Simon Whatley » Ben Forta

A Minor Rant About The ColdFusion 8 Developer Exam

Simon — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 14:19:06 +0000

The Adobe ColdFusion 8 Developer Exam arrived earlier this year and it is about time I took it. But like Ben Nadel, the exam scares me! Why? Because there is so much more to know. With the introduction of new AJAX tags, native JSON support, .NET integration, image manipulation, threading, interfaces, not to mention full PDF integration, the presentation builder and across the board enhancements, there are a lot of new things to know.

If it wasn’t for the fact that I am also an Adobe Certified Trainer, I would probably shy away from taking the exam, since, apart from showing that I have gained an Advanced level of knowledge of what’s available in the language/application, is it really relevant?

Now for the moan…

I like to prepare for exams properly. I studied hard for the CFMX6.1 and CFMX7 exams because I wanted to achieve the best result I possibly could. I don’t much like the stigma of mediocrity, so I try hard. But with the advent of the ColdFusion 8 exam, Adobe aren’t making life any easier and this isn’t because of the increased number of features. It’s because they are not supporting their exam with the appropriate study material.

In the past, Ben Forta had been commissioned to create the official developer study guide. However, according to Ben, this appears no longer to be the case (at least for now).

It beggars belief that Adobe release a product, then release a related exam, but do not have the will to produce a study guide. Yes we have the Web Application Construction Kit and Livedocs, but for me, they are either not succinct enough or not available in print. It makes it tough to study.

Clearly there is a cost issue, but Adobe Publishing can be smarter these days with their print-runs. Indeed they could even allow developers to choose between a print and PDF versions, much like Manning and many other publishers.

Perhaps Ben is busy. Surely not! But if it is the case, I’m sure there are a number of his peers that could take up the mantle. Cue…

A ray of hope…

There is a small ray of hope. There is likely to be an updated version of the popular CFMX Exam Buster by CentraSoft. Brian Simmons is working hard on the latest version.

The Coldfusion Podcast Episode 19 – Where is Coldfusion?

Simon — Sun, 19 Mar 2006 19:56:38 +0000

Bryan Kaiser & Michael Haynie talk about the usual news and then digress into the topic of the future of ColdFusion and its limited uptake in the developer community. This is a hot topic with a number of key figures in the ColdFusion community, in particular Simon Horwith and Ben Forta, have written articles to ‘defend’ ColdFusion, something I find myself doing almost on a daily basis.

They make reference to an online, download only, book by 37Signals, called Getting Real which at $19 is not only cheap but a great read. 37Signals have successfully implemented a number of web projects and this publication draws reference to their experiences.

Links:

Listen to the podcast or get the feed at feedburner: http://feeds.feedburner.com/coldfusionpodcast

The ColdFusion Podcast Episode 10

Simon — Mon, 09 Jan 2006 02:07:02 +0000

Main Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/coldfusionpodcast

Bryan Kaiser & Michael Haynie talk about a lot of news, OO programming, AJAX and web applications.

Links:

Listen to the podcast.

The ColdFusion Podcast Episode 7

Simon — Tue, 13 Dec 2005 01:53:33 +0000

Main Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/coldfusionpodcast

Bryan Kaiser & Michael Haynie talk about a lot of news, the cfcompile utility and J2EE packaging and deployment.

Links: