Digital Ninja

After keeping up with Adam Haskell's frustrations with Fusebox (well, with the vested interests, to be fair) it got me thinking about what Fusebox means to me. I mean, sure, I've thought about ColdBox and ModelGlue and even on a particularly spunky day Mach-II. But each morning I wake up and I'm still a Fusebox developer after 9 or so years.

So with project Fusebox being somewhat of a rudderless ship, or coffee-less donut, or Guinness-less me (you get the picture) where does that leave the Fusebox community? As rich as it ever was, I say!

It's a great framework because it started out dead simple. I started on FB2 and then wrote most of my professional code in FB3. Man, those were the days! Pop some variables into the ole' fbx_Settings file and away you go! It was a snap to get new hires up and running. Then FB4 came, and with it came XML - some kind of new, alien acronym that looked all foreign-like. ;) We pretty much ignored that version. Then along came FB5 and I had to figure out what all the hub-bub was about, so I immersed myself in that. Now I'm a FB5 fan through and through. Yep, you heard me right - a fan of the leader-less, roadmap-less framework.

It's left behind a great legacy with the community. So many applications (many still running) and so many wise lessons learned the hard way. It taught us why a framework is good, it inspired us to try to better it (nod to the sibling frameworks) and it gave some much-needed shape to the wonderfully flexible language that Allaire- er, Macromedia- er, Adobe had given to us.

Personally, I'm going to revel in my continued embrace of Fusebox. Having a fleet of major applications deployed using that technology might have something to do with that, but it's also a feeling of trust and familiarity. Let's not forget, too. We do have FuseNG! Let's wish the Fusebox/FuseNG community further longevity, whether it be called tomayto or tomahto. Just don't call the whole thing off.

It's the dawn of a brand new day. Here in Atlanta with peers and colleagues to finally get my chance to expand my sphere of knowledge on some things I've been lacking on. I would say a small portion of the content is not immediately relatable to my world, another portion could eagerly be applied to enhance my world, and then another segment is pretty much comprised of some things I've identified as "the road to travel" - and what's funny is that some recent talks about upcoming projects may have had that road arrive even sooner than expected.

What's truly cherishing about this for me - and you'd know this if you follow this blog at all - is that I'm going to have a rare chance to be a small fish in a big pond of ColdFusion experts. I expect to be coming up with questions that delve into deeper aspects of these raging curiosities I have. I must fill the empty spaces which I haven't been able to satiate via "expensive mentor-less epiphanies". This is going to be awesome.

And of course, the best part, and that I don't expect to be waving my wacky gospel and tamborine when I return to the "ranch". This stuff will be evident and appreciated by more than one peer, I'm sure. More to come.

Today I, and three other of my co-workers, registered for CFUnited Express Atlanta! I'm pretty excited about going, since it's the only conference I can afford to hit this year. I guess any conference money is a good thing. (insert obligatory "woe is me, the economy" remark)

My focus will be just as much on vying for face time with the presenters and geniuses at the conference as it will be the presentations themselves.ﾠ So much to learn, so little time.