This is an exciting opportunity to work for Brandworkz, a successful web development company focused on implementing Brand Management web-projects for clients like Red Bull Racing, Epson, Eurostar, ArcelorMittal, and Boots.

If you want to work here, you need show us:

• technical competence
• passion for development

We expect you to be able to not only implement code, but also design solutions.  You want to be part of a small focussed team working to deliver great software to blue-chip clients.  You should know what the factory method pattern means without looking it up.  You should want to do the hard work now, so that things are better later.

You should be proficient in one of Java, ColdFusion, Groovy, JavaScript, Node.js, Scala, Rhino and Clojure, and be able to compare and contrast the merits of the rest. You should have a real enthusiasm for development and for finding out random things.

You should be passionate about the internet, with loves and hates in equal measure. You should care about usability. You should hate html tables for everything except tabular data. If you have interests in photography, videography, music or design it might help.

If that sounds like you, drop us an email to careers@brandworkz.com.  I would like a CV, how much you would like to be paid, and your entitlement to work in the UK.

Our hiring process is straightforward: get your info, quick mini-interview via phone, a simple code test, and an on-site interview to meet the team.  Brandworkz pays competitively, and has benefits beyond the salary.  Positions are full time and we expect you to work in the Islington office.  The guys here are reasonable: if you’re the right person, they’ll work hard to ensure things work.

Please respond to http://www.brandworkz.com/careers or careers@brandworkz.com with your CV and a covering letter descriping why you are right for the role.

• Developing Coldfusion-based Digital Asset Management and Marketing software.
• Implementing projects for enterprise clients

We provide an integrated service that consists of consultancy, design, production, hosting and maintenance.

A successful candidate will have the ability to plan and architect new functionality and take this through the development stage producing well-structured code. The successful candidate will also be keen to extend their development knowledge. Ability to learn quickly is a must.

We are looking for a candidate who has a strong knowledge of the following:

• Coldfusion including CFCs (2+ years commercial experience or equivalent)
• SQL skills preferably using MS SQL Server
• JavaScript, HTML, CSS
• Object Oriented Development
• Source Control Systems

The ideal candidate will also have knowledge of the following:

• Agile Project Development
• Experience of Java, Groovy, Rhino, node.js or Closure
• Modern Development Frameworks ( Coldbox, CFWheels, etc)
• Java Application Servers (Tomcat, Glassfish)
• Design Patterns
• Code Reviews
• Continuous Integration
• Test Driven Development

You will get the opportunity to:

• Work in a relaxed environment in Angel, Islington
• Push the boundaries of your development
• Develop your skills and knowledge.

Please respond to joel@globusmedia.com with your CV and your salary expectation. No agencies.

Salary: dependent on experience

http://henke.ws/page.cfm/downloads

Must try it all out

Joel

1 – don’t use request scoped variables in the init of controllers. Wont work when you change the mode to testing. At All.

2 – if your using PascalNotation for your controllers, don’t forget to put hyphens in your views

Joel  -  Smarticles

I’ve been watching, and recommending this framework for a while. I recommend everyone taking a really good look at it.

There has been lots of speculation about it not gaining traction. In large organisations, or in large projects, people forget that frameworks can only be replaced when the existing application is redeveloped. In traditional risk-averse environments it can be many years between re-developments. Couple that with some really good frameworks like Coldbox, and Mach II and traction for Wheels could be pretty slow.That isn’t the frameworks fault, its just the way things happen. Sometimes a tipping point has to be reached before community projects explode into life.

All of this can only be aided by the release of the 1.0 release. Beta releases (except by Google) put people off, and hopefully this will mark a step change in peoples attitudes to wheels.

Joel – Smarticles

1) Coldfusion support in CF9 is enabled on the property tag as an attribute – not on by default
http://www.danvega.org/blog/index.cfm/2009/10/6/ColdFusion-9-Implicit-getters–setters-change

2) Coldfusion onMissingMethod
http://www.bennadel.com/index.cfm?dax=blog:868.view
Although Ben Nadel seems to dislike the thing ( it was a while back so maybe he changed his mind?) – and he’s being convinced in the comments. The performance affect was exceedingly marginal (<20ms).

An implementation of what I was talking about is here:
http://www.coldfusionjedi.com/index.cfm/2007/8/5/Warning-about-onMissingMethod – the warning relates to using the right arguments. Comments suggested changing find to comparing the first 3 characters to improve performance.

<cfcomponent name="entity_auto" extends="ColdFX.entity" output="false">

<cffunction name=”onMissingMethod” access=”public” returnType=”any” output=”false”>
<cfargument name=”missingMethodName” type=”string” required=”true”>
<cfargument name=”missingMethodArguments” type=”struct” required=”true”>
<cfset var key = “”>

<!— this includes arguments with set —>
<cfif left(arguments.missingMethodName,3) eq “set”>
<cfset key = replaceNoCase(arguments.missingMethodName,”get”,”")>
<cfif structKeyExists(variables, key)>
<cfreturn variables[key]>
</cfif>
</cfif>

<!— this includes arguments with get —>
<cfif left(arguments.missingMethodName,3) eq “get”>
<cfset key = replaceNoCase(arguments.missingMethodName,”set”,”")>
<cfif structKeyExists(arguments.missingMethodArguments, key)>
<cfset variables[key] = arguments.missingMethodArguments[key]>
</cfif>
</cfif>

<!— everything else still throws an error —>

</cffunction>

</cfcomponent>

If you want to turn on auto magic dynamic proxying all you do in your component is

<cfcomponent name="car" extends="ColdFX.entity_auto" output="false">
<cfproperty name="wheels">
<cfproperty name="engine">

<cffunction name=”init”>
<cfargument name=”wheels”>
<cfargument name=”engine”>
<cfset this.setWheels(arguments.wheels)/>
<cfset this.setEngine(arguments.engine)/>
</cffunction>

</cfcomponent>

In Railo administrator at Settings/Scope you can set the Local Scope Mode from update to always, this change how Railo use the local scope, after this change Railo write every un-scoped variable to the local scope, you no longer need the var or local. to write a variable to local scope, this makes code like this a much easier. Michael Offner-Streit

I’m still trying to get a virtual group (hopefully turning into a CFUG in the future) started for Coldfusion Developers, coldfusion-centric project managers and Analysts here in Belgium.

If anyone is interested, here is the linked-in group.

Joel

Terry Ryan has posted a blog about new licensing support. The problem with licenses, even when you are trying to be nice is that they are intentionally prescriptive.   he wrote in comments:

“In anycase, we don’t have Adobe police. The rules here are meant to enable you to have a proper environment, that is the spirit of those rules. We’re not going to hunt people down”.

I think that Adobe are being really nice about this – so kudos to them for that. Although it does start me thinking about what Adobe police would look like…

If you struggle with that there is always the brilliant Railo which has just jumped another point version in Alpha. The version Smarticles have running in production is lovely, lightning fast and stable. If I need a dev instance or 20 I can have them.  Love it.

How would this leave Coldfusion? I think, pretty well.

Much of the EU, national, regional, local governments and quangos use ColdFusion. For governments, and pan-european institutions having competitive open-source, enterprise, rapid application development frameworks is ideal. Already having the developer resources in place makes it almost a fait accompli. The more people who use open-source, the better it gets. I hope that these organisations use their Smarticles, and start to switch to open-platforms like ColdFusion.

There is choice in which provider of open-source coldfusion you want. Would you like the super-fast Railo option, or would you like the Myspace supporting OpenBlueDragon*. You can’t say that about PHP or .net can you? The CFML advisory committee allow for open-standardisation. (if you can’t decide between the open-source options you could always see which is the superior google-fighter). Smarticles preference is for Railo, it’s Swiss, as we’re in Belgian chocolate country; there’s a community in chocolate thing going on.

Don’t forget Adobe. Rationally, it has never been pushed by a sensible economic argument to go open-source with ColdFusion, but if big-business, or government, started switching, so might they. Adobe have been pretty pleasant with open-sourcing in the past. Microsoft, the most ardent Open-Source haters,  have opened a (half hearted) open source foundation. Adobe have open-sourced some pretty cool things – although not Photoshop, or Coldfusion (misers  ).

As for tools, most of the frameworks, and tools are supported by the trio.

As most of the servers are Unix (or derivatives) with J2EE engines, the underlying architectures will need little change.

Within councils, and governments I am starting to see real appetite for open-source. The advantage for them is that they aren’t blind-sided by changes or dumping of product. The crisis has also made large-international organisations a little more fiscally conservative when it comes to expensive software projects. They can pay for what they use. They can even improve the layer beneath, which for a massive organisation could be a bonanza.

Personally I think that the likely shift will be toward a greater shift toward Open Source, which wouldn’t hurt Java, or ColdFusion. I can imagine .net being left out in the cold, unless Microsoft do one of their unique powerplays.

It’s a great time to be a ColdFusion developer in Europe.

Joel

* I know .net…