Debating over the popular Coldfusion frameworks always leads to some interesting discussion.

Today, Model-Glue, Fusebox, and Coldbox will be facing off.

To introduce the code and theory, as well as the practicality each framework brings to the table, we will be presenting them with an application walkthrough.

Letting attendees see what's in the pudding and leave with the proof.

Check the NL CFUG Homepage for more information.

Location: Adobe HQ, Hoogoorddreef 54-A, Amsterdam

13:00 - 13:30 Binnenkomst
13:30 - 14:15 Coldbox - Tom de Manincor
14.15 - 15.00 Fusebox - Erik-Jan Jaquet
15:00 - 15:30 Pauze
15:30 - 16:15 ModelGlue - Jochem van Dieten
16.15 - 17.00 Discussie frameworks
17:00 - 18:00 Borrel / Netwerken

With a week left before the Coldbox 101 + Workshop here in Amsterdam, we have decided to extend the Early Bird pricing and offer a DISCOUNT, as well.

Early bird tickets are 1200 Euro ($1755 USD) and will be available until October 21st.

Use the discount code: CB_AMS_LM and receive a 200 Euro discount ($300 USD).

Where else can you get a 2 day training and a 1 day hands on workshop for 1000 Euro?

Not to mention, you will leave inspired and with plenty of resources and materials that will help you continue to expand your skill set indefinitely.

I apologize to those who have already registered, but we will also offer a retroactive discount for referrals. If you know someone who may be interested, now is the time to push. Have them mention your name and get 10% of their final ticket price. That applies to each referral. Yes, they are allowed to use the discount code above, but remember the kick-back is 10% of their ticket price.

Registration issues have been resolved. Due to issues accepting payments with PayPal, and hosting an international event, tickets must be sold in USD and processed with Google Checkout.

The registration page has been updated: Coldbox 101 Amsterdam @ eventbrite

More news about the event:

Luis Majano, the creator of Colbox, will be joining us via Video Conferencing for a Meet and Greet. He will also talk about what's new in the latest version.

Each attendee will receive a Coldbox Training Manual (over 300 pages), along with an Exercise Booklet (just under a 100 pages), and some nice schwag (bag,t-shirt,etc).

If you have tried to purchase tickets, but run into errors when checking out using PayPal, please bare with me. The alternate payment methods are also not functioning. I have been working with EventBrite and PayPal to determine the cause and find a solution...

I apologize for the inconvenience, and appreciate your patience.

In the meantime, it will be a manual process. To reserve your seat use the contact form and specify the attendees full names and email address.

You will receive an EventBrite ticket and a Paypal Invoice.

I am happy to announce the location of our first ColdBox Europe training here in Amsterdam.

Thanks to Ernst van der Linden, of Team Coldbox and BehindThe.net, along with the crew at RemuNet Services for offering to host the event.

The facility is in the heart of town, and has the real Amsterdam feel.

You can check it out on Google Maps:
Keizersgracht 83A
Amsterdam 1015 CG

The affiliation has also allowed us to offer the 3 DAY course for a discounted rate of 1200 Euros (early bird - before Oct.14th) and 1500 Euros after the 14th.

So spread the word and sign up soon, seating is limited.

Registration and Event Info at cboxams.eventbrite.com

Scotch on the Road is coming to Amsterdam on October 26th. If you don't know it is a FREE event. Check out their site for session information and other specifics.

We are considering offering a 2 day Coldbox 101 training and an additional hands-on Workshop. Since it's short notice, this is a quick poll for interest. Details and specifics will follow.

Schedule:
Thursday & Friday: Training
Saturday: Additional Hands-on Workshop
Sunday: ---
Monday: Scotch On The Road

This way there is enough time to go through the concepts, features, and syntax of Coldbox. And an extra day to put it into practice. Develop a full application using Coldbox with some of the latest technologies, like Coldspring, Lightwire, Transfer, etc. Not to mention, plenty of tips, tricks, tools, and shortcuts for developing. Not only with Coldbox, but in general. I'll even touch on some Object Oriented stuff, where it's good, bad, and why.

If you are coming from out of town, or just need a reason to bug the boss to spend some of that training budget...Amsterdam has one of the best public transport systems in the world. You can do plenty of sight seeing, beer drinking, and ...it's Amsterdam!

The guys here at CFUG NL are putting together a battle of the frameworks.

Bringing in presenters for each of the major frameworks: Coldbox, Mach-ii, Model Glue, and Fusebox.

I have been asked to represent Coldbox.

Each presenter will give a walk-through on how to build a basic application. We don't have too much time, so we will squeeze in as much info as we can about the frameworks, as well.

To help benchmark and to give developers a better understanding of what each framework offers, we will all be building the same app.

It will be held at the Adobe Office at the Amsterdam Arena and will start at 14:00 hours.

Team Coldbox is preparing to offer Certified Coldbox training courses here in the Netherlands.

I am hoping to offer our first course this winter in Amsterdam.

So if you have any interest or suggestions, please send them this way.

Luis and Team Coldbox have been busy as usual creating top-notch code for us all to use.

The upcoming 3.0 version of Coldbox is packed with improvements, new features, and all kinds of tools to make a CF developers life easier.

It's in alpha now and available from the Coldbox download page.

You'll also find LogBox, a logging framework, and MockBox, an object stubbing framework, are ready for the public to get their hands on. BlenderBox, a new IOC framework is around the corner, as well. Whether Luis likes it or not, I have deemed the new collection the 'Box Suite', for obvious reasons.

I'm no novice when it comes to Coldbox, but I've also never had the opportunity to sit and go thru the system with the author himself. That alone had me looking forward to the seminar.

The course kicked off with a nice breakfast and a goody bag loaded with training materials, a t-shirt, cheat sheets, candy and snacks, not to mention the bag itself is pretty nice.

The training manual has to be around 300+ pages, and that doesn't include the exercises. That's a separate booklet 100+ pages thick. Both are as rich in content as they are in size.

The lecture began with an intro to Design Patterns, Object Oriented methodology, and the vocabulary needed to comprehend the framework's architecture. He also went over some Best Practices not specific to Coldbox. A good lesson for those migrating from spaghetti or even well structured procedural code.

The highlight for me came when he mentioned a few things to be aware of when using ColdFusion. Years of CF and I guess a few things had slipped by me.

Did you know:

1. Variables of type string, array, number, and date all pass in and out of components by value. But structures, queries, and all other 'complex' objects including CFCs get passed by reference. May seem obvious to some, but to me, the ARRAY type seemed liked it should of been grouped with the complex types and passed by reference. Apparently, its a CF thing. Don't know how I feel about that, your thoughts?

2. ColdFusion creates java inner classes for each method in a CFC. So on top of the classes it uses to build CFC objects, it also has to instantiate these inner classes for each method. So consider the overhead of bloating objects with simple getter and setters, is it worth it?

Definitely, got me thinking...

From there we jumped into framework itself. Luis went over how to get it installed, configured, and how to tweak your IDE (eclipse and dw snippets and dictionaries).

The focus with Coldbox has always been the developer. If you don't know, there are lots of features that you wont find in other frameworks that make coding easier, and more fun. Luis touched on the development tools such as, the dashboard, debugger, cache monitor, and even the SideBar, to name a few.

Things started getting pretty advanced when we got into the Coldbox architecture and hierarchy. A great way to really understand the power and the functionality you have available from within the framework. I don't want to spoil it for those attending the seminar at CFUnited, so I wont go in to much more detail. I will say there are lots of details and knowledge to be absorbed, even for a veteran like myself.

Looking forward to Day 2's lesson. We still have half of the training manual to go.