Please get someone to clean up and build a proper documentation site to allow the users of ColdFusion and CF buillder to be able to use and understand your product,
I am new to ColdFusion and I am trying to learn the basics of creating a data driven web application using CF Builder linked to a CF server and MS SQL database. I have looked at the Basic tutorial videos. In the videos there is mention of a Course to learn ColdFusion.
I noticed that the version mentioned was not the latest, there are only 3 or 4 videos available, and there are no others which together could be considered a Course. Where are the Tutorial videos for a first-time developer in ColdFusion? Shouldn’t a course be complete and up-to-date? With Microsoft documentation at least they provide complete step-by-step documentation for their products, such as in Visual-Studio for such objectives as Creating a Web application.
Is anyone monitoring the status of your Adobe documentation and your delivery to your customers? You can start by posting a link to a complete Course to enable programmers to be able to build or understand the components and provide a tutorial which is complete. Having a scattered list of quick videos on various subjects is not helpful.
Newbie
1 posts
Philip, I appreciate your frustration. There are indeed many ways in which the docs are wanting, but it’s often not that what you want doesn’t exist, just that it may be hard to find. To be clear, I don’t work for Adobe, so I can’t fix anything, but I can help point you to what you seek (and we can only hope that someone from Adobe may take note of this and seek to improve things).
First, as for a “course to learn ColdFusion”, there is indeed one, and it’s free and online–and it’s neither scattered nor few. It’s readily found in a number of places (but again, you’d be forgiven for not having found them on your own):
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PL3iywAijqFoUD31CQBLsHvJn4WAonNA7r&v=9viMI8f4myM
- the course covers CF2016, but all of it applies to CF2018 and above (and even below), as it’s focused on fundamentals that are rather unchanging. Even so, it is at least a recent course
- It has 12 segments, broken into bite-sized chunks, which would take several hours to complete
- https://coldfusion.adobe.com/2016/03/new-coldfusion-training-videos-available/
- The blog post that announced it
- I see that this course (at least the first video) is linked to from the bottom of this page (at coldfusion.adobe.com), under “getting started” tutorials, https://coldfusion.adobe.com/tutorial/#tutorial-getting-started, but I see that indeed it only lists the first video and not all the rest. Again, the link above will let you see all of them.
Note that there is also the Adobe Certified CF Developer training, which is entirely different (and far more comprehensive) instruction, including 50 videos and more, though not free:
- https://coldfusion.adobe.com/certificate/
- which is also linked to from the top of this portal where you have posted your discussion, coldfusion.adobe.com
- which is also linked to from the top of this portal where you have posted your discussion, coldfusion.adobe.com
Moving from training to docs, there is indeed also substantial documentation of CF, though many don’t realize it. Most often, people will google some tag or function and find the CFML Reference, and that’s certainly a useful resource. But for someone like you, just getting started, trying to learn CF from that would be like trying to learn to speak English by reading a dictionary–not at all the way to go.
Instead, you should consider a couple of important resources:
- https://helpx.adobe.com/coldfusion/developing-applications/user-guide.html
- This is the missing link for most people, the Developing CF Applications manual, which if printed would be nearly 3000 pages. It covers every aspect of CF, generally in MORE detail than the Reference, or at least more from the perspective of understanding and USING a thing
- https://helpx.adobe.com/coldfusion/user-guide.html?topic=/coldfusion/morehelp/building-apps.ug.js
- Since you mention using CF Builder, there is also an entire guide on using that, which most CFB users never notice or consider. If you read even just the first few “chapters” of this guide, you will quickly accelerate your understanding and be far above many others who have been using it for years
- https://helpx.adobe.com/coldfusion/getting-started-coldfusion-builder.html
- This is an even more concise (about 20 page) intro to using CF and CFBuilder. I think this may be the best thing for you to start with, given where you are coming from. But the rest will help fill out your understanding, as you continue to explore things
- This is an even more concise (about 20 page) intro to using CF and CFBuilder. I think this may be the best thing for you to start with, given where you are coming from. But the rest will help fill out your understanding, as you continue to explore things
Finally, be aware also of the following:
- https://helpx.adobe.com/support/coldfusion.html
- a page pointing out many of the resources above, linked to from various places
- Even then, some of the pages linked to from that resource may well still list resources from CF11 or earlier, which is indeed unfortunate but at least for someone getting started (where fundamentals often have not changed from release to release), it’s far better than feeling like you have nothing to start with
- On my cf411.com site, I list several such resources as well:
- https://www.cf411.com/dochelp
- CFML Documentation/Help Tools and Resources
- https://www.cf411.com/cftrainingfree
- CFML Training Resources (free)
- https://www.cf411.com/cfres
- CFML Resource Sites
- CFML Resource Sites
- https://www.cf411.com/dochelp
All that said, I again lament with you how there are many warts in the docs and learning resources, and ways that things could be vastly improved.
Part of the problem also is that being an Adobe product, the CF team HAS to follow the lead of Adobe. For instance, the CF docs (that Dev Apps guide) are several levels deep and were created originally by Allaire and then Macromedia. The Adobe site doc design guidelines support only about 3 levels of depth, so often the CF docs seem to “stop” on a topic, and there’s no way to get to the “next page”. But the hands of the CF team are tied, unless they fundamentally reorganize the docs to fit that mold. (They can and should. I’m just saying it’s not a trivial task.)
And it doesn’t help that some links will take you elsewhere within the Adobe site to pages which have nothing to do with CF and sometimes no way to seeming way to find out about it there. That’s not a denigration or lack of respect for CF by Adobe that many think, because again it could happen with any of the several dozen other products that are not in the “creative cloud” or “document management” focus, which gets prominence.
Anyway, back to your main point, clearly, someone needs to be tending the garden of CFML training and documentation resources, and linking well to them. Until that’s addressed, I hope the above will help you.
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