093 Learn ColdFusion in a Week with Carl Von Stetten, Daniel Fredericks and Dave Ferguson

Contents

Show notes
Mentioned in this episode
Bio and photo
Join the CF Alive revolution

Carl Von Stetten, Daniel Fredericks and Dave Ferguson talk about “Learn ColdFusion in a Week” in this episode of the CF Alive Podcast, with host Michaela Light.

Show notes

What is Learn CF in a Week?
- http://www.learncfinaweek.com/
- Learn CF in a Week is a community-driven training program that teaches all the basics you need to be a ColdFusion Developer in one week.
- Online Course
- PDF
- E-book
- Sample files
- Started by Simon Free and many contributors for CF10, now updated for CF 2018
- Adobe and others have helped
How much does it cost?
- Free. Open source.
Why did you create it?
- To bridge the gap between reading online docs and learning the language
- Who contributed http://www.learncfinaweek.com/contributors/
When was it first released?
- Approx 2010
What versions of ACF and Lucee is it for?
- All versions since CF 11 because CF is backward compatible
- Examples for ACF, but mostly works ok in Lucee
What are the cool features of it?
- Walks through features
- Subsections
- Hands-on exercises with solutions
- Modern CF code – cfscript, commandbox
- Written by developers for developers
Sections
- Database access
- Applicaton.cfc
- Logic
- Setup
- Installing ColdFusion 10
- Installing MySQL
- Installing Sample Files
- Basics
- Decision Making and Scopes
- Looping
- Data Handling
- Code Reuse
- Application.cfc
- OOP
- ORM
- Mail
- Document Handling
- Caching
- Security
- Error Handling and Debugging
- I18n
- What to do Next – learning resources
Is it realistic for a non-CF programmer to learn CF in a week and be productive?
- Yes. Without human help!
- What about a non-programmer (eg an HTML graphic designer)?
  - Yes if you spend more time on the Basics chapter
What other ways are there to learn CF?
- Trial and error
- CF docs – but just documents individual tags – not the why
- Books
  - CF Web Application Construction Kit – now out of date
  - Learn CF in 100 minutes Ortus book
- Training
- Linda
- Adobe college curriculum
- Conferences
- CFUG
- CF certification
- CF Slack channel
What plans do you have for the future of Learn CF in a Week?
- Gotchas coming from specific languages
- Advanced sections
  - Containers
  - Performance
  - API manager
  - Cloud
  - Frameworks
  - Package Management ForgeBox
- More resources
- Statistics
- Learn CF a Week meetup at CF Summit
How can listeners help out with Learn CF in a Week?
- Google group for contributors and help
Why are you proud to use CF?
WWIT to make CF more alive this year?
What are you looking forward to at CF Summit West?

Mentioned in this episode

https://teratech.com/comprehensive-coldfusion-training-list-16-resources/
State of CF Union survey

Interview transcript

Michaela Light 0:01
Welcome back to the show today we've got an exciting episode about learn CF in a week, which is an amazing website, free training. Oops, I let the cat out of the bag there on the how it's priced. And I've actually got three experts who helped put together local fusion in a week we've got Dan frederick's of the North Virginia CPG. We've got Dave Bergson, who's joining us from sunny California, and Carl von Stephen. And I'm forgetting where in the country you are call California as well. Another sunny California is on the other end at the other end of California, the Republic of Northern California. So I'm cool. Well,

glad you all could join us here and I think we should start off because not everyone knows what this thing is learn CF in a week. What exactly is it?

Daniel Fredericks 0:52
I'm gonna let Dave mentioned this because Dave is one of the originals. Just a quick history that did

was part of this originally when they put it together five, six years ago. That's been a while. And then he realized that we that it needed to be upgraded. So he conned or asked both Carl and myself to join in. And we've been sort of helping administer putting the new thing together. So Dave can probably give you a better sense of where learns the up for week came from DEF CON with cookies is probably a good, good thing, but I still haven't given you the cookies. So.

Dave Ferguson 1:29
So, backstory like Dan said learn CF in a week was started a long time ago to try and bridge the gap between somebody wanting to learn the language and just reading help documentation.

We can go online and go to CF docs and wherever else you want you to figure out how to write certain tags and so on and so forth. But there was nothing to really say if you're new to the language. Here's how you would start here's how you would finish and kind of just help you along the way versus just hunting and packing up.

Bio and photo

Carl Von Stetten

Carl is in his 19th year working as a Geographic Information System (GIS) Analyst with a San Francisco Bay Area municipal wastewater agency. He develops and maintains multiple internal ColdFusion-based GIS applications for use by agency staff, and is well-versed in Microsoft SQL Server and Esri ArcGIS technologies. He can often be found hanging out in the ColdFusion Slack team, on the Adobe ColdFusion forums, or on Twitter (@cfvonner).

Daniel Fredericks

A ColdFusion Developer for over 15 years specializing in Government Contracts. Continuing to learn more modern techniques all the time such as OOP, API development and more. In my spare time I spend time with my wife and 2 kids, coaching and playing sports with them, and watching a lot of sports.

You can find me on FB, Twitter (@fmdano74), Slack and other CFML based sites.

Dave Ferguson

Dave has spent the majority of his life living in sunny Southern California. Over the past almost 20 years has worked in information technology after his attempt at being a career restaurant manager failed miserably. He has spent the majority of that time specializing in large enterprise-class systems. When not writing code, Dave is an avid gamer and competitive martial artist with multiple championship titles.

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