The first two months of the year are always the toughest for me. In early January my middle school basketball coaching starts up in earnest (we start pre-season practices in late October but those are just not the same as when the real season gets rolling). I basically spend the first 8 weeks of the year treading water; keeping my clients' projects moving along but not really having much time for other projects and such. Well, my basketball season ends Saturday and that's all about to change!
Yesterday, on a short break, I perused some tweets and came across one from @bitterweetryan that caught my eye. The idea in his tweet is simple: CFML developers need to branch out and learn new languages. Then, we should bring back ideas from these learnings, if you will, to CFML. It's an excellent idea.
Over the last 10 years, I have found no better web development option than CFML. And, I've found no better group of developers with whom to interact, work and share. We CFML'ers love our language dearly, but sometimes, I see us get stuck in the ways of the force, 'er CFML, and fail to see the other options or approaches that surround us.
With this in mind, I am going to begin a set of classes at the O'Reilly School of Technology (OST) to get 'certified' in in Python starting this Monday. As I get going on the courses required to earn the Python certificate, I am going to implement some things I learn into my on-going CFML project at Kronum.com. Naturally I'll write long-winded, inane blog posts about the process.
I'm very excited to get started and, once again, want to give a shout out to Ryan Anklam for the initial inspiration to get this ball rolling.
Also, and for a bit of fun, you can see my old testimonial on the OST 'Why' page. I'm the one with the humongous snake wrapped around my neck. That sounds worse than it is ... really ;-)!
