full presentation on slides.  


Marc Esher gave a great presentation on “The Human Side of Software” as a keynote speaker. 3 out of his 6 topics really caught my attention:

  1. learning from failure
  2. diversity and inclusion
  3. the dark side of heroism

You can see the slides from the presentation here

Follow Marc on Twitter

Miles Rausch gave a presentation on the topic of “BUILDING PROGRESSIVE WEB APPS USING CFML” By treating the network as untrustworthy, developers are forced to create better web apps that capitalize on modern browser features when they exist and fallback to traditional client-server communication when they don't. Here’s the full presentation and slides link.

Learn more about Miles on his website and follow him on Twitter.

Nolan Erck talked about “DEPENDENCY INJECTION, WHY IS IT AWESOME AND WHY SHOULD I CARE?” It was interesting because Dependency Injection is a very common pattern used in modern web development. It's not specific to Java or ColdFusion or JavaScript. It is equally awesome in all of those.

Here are the Main Points:

  • What is Dependency Injection?
  • When / why would I use this in my projects?
  • Intro to Aspect-Oriented Programming (or AOP).
  • Intro to Inversion of Control (IOC).
  • What is “Bean Management”?
  • Code samples in a variety of languages showing when it might be useful to add some DI magic into your application.

For the full info and the slides follow this link. I also recommend learning more about Nolan’s “Best Practices Are Best, Except When They're Not” presentation. A code-review of sorts where Nolan talks about some of the real-world situations when things just don't go the way the Stack Overflow Gods say they should. The pros and cons of solutions in these situations and the lessons hopefully learned along the way.

Follow Nolan’s work and get more info via Twitter.

Guys from Ortus Solutions had a very busy schedule. Besides their own presentations, they also gave ORTUS SOLUTIONS OFFICE HOURS: FREE CONSULTANCY FOR THE HOUR!

Raymond Camden had two presentations. The first on was “KICK YOUR SERVER TO THE CURB WITH OPENWHISK”. He explains the term, “serverless” as it can be as confusing (or misleading) as “cloud” – what does it actually mean and what are the benefits from going serverless? The slides and other useful info are on this link.

The second presentation “NODE.JS FOR THE CF DEVELOPER” where he introduces ColdFusion developers to Node.js development. A presentation was more focused on the “mechanics” of working with Node versus a deep dive into the language; it was supposed that the developer already is fully proficient to know it. Here are the slides.

Dfqlsnwxoaipbea

  Jul 21

speaking in the keynote – day 2 at –

Speakers that were also guests in CF Alive Podcast and their presentations

Summary

Stay tuned as I will be adding more follow up notes and slides from presentations as the speakers share them.

All in all, CFO was great content. All the comments from social networks, all the blogs talking about it and you can see it becoming more well known. My only note to the organizers is to have more live updates from the sessions and to share more info via social media channels. There are still lots of ColdFusion enthusiasts that are not attending conferences but are interested to know what’s going on in CF world.

 

Other ColdFusion conferences in 2017

 

Related

CF.Objective 2017 Recap by Nolan Erck