CF.Objective() 2011 Notes from Day 2
posted under category: ColdFusion on May 22, 2011 by Nathan
Second day!
First up, I went to Setting up a Solid Local Dev Environment with Kurt Wiersma
Old slides
Kurt told me it was going to be stuff I already knew, but I like to assure myself that I'm doing things right, or if not, that I at least know why I am doing it wrong. He was right, I didn't learn a lot, but it made me think about the way I do it versus his. He recommends the Apache/CF Multi-server stack with a shared database. I have been doing stand-alone CF with the built-in server, which has been great for my current projects. Also, he mentioned DDLUtils, which I need to play with. In the end, it was a well thought out session, and Kurt did it like a pro.
Second session, No-Nonsense REST & Taffy with Adam Tuttle
Slides
The first of two consecutive REST sessions, Adam talked about the tangible use of RESTful services in ColdFusion. The 5-minute intro to REST was just what we needed to get going, then he showed what it takes to do it in CF - y u c k. Hundreds of lines of code - we need a framework! Intro Taffy, a simple conventions-based RESTful framework for CF kind of like FW/1 meets jQuery, then mashed into REST. The killer feature of Taffy I think is the dashboard, which lets you call your REST services from an admin-like interface. Adam was funny and his software was keen.
Here is Adam talking about boring programmer stuff
Last before lunch, Everything you wanted to know about REST with Simon Free
No slides
Simon Free's REST talk right after Adam's was very helpful. Simon approached REST with the sort of philosophical hippie free love type of approach that REST was based on, which I think is comical because Simon is really just a cool, smart guy, not the hippie type. It was great to finally have someone tell me exactly what REST is and everything it stands for and how it was really meant to be used, plus how where and why to break the rules. I had a lot of takeaway points, so this one was a win for me.
After lunch, I gave my presentation, Holistic Program Quality and Technical Debt. I think it went pretty well. I could criticize myself all day on my performance, but instead, I will say I had a good interactive audience considering it was right after lunch, there were maybe around 40 people (?), I got a few laughs, we had some discussion at the end on code reviews, I think I hurt some people's feelings in a thought-provoking kind of way, which is good, then I had some requests to re-use my slides for themselves, plus one person called me "smart guy." Still I was kind of unsure until Sean told me that he liked it (but in person, not just on his site). Whew, that did a lot for my nerves, thanks! I felt better. A few kind words go a long way.
Slides
In the last session of the day, I went to A Git's guide to Gitting along with Tim Cunningham
Slides
Tim did something unique, he pre-recorded his screen as he used Git and while it was playing, he talked over it. It ended up being a little bit awkward because he hit the ffwd button a few times on accident, and sometimes couldn't pause it fast enough. Tim does great in front of a crowd and is fun to listen to, so it was kind of a bummer that the recorded part was only so-so. That said, I learned a great deal about how Git works, it's impressive and I am going to start using it because of this session. Mission accomplished, Tim.
CF.Objective() was well attended. Here is another shot from the keynote. My day 2 photos were lacking, so I'm dropping it here :-)