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Permalink Reply by Dan Miller on 27 February 2008 at 4:51pm

I was in the same boat... playing around with each ColdBox release, studying up on ColdSpring and Transfer but never setting up a working application that actually did anything important.

I finally just had to take the leap and dive in, once I did it was much easier to continue. They way I kept myself from getting to discouraged was to apply a sort of agile development thought process to what I was doing. I set basic goals and then once something was "working" I would re-evaluate, modify and add until I got my next goal to a working state.

My first goal was to get ColdBox functioning as my framework and setup a basic page layout/design. it was harder than normal because I wanted to refactor ColdBox to work under my application root instead of my server root. Next I added ColdBox's IOC support for my ColdSpring setup. Illudium made the job much easier. I just continued from there adding in Ajax support and everything else my app needed.

My only problem is that my objects are quite messy and poorly setup (It's hard to jump into the OO mindset!). My next task to rewrite that portion of the application. I hate wasting the time but the only way I could learn this was to get my feet wet. Now that my application is working I see all the flaws in my object schema that weren't so apparent when I was planning it out without experience to guide me a bit.

All this goes to say, I would jump right in and just start adding things going from basic goals to more complex. It worked for me... although I don't want anyone else looking at my code right now. It's like school photos all over again, hideously embarrassing and prominently displayed on my mom's fridge (ok, so maybe it's a SVN repo instead of mom's fridge).

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Permalink Reply by Jeff Fleitz on 4 March 2008 at 2:21am

Hey Dan,

Thanks for taking the time to reply in detail.

I agree that trying to eat the whole enchilada will only be discouraging, so I plan on taking your advice.

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Permalink Reply by Dan Miller on 5 March 2008 at 9:39pm

Hey Jeff,

Are you enjoying that head start book? I'm thinking that's the next step for me. I've got the basics of OOP but I'm having trouble applying the ideas to real world coding and I keep catching myself falling back into the comfort of procedural thinking.

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Permalink Reply by Jeff Fleitz on 25 March 2008 at 3:19pm

Sorry for being late on the reply. Too many irons in the fire lately.

I like the book a lot, and the Head First method of writing, which makes the content easier to digest. I haven't read the gang of four book, and I don't know that I will. But I can definitely recommend this book.

I hear you re: procedural thinking. So easy just to build something with what you know, it is hard to make that shift. I need a real project to work on. I am not the type who just likes to play with stuff and throw it away.

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Permalink Reply by Sana Ullah on 25 March 2008 at 2:22pm

Personally I would suggest to concentrate on sample Apps of ColdBox. There is allot to learn, specially coldbox docs are really good. Once you are comfortable with framework then move to Transfer.

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Permalink Reply by Jeff Fleitz on 25 March 2008 at 3:21pm

Thanks, Sana.

I think you are right. Awful lot to digest.

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