Customer Reviews

Programming Coldfusion

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I received my copy of Programming ColdFusion about a week ago. I didn't even know O'Reilly had a ColdFusion book until I saw a ColdFusion article featured on their web site.

Anyhow, I just finished reading it from cover to cover today and have to say that it is absolutely hands down THE BEST ColdFusion book on the market. I have all of the Forta books. I have the Wrox book, and while they are all great in their own respects, the O'Reilly book completely rocks!

Every chapter is well written and the book flows nicely from one chapter to the next - the result of having a single author as opposed to 5-10 like most of the other ColdFusion books. Rob gives indepth coverage to several topics usually skimmed over by the other ColdFusion authors such as LDAP, Verity, and regular expressions. His coverage of user defined funcitons is excellent as is the cflib.org site he hosts. The tag reference and function reference are awesome. Much more convenient than the online docs and the examples actually work!

Programming ColdFusion has become my NEW ColdFusion bible!

Front the first chapter, this book reads and flows easily. I find it, so far the best one out there for the reason it JUST covers straight programming CF. Not Studio or the server. Just straight 900 pages of pure CF programming. From basic to advanced, "LDAP, Verity (including the new K2-limited that comes in CF v5.0, CFSCRIPT, custom tags, WDDX, Graphing (new server side graphing and charting in CF 5) to name a few. I wholly recommend going out and adding this book to your collection.

I used the Forta 4.0 books for 2 years, was happy with them and was prepared to purchase his 5.0 book. Upon looking through the O'Reilly book and the Forta 5.0 at the bookstore, however, I found the O'Reilly to be superior for an experienced CF programmer. First of all the Forta is too big. Picking it up and sifting through it is cumbersome. Also, Forta removed the extended appendix explanations of each tag and function (present in the 4.0 version). The O'Reilly book has the detailed appendix, which is essential for reference. The O'Reilly is strictly about programming and much of the super basic stuff is skipped. Overall, the explanations and writing style are very good. There are some good tips on advanced topics, too. If you have some CF experience, I would get this book. Otherwise go with the Forta. A major complaint I have about both books is that there is nothing on xml parsing.

One of the criteria when I was buying a CF book was that I wanted it to be easy enough to learn ColdFusion from scratch, but also give me the needed advanced details. I've done a bit of HTML and programming, so I usually I pick this stuff up pretty quickly and i don't want to be buying a beginner book and advanced book. This book gave me just what I needed and it was easy to read, too. It wasn't overboard on the tech, but it wasn't too far abstracted from the needed concepts of how stuff works. I'd definately recommend it for people that are getting into ColdFusion and I'd also recommend it for the intermediate CF programmer.

I am a web developer building applications with ColdFusion. I've never before thought of a computer reference as "exciting", but the first time I looked in this book I found solutions to three problems, all clearly explained and with no extraneous fluff. This book saved me a mountain of time and paid for itself the first time I opened it. Now thats a cheap thrill!

<cfhumor>
Were I marooned on a desert island I'd want this book.
</cfhumor>

Programming ColdFusion is a real pleasure and a distinct credit to O'Reilly, Rob Brooks-Bilson, Paula Ferguson, Laura Lewin and Mary Anne Weeks Mayo.

About six months ago the company I work for recently moved to Coldfusion 5 server (holding off on CFMX until all the bugs are worked out) and since that time, application programming duties have been dumped on me. As a web designer and not a programmer, this was a more than a little worrisome. After trying to wade through Forta's Construction Kit, Hewitt's Core Coldfusion 5, as well as "Mastering Coldfusion 5" it was as if the light was turned on by Rob Brooks-Bilson's Programming Coldfusion.

By the by, those books mentioned are all great books. I own all of them. But when it came down to what I really needed to know and understand Bilson came through like no other. Great job Rob! Keep up the good work.

I own three ColdFusion books. Books-Bilson's book is top notch. It is a no-nonsense programming reference and guide. No fluffy examples that require you to wade through someone else's logic.

HIGHLY recommended.

I love this book! I am a relative ColdFusion novice (less than 1 year) but I found the book easy to follow and the examples exceptional. I would definitely recommend this book to others who want to learn and use Coldfusion

The only quibble I have with this book is that it is not long enough! Some parts just paraphrase ColdFusion documentation, which is not bad in itself but left me wanting to know more from the author about how he applied the feature to a project.

It would be phenomenal if the author could expand this book or, better yet, put together a new book of more extended examples called "ColdFusion Examples in a Nutshell," similar to "Java Examples in a Nutshell" by David Flanagan.

Having said that, I can now state that this book is a shining example of what a programming book is supposed to be:
(1) Well-Organized. Chapters are grouped logically.
(2) Well-Documented. Almost every topic has at least one example; a few have a complete set of templates to guide the beginning CF (ColdFusion) programmer.
(3) Well-Balanced. In addition to instructive code, the author also provides many in-depth explanations of ColdFusion and database principles.

"Programming ColdFusion" is an excellent reference source for those wanting to understand how to develop ColdFusion web applications. In the preface, Brooks-Bilson identifies his primary audience as current ColdFusion developers while also stating that all other web developers interested in web application development using ColdFusion will also find this book useful. I would have to disagree with this. Brooks-Bilson hits his primary target audience but misses the beginning web developer and a lot of the existing web developers that may wish to move towards a ColdFusion development environment. The book assumes a certain level of tacit knowledge about web development, in particular using ColdFusion.

In general, I found this book is very well written with clear descriptions of the various features and how to use them. The major failing is that while many examples are used to describe the various features of the ColdFusion tags, there is no unifying web application development. The addition of an application development that would span the features throughout this book, would go a long way towards increasing the target audience to include web developers from non-ColdFusion backgrounds and beginning web developers. The inclusion of a unifying example would go a long way towards driving home the points being developed and the advantages of using ColdFusion. If I take a simple example liking using the CFIF tag. Coming from a primarily ASP web development background, this is the same as using the IF function in Vbscript. What is the advantage towards my using CFIF vs. Vbscript? There were many places where the author showed examples of individual features where I basically had the same response.

In summary, this book appears to be an excellent reference for the active ColdFusion application developer and not a resource for the beginning developer or for a developer experienced in a different web application technology. One limitation of this book is the assumption that the reader is already convinced that ColdFusion is the way to go. There is no discussion about the benefits of ColdFusion over competing. Another limitation is that since this book only covers the individual aspects of ColdFusion, how one would tie these all together into an integrated application is not really discussed. In all fairness, Brooks-Bilson does address his primary target audience of practicing ColdFusion web application developers.