How I Got Started in ColdFusion

I spent many years working in the Engineering Industry as a CAD (Computer Aided Design/Drafting) Operator while tinkering with computers as a hobby in the evenings. I had tinkered with programming on my Commodore 64 and later with BASIC but was always more interested in the hardware side of things.

In 1995, while working at the engineering firm of Clark, Richardson and Biskup, I was given the opportunity to become a Network Administrator. They were a Mac shop and I was the only person who knew anything about PCs. I learned lots of things about networking, CAT5 cabling, Novell (!), keeping users happy and the importance of daily backups. During this time I also became intrigued with the “World Wide Web” and began teaching myself HTML.

While I developed my own ‘blog’ (at the time a lot of static pages), I also volunteered for a local animal rescue group who had a static one page site and soon began making it dynamic using Perl. At work I began creating what would later be called an ‘intranet’. I was using Perl there as well but two new languages caught my eye: ASP and Cold Fusion.

Researching both I immediately gravitated to Cold Fusion. It was tag based (just like HTML) and comparing code samples it seemed like a no brainer. What took 3-4 lines in Cold Fusion was 10-15 lines in ASP. Why would anyone want to write MORE code? Armed with my fresh copy of Homesite 1.0 I was ready. I soon began doing more and more web development and less and less network administration.

I soon developed both an intranet and external site for Clark, Richardson and Biskup build on Cold Fusion. Goodbye Perl. I overhauled the pet rescue website and created tools to allow them to manage the content themselves.

Fast forward a few years and I still think I made the right choice. ColdFusion has matured nicely and I hope I have as well :)