So what people are saying is that they've learn CF thru the school of hard
knocks? Adapting knowledge from other areas or research
(books,websites,etc)? The other choise is specialist courses al La Daemon
(and others)?


>> As a whole - it almost seems like web developers 'just pick up' a
language at some point and run with it

yup. that's me. Pascal (sad loss) -> C++ -> VB -> ASP -> CF. I'm now
sharpening up my PHP (groan).

>> Personally I feel that the benefits of CF (and particularly CFMX) can
only be seriously gleaned 
after a good grounding of the fundamentals of programming.

only for those interested. After ASP's death we had a decision: ASP.NET (too
hard/too much pre-req knowledge), PHP or CF. Guess what we chose? And
getting results quickly has been a boon to keep all those ADD students
interested! (we want dynamic websites NOW!). 

>> - there is no formal indoctrination, much like there is with something
like Java/C++/.NET. Maybe there should be?

Ahhh... watch this space.

cheers
barry.b

-----Original Message-----
From: Mark M [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Monday, 20 October 2003 1:59 PM
To: CFAussie Mailing List
Subject: [cfaussie] Re: who teaches CF? (was" Rates for start-up")


I'll 3rd that opinion - 

Personally I feel that the benefits of CF (and particularly CFMX) can only
be seriously gleaned 
after a good grounding of the fundamentals of programming.

(And no offense is intended to those who have gone to CF as a first
language, I know some 
very good developers who have done just that.)

I feel that if CF was to be taught in University (or related) it should only
be available to final 
(ish?) year students, and thus can be specifically aimed more at the more
advanced topics of 
CF and it can be assumed that the more fundamental aspects of programming
have already 
been learned.
(Whether or not that has been the case is a different matter all together).

As a weird aside - if not tertiary, where do people fall into doing CF? I
happened to get 
dropped into it when I started doing an idea for a web starte up with
another guy at 
University (that never went anywhere), and then just happened to continue
doing freelance 
work in it.

If it hadn't been for those events, I probably would have end up being a
entry level Java-
Monkey somewhere. (You know.. getting coffee and stuff ;o) )

As a whole - it almost seems like web developers 'just pick up' a language
at some point and 
run with it - there is no formal indoctrination, much like there is with
something like 
Java/C++/.NET.

Maybe there should be?

Mark

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Quoting Taco Fleur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:

> I fully agree with you.
> Only learned that the hard way though, by learning VB after CF...
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Pat Branley [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: Monday, 20 October 2003 1:11 PM
> To: CFAussie Mailing List
> Subject: [cfaussie] Re: who teaches CF? (was" Rates for start-up")
> 
> 
> > I personally haven't a problem dealing with new languages, but the jury
is
> > still out on whether students can easily migrate to another language
after
> > only learning CF's tags.
> 
> I would agree. I dont think CF is the best entry-level language to teach
new
> programmers. For that matter i dont think its a good idea for anybody to
> learn programming in an un-typed procedural language. too easy to get into
> bad habbits.
> 
> I did a course at uni in web engineering
(www.cs.newcastle.edu.au/~seng2050)
> , the course covered web development in general and UML for developing web
> applications. They covered JSP/Servlets and PHP, but the final assignment
> was open to so you could develop in in whatever you liked including CF.
This
> is probably where CF fits into the picture of educational languages, more
as
> an optional extension than core learning.
> 
> On the other side of the coin i think that CF would be usefull in a course
> more aimed at designers than programmers, either for building back-ends to
> flash or for providing simple dynamic content (eg. the famous MM example
of
> doing a query in CF and outputting resultset in less code than ASP). This
is
> becuase your not interested in teaching students how the code works, its
> just a means to an end.
> 
> I think maybe you kinda need to ask 'why do we develop in CF' ? Its
because
> its RAD tool. You can do things alot faster and use less code than
> alternative languages out there. This means that alot of the specifics of
> how things are achieved are hidden in the magic of those wonderfull
> <CFSomething> tags. This is not the best thing when your trying to teach
> someone how to program.
> 
> I think you need to know the rules first before you can start to break
them
> and take shorcuts like you can in CF.
> 
> my 2c
> 
> Pat
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> "Beattie, Barry" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> >
> >
> > Although we get lots of these arguments too, I'm sure we get more
students
> > understanding programming because of it. CFC's (basic OO programming)
> > especially so.
> >
> > Robin Hilliard could jump in here and point out the "paying for
worthwhile
> > technology" argument and the dev edition being free, etc (the students
> only
> > argument remining might be lack of free CF hosts/CF hosting costing more
> > than PHP, etc)
> >
> > <- my point ->
> > my worry is that after teaching CF as a tag-based language, how
> transferable
> > are these skills to
> > other languages?
> > </- my point ->
> >
> > eg: last year was the last time we taught ASP - it died out. sucessful
> > students were able to pick up another language (eg: PHP) and get a job
> > because they knew how web programming worked and they were skilled in an
> > un-typed procedural language.
> >
> > I personally haven't a problem dealing with new languages, but the jury
is
> > still out on whether students can easily migrate to another language
after
> > only learning CF's tags.
> >
> > eg: I didn't teach CFINSERT and discourage students from using it.
They'd
> be
> > better off using CFQUERY and an INSERT INTO sql statement. There are not
> > many CFINSERT equiv in other languages so it's use for me is very
limited.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Mark Stanton [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > Sent: Monday, 20 October 2003 10:17 AM
> > To: CFAussie Mailing List
> > Subject: [cfaussie] RE: Rates for start-up
> >
> >
> > I tried to get CF into TAFE when I was teaching there, but was met with
> some
> > pretty negative feedback from staff & students. The logic behind there
> > argument was why should we be learning/teaching something that costs $$
> when
> > there are "free" products (I am aware of the counter arguments) in the
> same
> > space. I thought this was a fair enough considering that most of the
> > students were looking at getting up & running with web dev stuff on
their
> > own or in their businesses with a minimum budget.
> >
> > The part that really didn't make sense was the insane investment in M$
> > products that TAFE were more than happy to make & push. AFAIK M$ were
> *very*
> > supportive of TAFE.
> >
> > I would have loved to have got CF in there because I really think
students
> > would have been able to learn & achieve more in their time there. But at
> the
> > same time I can understand the students reluctance. These people turning
> up
> > on their own time 3 nights a week for a year - working their guts
out....
> > the lower the barrier to entry (dollar wise especially) for these
people,
> > the better IMHO.
> >
> > In the end we went with php....
> >
> >
> > Cheers
> >
> > Mark
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> 
> 
> 
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