Category: Programming

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Six Years of Deep in the Code

six years old

In looking through my older posts, I realized that I wrote my first post, Guide for the Perplexed, six years ago yesterday.

I don’t have as much time to write as much as did during the first couple of years of this blog; I generally write two posts per month now. Even so, I hope that these posts continue to do what I originally intended when I started writing them back in 2012 – both to make available useful information that is not easily found in one place, and by combining different techniques to synthesize processes that create more value than the sums of their parts.

I have received many comments and suggestions over the years, and I have found almost all of them to be not only constructive in nature, but that they have also helped correct things about which I was mistaken and also to help provide clarity when my explanation was not as clear as it could have been. Thanks for these, and keep the comments coming – they are welcome!

The things that have changed the most are the technologies that I’ve used. When I started, I primarily wrote about ASP.NET (mostly VB.NET, with some C# .NET), and SQL Server. Though I still write about SQL Server often, I find that I tend to work with other front-end technologies more often than ASP.NET now – especially JavaScript with or without jQuery.

I am planning on getting involved with more open-source technology where possible – R seems to be a good choice. Much like Python and jQuery, I think it will be more widely used in the coming years.

Thanks for reading!

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Open-Source Alternative to Adobe ColdFusion

Lucee open-source CFML server

Six years ago, I had reason to move several CFML applications from a Macromedia ColdFusion MX 6 server to what was the only major open-source alternative – Railo.

Several years later, Railo was no longer being updated, and its website was shut down. The last post on the Railo site in mid-2015 mentioned a new (and perhaps unauthorized) fork of Railo 4.2, called Lucee. The Railo website then disappeared in mid-2016.

Due to the apparent demise of Railo and the continued need to support my CFML applications, I moved all of them back to Adobe ColdFusion 11.

Lucee open-source CFML server

Unbeknownst to me, Lucee was already gaining more support and has now taken the place as the leading open-source CFML application server.

While I don’t have any concrete plans at the moment for migrating my apps from CF 11 to Lucee, it’s good to know that I have options. Also, anyone considering moving from Railo to Lucee may find this article helpful, as this early adopter has already found some of the problems when migrating from Railo to Lucee.

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DataCamp for Learning Data Science

DataCamp logo

I have long been a fan of sites that use gamification to teach technology-related skills such as programming languages and database concepts.

I have used various free sites (such as Codecademy and Khan Academy) and premium sites like Code School. Each of these sites have strong and weak points, but all of them have been useful to some degree, and well worth the time and money (when necessary) invested.

A new site that I’ve just recently discovered is DataCamp. This site teaches both R (with which I currently have very little experience) and Python (which I’ve used much more extensively) as they are used for data analysis, especially in the realm of Big Data and data science. This site is not free; it currently costs $300 per year or $29 per month. I have signed up and will begin learning R. As I progress, I’ll report my thoughts on the site – especially as to its value, both from a monetary and time cost perspective.


Co-produced by :Game Period & Deep In The Code
Article from GamePeriod.com