The online Coldfusion community website

Introduce yourself!

Now that there are a decent numbers of folks in this group, I think it would help get things started if we all introduced ourselves. Nothing formal: just the name of your educational institution and what kind of CF work you do there.

I'm Brian. I work in the Office of Information Technology (the central IT infrastructure unit) at the University of Maryland, College Park: home of the Maryland Terrapin sports teams. I've been a full-time CF developer for 4 years now, creating or refactoring web applications for various departments at the university.

When I first started, we had two part-time undergraduate developers, but now it's just me, so I have to handle the whole process: meeting with clients, generating application requirements, setting up the database tables, prototyping, writing up the contract, and finally coding the app.

We recently rolled out a Java-based portal to the university, and I've developed a couple of portlets for it using CF, so that's a new aspect of my work.

I enjoy the work that I do, because the projects tend to be unique and I get to try out new things. The non-coding aspects of my job can be a drag, though--especially if it involves internal or campus politics.

That's about it, so...next! :)

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Wally Kolcz on 19 November 2007 at 8:38pm: We switched to CF8 officially last month, but I had been developing on it for well over 6 months so the new version of our site (which is a ModelGlue/Reactor/ColdSpring application) was running on it for a while. It has been fun using the extras in 8 on the site (exchange, presentations, etc.); ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Jason Fill on 19 November 2007 at 8:49pm: Troy - a bit off topic but - War Eagle! Big game this weekend, I am looking forward to it! I am up here in Birmingham-so not too far. Is there much CF development down there at Auburn? I know a company up here just hired a student that graduated from Auburn to do some CF development. I was not sure if many departments were moving to CF down there - just curious.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Troy Hahn on 19 November 2007 at 9:19pm: War Eagle! Hopefully we have a awesome game this weekend!

Unfortunately, there is only a small group.. The business school, liberal arts, and my department fisheries. It is kinda funny, but the reaction I get when I mention the word CF is that is is more for a younger generation...and the old school programmers are not found of it. So until they retire it will not be widespread.

Heh I even have trouble convincing some of the old schoolers' that Spry is neat lol and I built a entire faculty directory with it lol Oh well progress will get here soon, I pray!; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Brian Swartzfager on 19 November 2007 at 9:44pm: ColdFusion's always had a reputation of being a beginner's programming language because it's so easy to develop something usable in CF with a procedural coding style, and it's hard to convince programmers who are comfortable with their particular language that another language is just as good or better.

But building usable apps and tools quickly (like your faculty directory) is a good way to demonstrate to those old-school programmers the value of ColdFusion.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Dave Powell on 19 November 2007 at 9:13pm: I'm an Applications Analyst with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In my current position, I'm all PeopleSoft, but I'm still the AUG for campus, and I do a bit of CF consulting on the side.

In my previous life, I developed an intranet application for the School of Pharmacy, as well as a number of other internal business applications with reporting functions.

At UNC, we have a small but dedicated band of CF developers that realize that PHP is not much fun to develop in. We have a strong user base for other Adobe apps, and my hope is to draw those other users into CF for web development.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Brian Swartzfager on 19 November 2007 at 9:57pm: When I saw in your profile that you were from Durham, I thought you might be at UNC. Do you follow college basketball? The Tarheels always seem to be strong contenders in both the men's and women's game.

So is it the same at UNC as it is at Auburn: PHP is the most prevalent web language in use on campus, with ColdFusion used in certain areas? Do the schools/departments individually decide which technology they want to use?; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Dave Powell on 21 November 2007 at 5:17pm: pretty much...

...it all has to do with politics and money...those units with their own money have the opportunity to develop in whatever they want...some choose CF...

...there used to be campus-wide support for CF, but unfortunately, the last version placed on the university shared web space was 4.5...

...i dont' agree with that stance, but changing minds at an academic institution isn't easy...; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Luis Matthews on 20 November 2007 at 4:32pm: I am a ColdFusion developer for Thomas Jefferson University In Philadelphia, PA. These days I work mostly on internal projects, and data integration work in support of our main web team. (who also use CF). We currently run CF 7.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Sam Farmer on 20 November 2007 at 10:53pm: I work at Interfolio, an online dossier service, that is used almost exclusively by academics. Our product is CF 8 and MySQL.

While technically not working for a higher ed institution I hope its ok if I join this group since our users are the same people.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Brian Swartzfager on 21 November 2007 at 4:10am: Hi, Sam, good to see you here.

Anyone whose CF work is related to the needs of higher education is welcome here.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Sam Farmer on 21 November 2007 at 1:57pm: Cool.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Stephen Judd on 21 November 2007 at 12:44am: I am the Manager of IT and Distance Ed for UNH Cooperative Extension, the primary outreach arm of the University of New Hampshire. I do CF development about 60% of the time, mainly internal apps for reporting, scheduling, etc. I have one developer that works with me, and we've been exclusively CF (except for some open source stuff like Moodle and MediaWiki) for over six years.

The most useful app I've built is a form builder that allows our educators to create their own forms and surveys and gather the results, without any effort on our part. UNH has adopted it University wide now. I made it open source and posted it on RIAForge (fbx_formbuilder).

I develop using Fusebox (have progressed from 2 to 5.5). I'm still working on OOP development, but struggle with it at times.; ▶ Reply to This