ColdFusion is the Sparta of Programming Languages

Now I know what the Spartan Warriors in the movie 300 felt like fighting a seemingly unwinnable battle. This feeling comes after responding to yet another forum question on LinkedIn this morning where 10 PHP and Ruby developers decided to pile on and declare ColdFusion dead. And they did so to such an innocent and harmless question that it begs to wonder: what the hell is wrong with people?

I wasn't going to write another post on this. When I last wrote a post on this topic, a few ColdFusion people sent in or posted comments about not paying this type of nonsense any mind. But it is getting harder and harder to ignore the mindless banality. This one being particularly hard, as one of the commenters to this LinkedIn question was a person that was present at my Developer Ignite speech, in which I came to the defense of ColdFusion and declared my ColdFusiontology crusade. (Don't worry, I sent my colleague an email calling him my new arch nemsis for his answer)

This one was also hard due to the question being asked. The question came from a dad asking if it is ok to encourage his son, as his son wants to start learning ColdFusion.

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5 Ways to Use LinkedIn like a Nerd Would

LinkedIn is a popular social network of over 35,000,000+ experienced professionals from around the world. It is a social media tool that allows individuals and businesses a ways to find and collaborate with other qualified professionals. LinkedIn allows users to build a profile that summarizes their experience and expertise, and then share it with other users. Simply put, Linked in is a very powerful tool to inform the world about your own brand of Nerdness.

There are many ways that companies can use LinkedIn to help their cause. Several Entrepreneurs like Guy Kawasaki and Chris Pirillo have written several articles about the benefits and ways to use LinkedIn. The site even features a blog dedicated to the success stories of its users on how they made it work for them. So, we decided to come up with our own list of reasons individuals and companies should use and embrace the powerful online networking tool. Here are 5 ways to use LinkedIn like a nerd would:

1. To Brand Yourself or Your Business. Having a strong brand goes a long way, but it takes a lot to build up a brand and get it strong. A company has to develop credibility in its field and appear to have a strong presence. Having a strong network helps promote your brand. LinkedIn only reinforces the branding you’re doing elsewhere and helps increase your visibility.

2. Market Analysis and Research. Doing research is common for nerds. Every company and individual would benefit from doing more nerd-like research. And LinkedIn is a network that provides a plethora of information to research. It is a great way to analyze and benmark the markert. It is a great way to get to know a company or client and gauge its health. Not to mention, it is a great way to see what competitors are doing. On top of getting valid factual information, you also get other people's opinions through answers and recommendations. Use the vast amounts of information LinkedIn provides to your benefit.

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Top Online ColdFusion Resources

ColdFusion has a wide variety of developers and resources available online. Recently, we asked a question on an Adobe ColdFusion Developer Discussion in Linked In about what everyone's favorite online resource was. So, in honor of that the its recent 13th birthday, and by the help of our Linked In discussion, the Nerds and Brice Cheddarn Studios bring you the Top Online ColdFusion Resources:

http://riaforge.org/ - RIAForge was the brainchild of Ben Forta. The principal developer for the project is Raymond Camden. It is an online community to support developers building open source projects for ColdFusion related platforms.

http://cflib.org/ - The Common Function Library Project (CFLib.org) is another Ray Camden production setup to create a set of user-defined function (UDF) libraries for ColdFusion 5.0 and higher. These libraries are open source and may be used and modified to your liking. Functions range from email format checking to encryption routines. These UDFs can greatly speed up development time as well as add new and powerful features to your web site.

http://www.houseoffusion.com/ - House of Fusion is a powerful (but in need of a redesign) resource supplying quality content to the ColdFusion community for as long as there's been a ColdFusion community. It is a great online utility for ColdFusion Nerds.

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coldfusion: a dying platform? i think not.

while surfin around the web one day, i stumbled across a question/answer thread Linked In.  generally, i watch the questions being asked so i can see if my services can be utilized somewhere.  one question caught my eye, since it dealt with a topic i am very familiar with.  coldfusion. 

for those of you who don't know, coldfusion is one of the first web related programming languages, not to mention a complete application platform for developing and delivering powerful and scaleable applications and websites.  its hard to tell im a coldfusion developer, huh?

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