Mach-II By Hal Helms; Ben Edwards With the release of the
MX version, ColdFusion
has moved from its
strict procedural
programming background
toward object-oriented
design and programming.
This move has evoked both
hope and fear in
developers, some
welcoming the decidedly
new concepts of object ... Aug. 12, 2003 12:00 AM Reads: 12,359 Replies: 4 |
The Best Recipe By Hal Helms About two years ago, I
decided that it would be
'fun' to learn to cook. I
figured I would be a
quick learner; after all,
I liked to eat (passion
for the subject), I had
been a skilled
cabinetmaker (possessed
manual skills), and I
enjoyed watching 'Iron
Chef' on th... Jul. 11, 2003 12:00 AM Reads: 10,369 Replies: 2 |
System Thinking By Hal Helms In several recent CFDJ
articles, I've described
software architecture as
akin to model building.
In both designing
software models and
building scale models,
it's important that the
model be internally
consistent as well as
sufficiently rich to
encompass the desir... Jun. 16, 2003 12:00 AM Reads: 9,550 |
Ten Reasons for Java
Expertise: Why Java is
Important, Even for CF
and .NET Developers By Hal Helms Hal Helms, editorial
board member and regular
columnist for ColdFusion
Developer's Journal, is
also a strong advocate
for Java training. This
commentary originally
appeared in his Website
and is reprinted with
his permission. May. 13, 2003 12:00 AM Reads: 13,117 Replies: 22 |
The Power of Antipatterns By Hal Helms It seems that lately, you
can't pick up a book or
magazine without hearing
about design patterns. If
you're new to the idea of
design patterns, they're
simply time-tested
solutions to common
problems. Design patterns
began with the work of
Christopher Alexander, a
... May. 1, 2003 12:00 AM Reads: 10,412 |
10 Mistakes Fuseboxers
Make By Hal Helms In the last year, I've
seen a great number of
developers make the
commitment to learn
Fusebox - and for good
reason: the Fusebox
framework and the Fusebox
Lifecycle Process (FLiP)
give developers both a
framework and a
methodology that work
well in creating Web
... Apr. 3, 2003 12:00 AM Reads: 8,647 |
A Developer's Story Part
2 By Hal Helms In last month's article,
I introduced you to a
company with a project in
jeopardy. When I was
called in to analyze the
situation, I discovered
that the project was a
major revision; the first
version had been very
successful, but now the
company was running into
p... Feb. 28, 2003 12:00 AM Reads: 8,224 |
A Developer's Story, Part
1 By Hal Helms 'Actually, it's no one's
fault.' This was the
conclusion I had come to
after a week of working
on a nightmare project I
had been called in on.
The CIO had asked me for
a briefing on what I had
found so far.
'But how could this be
such a mess?' the CIO
wan... Jan. 31, 2003 12:00 AM Reads: 7,694 |
All About Arrays: Part 2 By Hal Helms In the last issue of CFDJ
(December 2002), we
looked at arrays, those
enormously useful
creatures that are
underused by some
developers. We confined
ourselves to
one-dimensional arrays -
those arrays that look
like a single row from a
spreadsheet. Jan. 7, 2003 12:00 AM Reads: 10,356 Replies: 3 |
All About Arrays By Hal Helms With all of the
excitement over the new
features of ColdFusion
MX, it's easy to skip
over some of the basics
of ColdFusion. In
training developers, I
find that the subject of
arrays causes a good deal
of confusion - so much so
that many good coders
omit ar... Nov. 19, 2002 12:00 AM Reads: 8,982 Replies: 2 |
Working with Use Cases By Hal Helms Designing Web
applications is very
different from designing
Web sites. Web site
design typically consists
of finding ways to
organize information so
that it is clear
(hopefully) to the site
visitor. An
excellent book that deals
with Web site design is
S... Oct. 22, 2002 12:00 AM Reads: 7,695 |
Scale Models By Hal Helms I was telling my son
about my childhood the
other day. He's 13 now
and no longer willing to
believe the stories I
used to tell him. Gone
are the days when I would
recount tales of my pet
dinosaur Oct. 4, 2002 12:00 AM Reads: 7,223 |
A Book Excerpt -
Discovering ColdFusion
Components By Hal Helms This article is based on
the upcoming Discovering
ColdFusion Components by
Hal Helms, published by
Techspedition Press
(www.techspedition.com),
and appears here by
permission of the
publisher. Aug. 23, 2002 12:00 AM Reads: 9,710 |
Managing Your Career in
Tough Times By Hal Helms Ah, for the good old
days! Only a couple of
years ago, one of the
biggest problems for
developers was the
constant blitz of
recruiters... Aug. 23, 2002 12:00 AM Reads: 9,798 |
Understanding the
Model-View-Controller
Design Pattern By Hal Helms With the advent of
ColdFusion MX, CF
programmers have the
ability to bundle data
and functions into a
single unit for the first
time. Macromedia calls
these constructs
ColdFusion Components, or
CFCs; other languages
call them objects. This
isn't to say that
Cold... Jul. 1, 2002 12:00 AM Reads: 9,905 |
What Really Leads to
Successful Software? By Hal Helms ColdFusion MX is a
complete,
from-the-ground-up
rewrite of an existing
piece of software,
shifting its
architectural base from a
purely interpreted
language sitting atop C,
its base language, to one
that compiles into Java
code. That's quite a
shift. Jun. 28, 2002 12:00 AM Reads: 7,326 |
Do You Object? By Hal Helms As I write this,
ColdFusion MX is widely
available in a preview
release and it looks like
it's going to be an
excellent one. CFMX
offers several features
to ColdFusion developers,
including native support
for reading and writing
XML, Unicode support,
better Flash ... May. 30, 2002 12:00 AM Reads: 8,436 |
Handling Recursion By Hal Helms Recursion is a
wonderfully geeky word
that comes from the Latin
word recursio, meaning
'to run back.' A
recursive procedure (or
function, or subroutine)
is a procedure that calls
itself to do part of the
work. The ancients showed
the concept of recursion
as a snake eating itself. May. 2, 2002 12:00 AM Reads: 8,314 |
In Praise of Simple Tools By Hal Helms My first impressions of
going to a professional
baseball game are still
vivid. I was 11 years old
and I went to see the
greatest team in the
world - the New York
Yankees - play in Yankee
Stadium. I grew up
listening to my brothers
tell tales of watching
Mickey Man... Apr. 8, 2002 12:00 AM Reads: 6,744 |
A Case for Methodologies By Hal Helms Several years ago I came
across a statistic that
I've since shared with
many others and it never
ceases to shock me:
according to four
separate studies, the
failure rate for custom
corporate software
development hovers at
70%. In fact, some
studies indicate the
... Mar. 11, 2002 12:00 AM Reads: 6,815 Replies: 1 |
A Fusebox 3 Tutorial -
Part 2 By Hal Helms Last month in CFDJ (Vol.
4, issue 1) we began
building a Fusebox 3
application - a game
played at a social club
run by Vinny. The game is
simple: registered users
log in, pick a number,
and then place a bet
Feb. 5, 2002 12:00 AM Reads: 9,160 Replies: 1 |
A Fusebox Tutorial - Meet
my client Vinny By Hal Helms For some time, Macromedia
has outlined its vision
of ColdFusion
interoperating seamlessly
with Java. In the
November issue of CFDJ
(Vol. 3, issue 11) John
Quarto-vonTivadar and I
gave an overview of
Fusebox 3. Now, over the
next two months I want to
walk through b... Jan. 9, 2002 12:00 AM Reads: 8,595 Replies: 1 |
The Mommy of All OO
Tutorials By Hal Helms For some time, Macromedia
has outlined its vision
of ColdFusion
interoperating seamlessly
with Java. This raises
some very interesting,
exciting possibilities
that CFDJ has invited
authors to explore this
month. My own experience
with object-oriented
programming i... Dec. 3, 2001 12:00 AM Reads: 6,457 |
Fusebox 3.0 By Hal Helms It's finally here! For
months, the lights have
burned late and e-mails
have flown furiously as
work proceeded on the
latest version of the
Fusebox specification,
version 3.0. It was
released to rave reviews
at the Fusebox 2001
conference held in
Orlando on October... Nov. 1, 2001 12:00 AM Reads: 8,438 |
Defending Socrates By Hal Helms So Socrates says, but I
think if we were to pick
out one trait that novice
developers share, it
might well be the
unwillingness to test
code. Why is this? Well,
I can't speak for
everyone, but I remember
when I first began
developing applications;
after struggling... Oct. 4, 2001 12:00 AM Reads: 7,360 |
Fusedoc with XML Vision By Hal Helms The U.S. Army used to
have a recruiting
campaign featuring
colorful posters of
exotic locales (populated
by welcoming people) with
large, bold type that
said, 'See the world.
Join the Army.' I didn't
exactly join the Army.
Instead I received a
personal invitation... Aug. 31, 2001 12:00 AM Reads: 7,590 |
A Script for Teamwork By Hal Helms In this issue of CFDJ,
the editors are looking
at the subject of
collaboration and
ColdFusion. Jul. 11, 2001 12:00 AM Reads: 7,315 |
Pssst! Wanna Hot Tip? By Hal Helms Let's face it: stocks
haven't exactly been the
best place to invest this
year. As I write this,
the Dow has just suffered
its worst-ever week, the
once-mighty NASDAQ is
humbled, and tech
investors are running
from the reach of the
bear, surly and hungry
after long years of
confinement. Apr. 27, 2001 12:00 AM Reads: 6,924 |
Testing for Smarties By Hal Helms If people only knew how
hard I work to gain my
mastery, it wouldn't seem
so wonderful at all. -
Michelangelo Mar. 30, 2001 12:00 AM Reads: 7,651 |
Exploring the Development
Process By Hal Helms Recently I was asked by
another developer to
describe my development
process. Since I enjoy
hearing how other
developers approach
issues, I thought you
might like to hear how
one developer approaches
the entire development
process. Feb. 22, 2001 12:00 AM Reads: 7,615 |
Worst Practices By Hal Helms 'If debugging is the art
of taking bugs out of
programs, programming
must be the art of
putting them in.'
-Anonymous Jan. 27, 2001 12:00 AM Reads: 6,660 |
Forget Work; Let's Play By Hal Helms Let me say it up front:
I'm frustrated by the
training offered to
developers. I'll set a
scene; tell me if it
sounds familiar.
Dec. 26, 2000 12:00 AM Reads: 6,425 |
A Gathering of Fuseboxers By Hal Helms My troubles all began
when my editor heard
about the Fusebox FUN
conference being held on
September 16 in
Charlottesville,
Virginia. 'You're the
perfect person to report
on it,' she said
convincingly. 'After all,
you're already going to
be there doing a
presentation.' Nov. 27, 2000 12:00 AM Reads: 7,344 |
The Screwtape E-Mails By Hal Helms From: screwtape@fourthcir
cle.hell To:
wormwood@e-hell.com
April 4, 1997 My
dearest W, let me join so
many others in
congratulating you on
your promotion to our new
Internet division. I
don't pretend to
understand such things -
I leave such newfangled
... Oct. 30, 2000 12:00 AM Reads: 6,971 |
Making Assertions By Hal Helms I'm a great believer in
modularity of code.
Modularity - breaking
code into distinct pieces
with a well-defined
responsibility - is
crucial if large-scale
development projects are
to be on time, on budget,
scalable, maintainable
and robust. Oct. 5, 2000 12:00 AM Reads: 7,192 |
If You Meet Buddha on the
Road, Kill Him By Hal Helms The title of this article
refers to an ancient Zen
Buddhist saying, meant
like other non-sense
proverbs in this
tradition to startle
the student into a new
way of looking at things. Aug. 23, 2000 12:00 AM Reads: 8,135 |
Hors d'Oeuvres Anyone? By Hal Helms This month I've taken the
liberty of assembling a
small collection of
unrelated ideas that I
think you might enjoy as
ColdFusion appetizers. Jul. 26, 2000 12:00 AM Reads: 7,030 |
You Have 90 Minutes By Hal Helms Some questions seem to be
so obvious that you
wonder why they're even
asked. Take this one, for
example: 'Would you
prefer to have a
noncertified mechanic
work on your car (one who
supposedly does excellent
work) or a certified
mechanic perform the same
task?' Jun. 22, 2000 12:00 AM Reads: 7,053 |
Tipping Points: Little
things that make a big
difference By Hal Helms In his new book, The
Tipping Point: How Little
Things Can Make a Big
Difference (Little,
Brown), Malcolm Gladwell
makes the case for
critical stages in the
development of an
endeavor. May. 25, 2000 12:00 AM Reads: 7,338 |
Sharing The Wealth By Hal Helms For ColdFusion
developers, this really
is the best of times.
Demand for developers is
exploding, taking
salaries and consulting
rates along with it. Apr. 26, 2000 12:00 AM Reads: 6,599 |
About Newsfeeds / Video Feeds
Hal Helms is a well-known speaker/writer/strategist on software development issues. His monthly column in CFDJ contains his Musings on Software Development and he has written and contributed to several books. Hal holds training sessions on Java, ColdFusion, and software development processes. He authors a popular monthly newsletter series. For more information, contact him at hal@halhelms.com or see his website, www.halhelms.com.