This is a bit of a "random thought" more than an article. My focus on this blog at present is to catch up with responding to people's comments, before writing anything new. I've got another 1-2 unit testing / TDD articles partly drafted (just in my head at the moment), but this draft has been sitting around for a while, so I figured I'd just press "send" on it. It's not one of my usual 1000+ word mammoths. Which might be a relief.
I spend a lot of time reading stuff on Wikipedia. We probably all do. But I sit around in the evening - just for pleasure - reading pseudo-random articles. Usually whilst watching a movie or something.
Anyway, I read all sorts of topics, and often read up on programming-related topics too. Being a programmer 'n' all. One thing I have noticed is that a lot of articles on programming techniques have examples in various languages, eg: "this is how one does a for() loop in PHP" or whatever is relevant for the article. And another thing I have noticed is that CFML seldom features on the list of languages with examples. Take the "for loop" page on Wikipedia: it has examples in 24 different languages. But no CFML anywhere. It'd be easy to add something in, and I will try to get around to it soon.
After only about 10min research, I found a list of articles that could mention CFML but don't:
For loop(done)Do while loop(done)Foreach loop(done)While loop(done)?:(done)Anonymous function(done)- Mutator method
- this (computer programming)
- First-class function
- Base 36
Exception-handling syntax(done)
I reckon we could do worse than making sure CFML does get a mention on these pages (and any other relevant pages). It will all help get knowledge of CFML out there, and just get the concept of CFML in front of more people's eyes. It also might help demonstrate that CFML is still very much an alive and actively used & developed language.
So I'm gonna chip away at this stuff when the mood takes me. If you find any pages on Wikipedia that could use a mention of CFML... consider editing it. Or if you don't think you're up to that, let me know and I'll add it to the list above. If you do pitch in and help, let me know and I'll cross the page off the list above.
Another area we could stand to improve CFML's exposure is on the info page for ColdFusion on Stack Overflow. Compare this page: ColdFusion (fewer than 200 words); to this page: PHP (close to 2500 words!). Obviously volume != quality, but still... we're not doing ourselves proud there.
What other public resources are there in which CFML could promote itself better? Where can we contribute?
(I warned you this is a bit of a nothing article. Sorry).
--
Adam
