ColdFusion Book Recommendation

Question

I'm working on learning ColdFusion (I may have an opportunity to get an internship at a company that develops exclusively in CF) and am looking for some good resources to get me started.

I'm definitely going to buy a book, but I was wondering if anyone has any recommendations.

Any non-book (i.e. websites) recommendations would be helpful as well, however I'm going to buy a book regardless.

I know it's a vague question, but I have a lot of experience with everything from markup languages like XHTML/CSS to high-level programming languages like C++ and Java (and javascript, which is an interpreted language), so I'm really looking for something that will cover as much of the following as possible:

• intro. to the language's syntax
• looping structures
• database i/o
• file i/o
• language-specific stuff

I don't necessarily need a "reference book" as much as a primer book. I can use online resources for function references, etc. I just like to have a physical book that I can read without always having access to a computer.

Answer 1

The CFWACK series will get you going:

Not sure if the series for CF9 is out yet.

Answer 2

The Adobe ColdFusion 8 Web Application Construction Kit is pretty much the "official" ColdFusion documentation. Volume 1 should give you the basics and there's volume 2 and 3 if you want to progress to more advanced concepts. The books are very thorough and give you a good idea of what's actually going on rather than saying "this is a loop, this is a variable etc".

R.e. websites, once you've learned the basics I would recommend Ben Nadel's blog where he regularly talks about all sorts of less common ColdFusion issues and pitfalls.

Answer 3

Another awesome choice is the hard copy version of "Adobe ColdFusion 8: The full ColdFusion 8 documentation, a 6 volume, 3,000+ page reference set, is a must-have guide to installing, managing, and building Internet applications with ColdFusion 8 for every developer."

At only $50, it is a great value, and is often overlooked because of WACK.

You can find it here: Adobe - Adobe Store - North America http://bit.ly/9P5cWZ

It is published by Adobe, so it could be considered more "official" then WACK.

The very best part about this documentation is the way the code examples are formatted; the "reviewing the code" sections take a line of code and describe what it's doing!

I'd take this over Wack any day (and I even bought all three volumes of Wack - expensive!)

Finally, I have my fingers crossed that they are going to publish this for CF9 soon!

Answer 4

I completely agree with Loftx answer above.

I would also recommend Ray Camdens blog and the forums at adobe, when you get stuck with anything. The community there is quite helpful, as it is here also.

I would also strongly recommend having a look at the coldbox framework......

Cheers