BOF = Birds of a Feather, check out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BOF
/Cody -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Kirk Brogdon Sent: Friday, September 23, 2005 1:21 PM To: [email protected] Subject: RE: Re: [CFCDev] Ruby on Rails for CF I'm still working on BOF . . . -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Seth MacPherson Sent: Friday, September 23, 2005 12:15 PM To: [email protected] Subject: RE: Re: [CFCDev] Ruby on Rails for CF Could someone please clue me in to what ORM means? Thanks. - Seth -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of John Paul Ashenfelter Sent: Friday, September 23, 2005 7:14 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Re: [CFCDev] Ruby on Rails for CF On 9/23/05, hal helms <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Oh, diggity: I could get seduced back into using Smalltalk...although > I hear > Ruby is pretty sweet. I'll have to check Rails out: I know too little > to do > more than voice an uninformed opinion. Actually, Ruby owes a lot of it's idioms to Smalltalk -- there's a definite thread of connection. And I'll take the opportunity to point out that I'm talking about this exact subject at the Fusebox and Frameworks conference next week. Maybe we need to add a BOF? Here's a quick synopsis "And while you can't build your ColdFusion application in Rails (yet!), there's still a lot that can be learned from the framework and the Rails approach to application architecture. Come learn about the framework that's having Java, PHP, and even .NET developers thinking about running Ruby on Rails for their next application" Sounds like it's going to turn into more of an open forum :) :) But seriously, the big thing about Rails isn't that it's got ORM, AJAX, or any of the other specific features. The key thing about Rails is that the framework embodies many of the key best practices of the Agile methodologies and bakes them right into the framework. For example: + MVC design is required + conventional configuration is automatic + dev/test/production is built into the framework (you change an environment var, not code) + testing's built in (functional, unit, and even performance). + you can directly interact with the running application from the command line (e.g. dump out an object from the *production* application, while it's running). etc, etc. Fundamentally, it makes things easy unless they need to be hard -- and then all of the basic assumptions can be overridden without massive code changes. More importantly, Rails makes it *really* hard to write bad code :) One quick example, David HH (the Rails creator) likes plural database table names and underscore, so Rails ASSUMES that the the LineItem object is stored in the database table line_items. If you're ok with that, you're Ruby code is class LineItem < ActiveRecord::Base end But if you'd rather name the database table in the singular and without underscores, your code becomes class LineItem < ActiveRecord::Base set_table_name "lineItem" end So follow the convention, no problem. Have your own convention, no big deal. As an aside, the pluralizer in Rails is pretty basic -- it understads that Person should be people and that Datum should be data in the db, but it doesn't understand that Sheep is not sheeps... so class Sheep < ActiveRecord::Base set_table_name "sheep" end The Pragmatic Programmers (Dave Thomas/Andy Hunt) are some of the best methodology guys around, and they are smitten w/ Ruby in general and Rails in specific. And the open source community (esp the Java folks) are jumping on board -- I had dinner with Dave Thomas, David HH (rails' creator), James Duncan Davidson, Erik Hatcher, and a few others at OSCON just as the book on Rails was being released. The interest is *phenomenal* -- and extremely serious. The rails book from the Pragmatic Programmers is probably the best serious source for learning rails, other than the rubyonrails.org site. The reason this should be important to you as a CF developer is twofold: 1) Frameworks build on the improvements of other frameworks. For example, Tapestry is lots more flexible than Struts for many Java apps, but there are many ideas from Tapestry that are informing the design of Struts 2.0 (aka Shale). 2) Rails is the first serious new contender in the web dev world that's object-oriented and RAD. Interestingly, many of the arguments against it are similar to those against CF ("It can't scale". "What's that weird langauge -- it's not .NET or Java", etc). CF's always had the advantage over the other platforms in speed of development, easy of use, etc. Rails certainly can complete on those terms. I think in the coming 12-18 months, lots of proposals that might have gone to CF shops may go to RoR since the Agile java folks are heading that direction. My 2c. -- John Paul Ashenfelter CTO/Transitionpoint (blog) http://www.ashenfelter.com (email) [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---------------------------------------------------------- You are subscribed to cfcdev. To unsubscribe, send an email to [email protected] with the words 'unsubscribe cfcdev' as the subject of the email. CFCDev is run by CFCZone (www.cfczone.org) and supported by CFXHosting (www.cfxhosting.com). CFCDev is supported by New Atlanta, makers of BlueDragon http://www.newatlanta.com/products/bluedragon/index.cfm An archive of the CFCDev list is available at www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] ---------------------------------------------------------- You are subscribed to cfcdev. To unsubscribe, send an email to [email protected] with the words 'unsubscribe cfcdev' as the subject of the email. 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CFCDev is run by CFCZone (www.cfczone.org) and supported by CFXHosting (www.cfxhosting.com). CFCDev is supported by New Atlanta, makers of BlueDragon http://www.newatlanta.com/products/bluedragon/index.cfm An archive of the CFCDev list is available at www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]
