Thought Delimited

In an ideal application development process, you work with the client to get an accurate picture of all of the business logic involved in the process the application is supposed to handle, and the end result is a robust system built with clean, understandable code.

But it doesn't always work out that way (some would say it never works out that way). Most of us have had to deal with "scope creep." In fact, one could argue that most modern CFML-coding frameworks and patterns came out of the need to deal with "scope creep" and other reasons for changing our applications.

But sometimes the challenge in creating a clean application comes from the nature of the business "logic" itself, the real-world process that your application is supposed to mimic and replace. It occurred to me the other day that that is often the biggest hurdle I have to overcome with the applications that I'm asked to construct.

When I work with my clients to figure out what exactly what tasks the software needs to perform, I often discover that the processes at work are often riddled with exceptions and conditionals. Sometimes my clients are consciously aware of these exceptions, but other times I have to point them out and we have to figure out how they need to be dealt with.

We humans can handle exceptions within our thought processes very easily. Computer logic, on the other hand, doesn't handle exceptions so casually (which is probably why errors can be referred to as "exceptions"). Coding for even a single exception to an otherwise iron-clad rule can make the code involved twice as complex and perhaps a bit less than pristine.

While we do all we can as responsible programmers to deliver a beautifully-coded application, I think that sometimes there's no avoiding the touch of ugliness that comes from trying to represent and replicate an "ugly" human-driven process.

Blogging bullet-point style tonight:

• Charlie Arehart's new CF411 site has a MASSIVE amount of links to tools and resources for CFML and web development. Stop what you're doing right now, go to the page, and store it somewhere (your bookmarks, Delicious, wherever).

• The announcement that ColdFusion 8 Enterprise is now available for free for educational use (in other words, for learning purposes) was made on Monday. You can find out more at https://freeriatools.adobe.com/coldfusion/

  While I'm glad the announcement is out, I just wish it had been promoted better. There's still nothing about it up on the Adobe home page or even on Adobe's ColdFusion product page. Why not?

• Last (and least...), Google surprised everyone this week with their new Chrome web browser. It got so much attention that everyone stopped talking about the iPhone, which is admittedly pretty impressive.

  Like everyone else, I've played with it. Here's my take on it (yep, more bullet-points):

  • It runs pretty well.
  • It does seem to run JavaScript more quickly than other browsers.
  • It has a few nice innovative features.
  • It can be quirky at times and it has some flaws (but it is a beta).
  • It has promise, but it doesn't provide any new functionality that I find particularly useful to me.
  • FireFox will remain my browser at work and at home.

I've been a little lax in posting about new episodes of the CFConversations podcast (and lax in my blog postings in general), but I wanted to point out that episode #9 (the 5th interview episode) was released today.

The reason this episode is being released mid-week is because part of the interview is about the Michigan Flex Camp which will be held on July 30 and 31.

I've heard very little chatter about the podcast in the CFML blogosphere, so I'm curious: are folks listening, and do they like what they hear (content-wise)?

Hey, folks, the first CFConversations interview podcast is now available. Check it out--you can either subscribe to the podcast via iTunes (just search for "CFConversations") or download each episode directly from the CFConversations website.

The fourth episode of the CFConversations podcast, the last of the three episodes recorded at CFUnited, was released early this morning.

This episode focuses on some ideas that came out of Brian Meloche's conference session on promoting the use of CFML outside of the ColdFusion community. Check it out!