CFUnited Presentation Roudup

CFunited was busy for everyone involved so I have no excuse for falling behind in making blog entries as many others just as busy as I did kept up just fine. I'll only post 2 entries for CFUnited this one with all my presentations and then a second one recapping my CFUnited experience (spoiler: It kicked ass!). On with the recap!

Red Green Refactor
PDF Keynote

I was fortunate enough to be given the opportunity to present this topic 2 times at the conference. I feel like both presentations were solid and entertaining; including a reference to old Purple Pants (if you do not know, probably best not to ask :) ). Barney B was disappointed in my lack of gratuitous vulgarity, I'll attempt to not let him down next year. I got really good feedback, even testimonial that TDD does speed up development!

Fusebox Past Present Future (Busy Developers Guide to Fusebox)
PDF Keynote

This was a bit awkward given the current situation surrounding Fusebox and Myself. The first half I did my best to sell on the framework and break down some of the old myths. At about 5:55 I entered my 5th Myth: Fusebox is Dead and instead of really getting into that I made the attendees aware of the current state (at the time) and announced I was resigning. I think spent the second half of the presentation talking about FuseNG (or Fork-a-doodle-doo). Expect more entries soon surrounding FuseNG 1.0 (code named Cuddles).

Code Review and Team Dynamics
PDF Keynote

This started my 3 hour marathon of presenting. It was also a late add to the conference, I was subbing for Jake Munson who was unable to present do to person reasons. I love this presentation, I've given it a few times previous. I felt really good about my delivery and I think everyone got something out of the presentation. I think I might create a new presentation on the same vein but with more emphasis on Team Dynamics and mentoring for next years conferences. I appreciate all the positive feedback from everyone!

Busy Developers Guide to Java Part 1
PDF Keynote

This was one of those presentations with so much content it has to go perfect or you run out of time. I screwed up 2 times and ran over. I was also called Drill Sgt. and Reverend after this presentation. Apparently I was too brash haha! I felt everyone still learn a great deal about java and I got some great positive feedback as well, definitely help enable folks in this one. This was the second session I got to repeat. The second iteration I tried not to preach as much I also pulled some content that might have been too preachy. I ended right on time and had some great interaction, just like the first time. I think this session has great replay potential for future conferences.

Busy Developers Guide to Java Part 2
PDF Keynote

This was my final presentation of the 3 hour presentation marathon. I'll admit that about halfway through the Part1 session I felt ill. This continued into part 2. About half ways through one of the most embarrassing things happened, I had to excuse myself from the presentation for a moment. Luckily this was the last session of the day and everyone was very understanding and allowed me to run over the time and finish the content. I appreciate everyone's patients with me. Aside from the total misery I was in as far as how I felt I think this presentation was awesome. I got good participation from the attendees and very positive feedback from many folks. Anytime I stick around after a session to answer additional probing questions seeking to learn more is awesome.

Overall I had a blast presenting. I hope everyone attending my presentations was entertained and learned or was motivate. As long as I was able to positively affected at least one individual that is all the more I can ask for as a presenter the rest is gravy. Our community is growing and I am glad to be part of the growth. Here's to CFUnited and any other conference that facilitates collaboration and growing! Thanks Stellr for organizing, promoting and kicking ass.

MXUnit ExpectedException

I'm glad to see the next minor release of MXUnit :) I'm even happier to see ExpectedException make it into the release. I'd been doing a lot of development in Java and using the latest JUnit and the expected exception annotation was so nice. When I went back to writing test cases for Fusebox I found myself avoiding writing tests that would throw errors (like testing bad paths for Fusebox parsed files). Well long story short I found myself one night debugging something in Fusebox only to find Fusebox should have been throwing an error. Since I never tested for it I never caught that Fusebox was not throwing an error. That motivated me enough to spend the 30 or so minutes it took me to write a couple test cases and add the functionality to MXUnit.

So the old way to test for an error was something like this:

      <cffunction name="ensure_error_on_load_extentions_with_bad_path">
           <cftry>
               <cfset extManager.loadExtensions(getDirectoryFromPath(getCurrentTemplatePath()) & '/notthere') />              
               <cfset Fail("Last line should have thrown an error") />
               <cfcatch type="mxunit.exception.AssertionFailedError">
                   <cfrethrow>
               </cfcatch>
               <cfcatch type="fusebox.BadDirectory" />
               <cfcatch type="any">
                   <cfset debug(cfcatch) />
                   <cfset fail("Bad Error")>
               </cfcatch>
           </cftry>
       </cffunction>

Now all we have to do is this:

       <cffunction name="ensure_error_on_load_extentions_with_bad_path" mxunit:expectedException="fusebox.BadDirectory">
               <cfset extManager.loadExtensions(getDirectoryFromPath(getCurrentTemplatePath()) & '/notthere') />              
       </cffunction>

I love the feature, and I hope others enjoy it too.

Pulse2 now with mxUnit

In the past I've blogged about Pulse2 and I have to say it really has grown on me over the previous month or so that I have been using it. I've decided the $6/month is worth the investment as it does save me time and hassle as well as preconfiguring some of the "extra" plug-ins. On the free side though Pulse2's catalog has grown and that includes listening to my previous post and adding mxUnit for all the CFML developers out there! Finally, with this plug-in added I have posted a public profile for anyone that wants to give eclipse a try but have been intimidated by eclipse setup. Check out Pulse2 and use my public profile. Everything you'll want is packaged in there (add Aptana with a freelance account for an ever better development experience). Pulse2 is an awesome tool and something I definitely plan to demo very briefly in my Be Lazy, Use Ant session at cfdevcon. Don't wait for me to demo it though it is dog simple check it out today: