An Architect's View

Blame Twitter! I was a technical reviewer for the ColdFusion 8 version of this book and, looking back, I failed to blog about it - I just tweeted it. My bad. Then the ColdFusion 9 version appeared and again, I just tweeted about it.

What stood out about the CF8 version was the engaging, easy to read style used to tackle real world problems in a pragmatic way, showcasing increasingly more advanced features in the language and the platform. It is a great book to introduce new developers to CFML, as well as helping existing developers come up to speed on many of the new features in CF8, as well as encouraging the adoption of better practices by making ColdFusion Components (CFCs) more accessible and natural to use - with a pragmatic approach.

Rather than take the easy way out with simply adding chapters to the book to cover what's new in CF9, the author and the publisher have taken the bold step of taking on a fairly substantial rewrite to improve the flow and integrate the new CF9 features right into the existing fabric of the book (see, for example, this sample chapter about ORM (PDF). I'm pleased to see another ColdFusion book out there and I'm especially pleased that so much effort has gone into this new book when an easier option would have been possible (but much less beneficial).

I'll write a longer review of the book in due course.