FlexOOP

This should finish up my technical background and can get on with the good stuff.

After proving that I could actually program given something interesting to do, the web development company promptly offered me a position. It consisted of one man who had been working for himself for several years. I worked on all kinds of projects there, large and small, and was allowed to develop my skills in other ventures, not just ColdFusion. However after several years, I felt myself stagnating and not being challenged enough, so, once again, after getting bored, I decided I should look for something new. I had been looking into going towards something of a more OOP design, and needed somewhere that would allow someone with a self-taught CF background, to begin somewhat a-new but bringing all of the coding background along for the ride.

Enter my current company and Adobe Flex. I had no idea (before beginning the position) how much programming and OOP was involved in Flex and ActionScript. I thought that it was all just Flash (which I never thought of as anything more than a design program). After playing with Flex and ActionScript for a couple of weeks, I’ve got a whole new appreciation for it.  It has challenged me more than anything I’ve done so far, and forces me to rethink my previous procedural style of thinking every day. There always seems to be something that can be re-written better or more logically, or encapsulated to save time later. And on that point, I think this article just about sums up me, my programming, and a good portion of why I do what I do The Nerd Handbook (better than I could explain myself )

Anyway, if anyone actually made it this far, thanks for reading and hopefully I’ll have the time and patience (and the code) to post something helpful.

Gareth Personal ColdFusion, Flex, Introduction, OOP

Well, not really too little, but hopefully I won’t bore anyone…it’s all great stuff…really
I learned programming in high school, mainly Pascal on UNIX PCs (yes, we all thought that was way too much money to spend on computers that we were just using to type short Pascal programs on), with some Hypercard on Apple II’s, and some TC Logo on any PCs they had lying around. Before this I had really just tinkered with my old Commodore64 and BASIC, so nothing too crazy. Not seeing any of the potential work or monetary gains in this, I switched gears and went with Biology in college. In my junior year, I realized that I really did not like the biology I was learning (that plus my grades weren’t up to par with being that doctor my mum always wanted me to be), I figured it was too late to change course so I might as well finish up and figure out what I wanted to do after graduation.

I ended up going back home and looking for whatever would earn me some cash, that did not involve manual labor (grocery store stocking and assisting my dad with home repairs taught me early about the benefits of an education). I began working as a temp, then worked as a DBA (well, they called me a DBA, but I don’t think MSAccess really counts, but I still keep DBA on the resume ) at a mortgage company. I transitioned to their web department (this involved my boss leaving and them saying “Here, you have to do the web site now as well”). Luckily they hired a company using ColdFusion to develop their external site, as I had been having fun with classic ASP before that.

I ended up getting bored just working on the intranet (they used frontpage to manage it), and asked if the web development company needed any help building the site. Not ones to turn down free coding help, they jumped at the chance. From here I got to see (and learn) some not so useful coding practices for ColdFusion (pound signs everywhere), but hey, it was a start and I did manage to fix them going forward. I began working with CF4.5 with MSAccess as the dB, and was well on my way to becoming the CF Guru I am today.

Gareth Personal ColdFusion, DBA, Flex, Introduction, Programming

Not exactly the most original title for my first post to my very own blog, but everyone has to start somewhere…and yes I do know that it is spelled Flexibility, but this is a better play on words.

I’m writing to this blog partially as a way to post my thoughts, and partially as a way for me to remember things that may have caused me grief while coding in the past.  In writing them, perhaps I can help others through the same issues but with less grief.

I began writing to a blog over at ColdFusion Community and will probably still post there every now and then, but I thought that I would try creating my own rather than going solely through there.  My wife has been asking for a place to post her thoughts so I figured why not keep everything together and just post them both to the family web site.  She hasn’t decided on what she wants hers to be called yet, but once she does, I’m sure she’ll be posting like crazy!

I had originally tried out blogspot/blogger and thought that it would be a simple process to get it up and running.  Initially it was.  I made one post.  I then decided to start copying over some of my posts from CF Community, and that was where my problems started.  At CFC, you could “future date” your posts.  I posted specific days for the blogspot posts, not knowing that that just puts a date on the post, not when it will actually be posted.  After I made 4 posts (apparently too quickly for blogspot), my blog got mark as potential spam.  I got sent an e-mail notifying me that my blog was mark as potential spam, so I went and clicked the “unspam me” link, and went on my merry way.  After 5 days of hearing nothing back, I decided to search around to find another way to notify Google that I was actually a real person and not trying to spam anyone (I’m sure talking about my history would definitely boost the blog spam ratings of someone, somewhere).  Finally I found a link, filled in more or less the same information as before, and waited another 5 days before hearing nothing.  After posting nothing for 10 days, and finally having something to say, I decided enough was enough and started to look around for other solutions.  I then came across WordPress.com

I signed up for an account which, just like blogspot, was quick and easy.  Signed in and started to make my first post.  As I went through my day, I surfed around a bit and found someone who posted that wordpress.com was built off of open source code at wordpress.org  Having a family site written in PHP (for fun, I know, crazy aren’t I ), I decided I would try installing the wordpress.org pages and give it a whirl.  Well, after running through the 5 minute installation process, I’m glad I went with Wordpress.  It was such a simple thing to get going, and looks very clean and professional throughout.  Having the PHP pages available is really nice for customization, and as a learning tool.  I’m always looking for ways to improve my coding skills, and what better way than to look through code that has had perhaps thousands of eyes looking at it, improving and optimizing the code.  Plus the simplicity of the administration section will be a boon for the wife.  She wants something that’s easy to use, that she can post her thoughts and pictures and be done with.

This blog will probably be primarily focused on Adobe Flex, Adobe AIR, and Adobe/Macromedia ColdFusion, but have a smattering of personal items, probably some rants, and certainly a PHP issue every now and then.  Hopefully it will become something that will get a regular following, but if it helps one person who was having difficulty coding, then it will have done its job.

Gareth Personal ColdFusion, Flex, Introduction, welcome, WordPress