CFConversations 20, Roundtable 7 - 10/26/08 - Part 2 on controller frameworks!
Part 2 features other viewpoints not represented in Part 1. For this episode, which was recorded on Wednesday, October 15th (technically, Thursday, 16 October 02:00 UTC time), we have:
- Brian Meloche (moderator)
- Adam Haskell (representing Fusebox)
- Ray Camden (representing Model-Glue)
- Chris Peters (representing ColdFusion on Wheels)
- Mark Mandel, of Transfer fame, but Transfer is an ORM framework, not a controller framework, so he wasn't representing it. On controller frameworks, Mark is framework agnostic.
- Nick Kwiatkowski, who is anti-framework.
The plan is to do more roundtables on other kinds of frameworks, such as ORM/Data, dependency injection, and unit testing frameworks, after the MAX North America conference some time in December or January. We're also interviewing some of the framework authors and lead developers in other episodes (we have two of those already done, and more scheduled).
The feedback on Part 1 so far has been overwhelmingly positive, and I believe part 2 is more of the same. This one was a little more contentious than part 1, and that leads to good podcasting! I personally think this episode is one of our best to date.
Enjoy!
Run time: 1:03:04
I'll also echo Ray's comments about Fusebox, that the latest versions of Fusebox have resolved many of the issues that originally had me feeling that versions 3 and 4 were very repetitive. The latest Fusebox is a lot nicer imo than it's been in the past. Also true (although for me to a lesser extent) of Mach-II and Model-Glue.
Nice cast! didnt know about this site yet.
This episode...
Although I do take the same stance as Nick Kwiatkowski I have enjoyed the framework episodes greatly. I am forced to use frameworks at work and find on small projects with few developers they can hinder us greatly.
The only one thing I didn't like in this episode was the words Search Engine Friendly URL used in ref with frameworks, sorry but its the term user friendly not search engine friendly,
there is nothing search engine friendly about rewriting ULRs http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/09...
and
http://www.newebia.co.uk/blog/index.cfm/2008/10/20...
I have not yet found framework in CF that IS search engine friendly from the ground up sorry.
anyhow, again thanks for the hard work and i look forward to your next post.
Glyn
And thanks to everyone who has become listeners to the podcast! This is a labor of love for me, Adam, Dan, Brian S., Rick, and the rest involved, and we'll keep doing them as long as people want them!
Infact, the most interesting bits of the round tables i found have been when its obvious others present dont agree with whats being said. the fact you had someone anti-framework was cool at first i assumed it was going to be one sided.
again you are a credit to the community I only wish we had such a following in the UK
PS I look forward to the above episodes, makes my drive home much better when i have something interested to listen to!
So while the framework will support ?event=x.y style URLs, it will also support more traditional URLs.
Brian mentioned an upcoming interview and I think during that interview I talked a bit more about porting Ray Camden's Galleon Forums to several frameworks not long ago. When I did that, none of the links or form actions in his original view templates had to change to accommodate the onTap framework. They all just worked as they were. That wasn't true of any of the other four frameworks at the time. I think Adam mentioned an enhancement request for an upcoming Fusebox release to allow that as well.
But in my case my reason for that had nothing to do with SES URLs. I'd been aware for a while that SES URLs weren't really useful and there's even an article on my own blog about that... I was more concerned with limiting the framework's impact on existing views and the amount of code a person might need to rewrite to get something into the framework.
Thanks for posting that URL, I wasn't aware that Google were recommending that people not rewrite their URLs. Good to know! :)
i am not anti framework, however when i started out in CF a few years back i was forced to jump into using one. then when something went wrong i had no idea how to fix it due to my lack of understand I did not know what was happening under the hood. it was not until i stopped using the framework in question and actually started constructing my own application.cfc and writing my own components that I started to learn 'how ColdFusion worked' and how i could do things differently.
as you guys are framework writers and have a much deeper understanding of CF than most users, it can be easy to forget users like myself the frameworks are aimed at.
Some just make us lazy others force us to learn something unrelated to how CF actually works and complicates the understanding of CF.
if we never had to grasp the basic, fundamentals or models these frameworks are based on it means that extending functionality is impossible and the framework has a limited life for that users.
I think we need a framework that forces users to think about they are doing and be flexible in allowing them to make mistake and learn form them, a framework that writes itself as the users experience grows lol ....
does that even make sense, sorry I am ranting on now, will stop? thanks again for the podcast, has got me thinking anyhow.
Right now the onTap framework website is built using the framework and on the site there you can see the documentation on that site. http://on.tapogee.com - the documentation which is part of the core framework download is also written within the framework. I know that there are some folks using parts of the code in the wild, but right now I don't know of any other sites specifically that I could point you toward. Several years ago I gave a presentation for the Austin CFUG and at the time I remember someone working for the city saying he recognized some of the code from an application they had and had always wondered where it came from.