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Jul 16, 2008
Luis Majano on ColdBox Presentation Recording
Tonight Luis Majano presented to the Boston CFUG on the ColdBox framework. You can view the recording here. While I have not tried ColdBox yet, I was really impressed by the breadth of functionality the framework contains. Luis and the ColdBox team seem to have a great attention to detail that reflects very highly on every aspect of the framework shown. A lot of care seems to have been taken in the appearance/presentation of the framework as well as very detailed documentation, which is very much unmatched in any of the other Coldfusion open source projects (frameworks or otherwise). Thanks to Luis for taking the time to present.
On another note, for those of you in the Boston area, check out the CFUG's upcoming events including Gert Franz in Boston talking about Railo next month.
Recording URL: http://adobechats.adobe.acrobat.com/p70457199/
Comments
"as well as very detailed documentation, which is very much unmatched in any of the other Coldfusion open source projects (frameworks or otherwise)"
Well that's not actually true... the onTap framework had extremely thorough documentation for a very long time because I spent many HUNDREDS if not thousands of hours documenting it.
In the more recent versions I've actually removed documentation because I discovered that having very thorough documentation apparently turned people off.
A few people said so specifically, including Jeff Peters from Team Fusebox. Not in those words, but "oh my god, do I have to read all this?" (basically a verbatim quote from Peters when I met him in person at cf.Objective) ... and then essentially gave up before even touching the intro docs.
Joe Rinehart had made a similar comment previously on the cf-talk mailing list, which had been framed as a complement ("thanks for setting the bar for us on documentation" or similar), though in retrospect he may just have been trying to be polite.
A lot of the documentation is still in the next release in the SVN repository, but I have removed a bunch also. I haven't yet started writing the documentation for the IoC Manager in the next release tho.
Am I bitter? Sometimes. Just being honest. But I really try not to dwell on that and just focus on continual improvement. I'd have long since given up if it weren't a labor of love and VERY important to me. That's why I'm working on new stuff like the IoC Manager and having taken the time to separate the ORM into DataFaucet, which has produced a feature request list that doesn't want to stop growing. ;)
Well that's not actually true... the onTap framework had extremely thorough documentation for a very long time because I spent many HUNDREDS if not thousands of hours documenting it.
In the more recent versions I've actually removed documentation because I discovered that having very thorough documentation apparently turned people off.
A few people said so specifically, including Jeff Peters from Team Fusebox. Not in those words, but "oh my god, do I have to read all this?" (basically a verbatim quote from Peters when I met him in person at cf.Objective) ... and then essentially gave up before even touching the intro docs.
Joe Rinehart had made a similar comment previously on the cf-talk mailing list, which had been framed as a complement ("thanks for setting the bar for us on documentation" or similar), though in retrospect he may just have been trying to be polite.
A lot of the documentation is still in the next release in the SVN repository, but I have removed a bunch also. I haven't yet started writing the documentation for the IoC Manager in the next release tho.
Am I bitter? Sometimes. Just being honest. But I really try not to dwell on that and just focus on continual improvement. I'd have long since given up if it weren't a labor of love and VERY important to me. That's why I'm working on new stuff like the IoC Manager and having taken the time to separate the ORM into DataFaucet, which has produced a feature request list that doesn't want to stop growing. ;)
Erm... Met Peters at Fusebox / Frameworks conf. not cf.Objective ... darned memory lapses. :)
the link to preso is wrong... goes to an admin login
Sorry if Ike feels slighted, but I agree with Brian. It doesn't matter if onTap has comparable docs to what ColdBox has if they aren't online and accessible. I really hope you plan on re-posting them, Ike. I honestly don't see how having thorough documentation can be seen as a bad thing, and in my case it's one of the main reasons why I've adopted ColdBox for my projects.
@Tony -- Actually the docs I wrote have a few advantages over a central wiki if only for one reason. They use CF to get path information from the current installation, so that paths displayed in the documentation are *literal* paths that exist on the server where the documentation lives. They also allow plugin authors to include their own documentation for the plugin directly into the navigation of the framework documentation and can take advantage of those same pathing features.
So when my docs say C:\apache\ it's not because I presume that you might have an apache instance there, it's because you not only actually have but are currently using an apache instance at that location. The ColdBox wiki won't and can't do that. My hope was that it would reduce confusion about file paths.
When I had it up on http://fusiontap.com (which is currently down), I got a number of emails complaining that the path information in the documentation on the public site was confusing, in spite of the fact that I had added several messages stating specifically that the documentation was designed to be read on your own server and that all you had to do was download it and put it on your localhost.
And I'd love to have the docs back up on that domain when I can afford it or someone offers to host it for me... In spite of the complaints that "you have broken links in your documentation" that were an obvious indication that the reader had not READ the part of the tutorial which said "copy this code to file at location x **THEN** view this link", intended to establish a practical understanding of the framework through personal experience. The links had been deliberately created to pages that didn't exist so that you could create them and see that they work. Again, something the ColdBox wiki won't do because it can't do that.
All that being said, I'll be glad to convert the docs I have and put them up on the RIA Forge wiki, plus whatever else people want to know. All I need is a little feedback. And aside from having been very recently asked by Sana Ullah (who I believe is active in the ColdBox community) to put some information on the DataFaucet wiki, this is the first time that I can recall having heard someone say that documentation *needed* to be on a wiki. In fact, I posted an article in the DataFaucet blog just last week asking about that specifically and there's been only one comment, from Sana, who is the person who originally suggested it.
I apologize if any of this sounds confrontational. It's not intended to be that way, I'm just trying to lay out the facts as I see them. But I do know that because of my (likely) Asperger Syndrome, I frequently miss social cues and come across in ways that I don't intend to. Many aspies (as they're sometimes called) are frequently perceived as "abbrasive". So ... I don't mean to belabor the point either, it's just that I don't yet know how to explain these things succinctly. :)
Thanks,
ike
So when my docs say C:\apache\ it's not because I presume that you might have an apache instance there, it's because you not only actually have but are currently using an apache instance at that location. The ColdBox wiki won't and can't do that. My hope was that it would reduce confusion about file paths.
When I had it up on http://fusiontap.com (which is currently down), I got a number of emails complaining that the path information in the documentation on the public site was confusing, in spite of the fact that I had added several messages stating specifically that the documentation was designed to be read on your own server and that all you had to do was download it and put it on your localhost.
And I'd love to have the docs back up on that domain when I can afford it or someone offers to host it for me... In spite of the complaints that "you have broken links in your documentation" that were an obvious indication that the reader had not READ the part of the tutorial which said "copy this code to file at location x **THEN** view this link", intended to establish a practical understanding of the framework through personal experience. The links had been deliberately created to pages that didn't exist so that you could create them and see that they work. Again, something the ColdBox wiki won't do because it can't do that.
All that being said, I'll be glad to convert the docs I have and put them up on the RIA Forge wiki, plus whatever else people want to know. All I need is a little feedback. And aside from having been very recently asked by Sana Ullah (who I believe is active in the ColdBox community) to put some information on the DataFaucet wiki, this is the first time that I can recall having heard someone say that documentation *needed* to be on a wiki. In fact, I posted an article in the DataFaucet blog just last week asking about that specifically and there's been only one comment, from Sana, who is the person who originally suggested it.
I apologize if any of this sounds confrontational. It's not intended to be that way, I'm just trying to lay out the facts as I see them. But I do know that because of my (likely) Asperger Syndrome, I frequently miss social cues and come across in ways that I don't intend to. Many aspies (as they're sometimes called) are frequently perceived as "abbrasive". So ... I don't mean to belabor the point either, it's just that I don't yet know how to explain these things succinctly. :)
Thanks,
ike