On February 1, 2006 I'll be speaking at the Atlanta CFUG (www.acfug.org) on static v. dynamic typing and why I think so many of us are missing the power in CFCs.

We now have a forum for people interested in discussing ideas brought up in my monthly newsletter. URL: http://ray.camdenfamily.com/forums/threads.cfm?forumid=68396328-A2A1-BC2A-B86644B4B7B0A633.

Top ten general software related blog entries this year.

Creating excellent tutorials and training materials requires that we partially forget what we know.

Ruby has changed the nature of the debate about custom software, making ColdFusion more viable for companies and organizations.

Jeff Peters and I have started a podcast. Each week, we'll spend 30 mins or so talking about software issues. The first podcast is available at helmsandpeters.com. Hope you enjoy it.

I'm reading a book recommended by one of my newsletter readers: Emotional Design: Why We Love (Or Hate) Everyday Things. Written by Donald Norman (of The Psychology of Everyday Things fame), the book explores why usability alone isn't enough. Norman

We're very close to a new release of Mach-II. One thing we're concentrating on is better documentation. Somehow (and the blame has to fall on me and Ben), the notion that Mach-II is "really hard" has gotten some currency. I hope to show tha

About 13-14 years ago, while I was living in Tucson, I was introduced to a little creature called a "brown recluse spider" in the most personal way: the bugger bit me. After all this time, the wound this fellow inflicted is still giving me

At the Fusebox conference last week, someone suggested having a CMS so that others could offer articles for the Fusebox.org site. At first, I was amused by this. We just don't get many article submissions for the site, so it seemed a bit like buildin

I've seen many techie blogs disintegrate into rants (using political or social). I think this takes advantage of the good will of the blog's readers. And while I recognize that's it's sometimes fun to write (and read) such musings, I think they have

I drive a lot. Unless I'm headed for the left coast or overseas, I tend to drive. I don't like most of the radio stations available. If I want to listen to music, I prefer to use my iPod. But most of the time, I prefer listening to speech: books, int

I spotted an entry on Joel's blog (www.joelonsoftware.com) that made me want to want to do one of those spinning hip-hop moves that end up with me in this casual pose looking tres cool that were so popular in the 80's. Realizing that this would prob

Since blogs make good confessionals, here's mine: I'm lousy at writing outlines. That might not seem like a big deal, but for a writer, it is. Bad (or no) outlines make a project take much, much longer than it should, which discourages future project

The 6th annual Fusebox conference is going to be held on Sep 29-30 in Rockville, MD. Michael Smith, who did such a great job with CFUnited, has agreed to handle the logistics of the conference: many thanks, Michael.With the increased interest in fram

Over the last several weeks, Joe Rinehart's new framework, Model Glue, has been getting a lot of interest, mostly spurred, I think, by Sean Corfield's blog. While I was at CFUnited (a great conference, btw), the subject came up several times.Here's m

In animal packs such as dogs and wolves, one male and one female from the pack emerges as the alpha animal. The other males take their lead from the alpha male; the other females from the alpha female.I was thinking about this recently while particip

With Adobe's purchase of Macromedia, CF developers are rightly worried about the future of ColdFusion. For 2-3 years, I've felt like Cassandra, warning CF developers that the future didn't look bright for ColdFusion. With Adobe's purchase and given t

This week, I'm teaching my Designing and Developing OO Apps with CFCs class. The students in this class are really bright people (including a Mathematics professor from the University of Bolgna in Italy), but learning OO is hard work. Or let me quali

Allen Holub has written an article for Software Development Magazine in which he argues that computer programming belongs not so much to mathematics as it does to creative writing. Allen has a history of controversial positions, but this read is a re

I've been doing a lot of training lately and that often means traveling. I'm a frequent customer of Marriott and so I have elite member status. Ooh! That's worth spending 75 nights a year away from home for!I even have a special number I can call (a

I was talking with a student recently who's just starting out on his programming journey. He's brand new to the field and was asking me some very basic questions about programming. At this point in his progress, everything is confusion. I sympathize

One of the most important parts of the Fusebox Lifecycle Process (FLiP) is the idea of prototyping to help both clients and developers discover requirements. Now, someone's created software that allows for rapid prototyping. I'm not affiliated with t

After John Q and I sweated to come up with Fusebox 4, I hadn't done much with the framework for a while. Last week, as part of an effort to help newbies understand FB, Jeff Peters and I wrote a little FB 4 app. What fun! If you've not looked at Fuseb

It occurs to me that there are (at least) two types of programmers. We might call them "social programmers" and "solitary programmers". Social programmers work well in collaboration with others; they derive energy from the interac