> I personally disagree, respectfully of course, with the people who say, that > developers should be able to maintain > CF and web server, as well as set up 3rd party components etc. To me, that is > like saying that any developer > should be able to set up a database server, know how DNS functions etc. > > While I would agree, that knowing some of these things could be beneficial > for a developer from time to time, I feel > that developers should be specialists who focus solely on developing - not on > server maintenance.
I have to disagree with practically everything you've written here. In my experience, many web developers simply do not know enough about their development stack - which includes all of the items you've mentioned. You don't have to be an expert at configuring a database server or managing DNS, but I can't count the enormous number of times my knowledge of both of those has saved countless hours debugging problems. Your applications don't live in a vacuum - they interact with all of these things. If you don't know how they work, how will you identify problems that aren't directly in your CF code? Here's an extreme example. Many years ago, I was helping some CF developers who were building an application that relied on custom functionality in the browser - a Netscape browser plugin, to be exact. This plugin was written in C++. The developer of the plugin worked offsite, and had the plugin working on her development environment. The CF guys couldn't get it to work on their development environment, though, and had been fighting with it for several months. It turns out that the offsite development environment had debug libraries, and the local one did not - it was as simple as that. Countless hours were shot to hell because nobody on the CF team knew how to check for dependencies, because it was "outside their scope". I fortunately knew how to do this, I did it and discovered the problem the first day I was there. Many years ago, when I was in the military, I drove a tank. But I also learned how to be a gunner, loader, and tank commander - not because I would have to do those things regularly, but because a good driver has to know how those other jobs work in order to do his own job. Now, to wrap this up, I did say "practically everything". I don't think you have to be an expert on server maintenance. But you have to know the basics on how all the components in your application stack work. And for that matter, there are very few experts on CF server maintenance who aren't CF developers. If you ask the average server administrator how best to manage CF, you're probably going to get a blank stare in response. Hell, I developed a class for CF administration for this very reason - I ran into so many clients who simply didn't know what they were doing (and this remains the case to this very day). Dave Watts, CTO, Fig Leaf Software http://www.figleaf.com/ http://training.figleaf.com/ Fig Leaf Software is a Veteran-Owned Small Business (VOSB) on GSA Schedule, and provides the highest caliber vendor-authorized instruction at our training centers, online, or onsite. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Order the Adobe Coldfusion Anthology now! http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Coldfusion-Anthology/dp/1430272155/?tag=houseoffusion Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/message.cfm/messageid:354248 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/unsubscribe.cfm
