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048 Best Practices Are Best, Except When They’re Not with Nolan Erck

By Michaela Light Leave a Comment

Nolan Erck talks about “ColdFusion Best Practices, Except When They Are Not”, in this episode of ColdFusion Alive Podcast, with host Michaela Light.

Episode highlights

  • What really is a best practice?
    • May evolve over time
    • Day job vs college best practice
  • What is Technical Debt and why you don’t want it
    • Quick fixes that cost you later
  • Good, cheap and quick – pick 2
  • When CFForm tags can be cool
    • Best practice – use HTML form tags + Javascript libraries
    • But – Non-programmer Dreamweaver editing for intranet with CFFORM
  • When it is ok to changing code on your production code
    • VP of marketing editing HTML + CF link to update Git
  • Using a Non-MVC framework
    • Best practice FW/1 or ColdBox
    • Beginner CF team + custom XML framework + tight hard deadlines
  • Emailing errors to your team vs logging
    • Best practice CFLOG or LogBox or BugLogHQ + Slack
  • When the problem is not code
    • Developer stuck in the middle
    • Removing “alter” from the code story
  • Why are you proud to use CF?
    • Less code to write
    • No need for 3rd party libraries
  • WWIT for you to make CF more alive this year?
    • Modern CFers helping the middle CFers and the 5 tag CFers
  • What are you looking forward to at NCDevCon, CFCAMP, CF Summit?

Mentioned in this episode

And to continue learning how to make your ColdFusion apps more modern and alive, I encourage you to download our free ColdFusion Alive Best Practices Checklist.

Because… perhaps you are responsible for a mission-critical or revenue-generating CF application that you don’t trust 100%, where implementing new features is a painful ad-hoc process with slow turnaround even for simple requests.

What if you have no contingency plan for a sudden developer departure or a server outage? Perhaps every time a new freelancer works on your site, something breaks. Or your application availability, security, and reliability are poor.

And if you are depending on ColdFusion for your job, then you can’t afford to let your CF development methods die on the vine.

You’re making a high-stakes bet that everything is going to be OK using the same old app creation ways in that one language — forever.

All it would take is for your fellow CF developer to quit or for your CIO to decide to leave the (falsely) perceived sinking ship of CFML and you could lose everything—your project, your hard-won CF skills, and possibly even your job.

Luckily, there are a number of simple, logical steps you can take now to protect yourself from these obvious risks.

No Brainer ColdFusion Best Practices to Ensure You Thrive No Matter What Happens Next

ColdFusion Alive Best Practices Checklist

ColdFusion Alive Best Practices Checklist

Modern ColdFusion development best practices that reduce stress, inefficiency, project lifecycle costs while simultaneously increasing project velocity and innovation.

√ Easily create a consistent server architecture across development, testing, and production

√ A modern test environment to prevent bugs from spreading

√ Automated continuous integration tools that work well with CF

√ A portable development environment baked into your codebase… for free!

 

Learn about these and many more strategies in our free ColdFusion Alive Best Practices Checklist.

Bio

Nolan Erck is the Chief consultant at South of Shasta. He has been developing software for 19 years. Starting in the video game industry working on titles for Maxis and LucasArts, then advancing to web development in 1999, his list of credits includes Grim Fandango, StarWars Rogue Squadron, SimPark, SimSafari as well as high-traffic websites for clients. Nolan manages the SacInteractive User Group, teaches classes on aspects of software development, and regularly gives presentations at conferences and user groups across the country.

Links

Interview Transcript

Michael:          Welcome back to the podcast. I'm here with Nolan Erck from South of Shasta consulting. And we're going to be talking about ColdFusion best practices, but more importantly when the best practices are not the best practice. So we'll look at best practices and what they really are. What is technical debt, and why you don't want too much of it on your project. Picking two of good, cheap, and quick, and how to do that. We’ll look at a very naughty tag called C.F. form, and when they actually could be cool to use. And when it is okay to change code on your production server. We'll also look at some frameworks you may not be using, and what to do with error messages, and the best practice there. So, welcome Nolan.

Nolan:             Thanks for having me.

Michael:          Hey, I'm glad to have you back on the show. And Nolan’s being very popular. He was speaking in C.F. objective. I think you are in four sessions, or something.

Nolan:             Part of four sessions, yeah.

Michael:          Yeah, and he's also speaking N.C. Defcon, C.F. camp, and C.F. summit. So we'll talk more about those towards the end of the episode. But first, let's just clarify what exactly is a best practice? We hear about them all the time. What exactly is a best practice?

Nolan:             So best practice is a technique, or a guideline of some kind that has generally been accepted by whatever community you're part of. In this case ColdFusion or CFML. As that's the at least currently less proper respected way to do whatever the task is you're talking about. The reason I say most current is sometimes, best practices of all over the course of the evolution of the language, or evolution of the technology stack, or whatever. So it might be a best practice today, may not have been a best practice five years ago. And it might not be a best practice five years in the future.

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