Brian Meloche's Blog I'll blog about ColdFusion, weight loss, podcasting and life with too many pets! :-)

I've FINALLY released LightFront version 0.4.4. With this version, despite the version number, I am officially deeming this version of LightFront production ready.

Why did it take so long? I've spent a number of months on building a LightFront application, and I had to get that application out the door before I could spend time updating the framework.

That is both a detriment and a blessing. Sean Corfield's FW/1 framework, which started out very similar to LightFront, has been developing a big following, and that just proves that the lightweight framework idea we both had at about the same time had something. However, there's been a lot of work going on with FW/1, and LightFront's been quiet.

It really hasn't been quiet, though. As I said, I've been out there, using LightFront, and I've figured out lots of ways to use the framework and learned ways to be more flexible. While doing that, I also discovered something rather important about Object Oriented ColdFusion that fits right into LightFront. I also figured out some of the potential pitfalls you could run into while using the framework that all revolve around trying to work around the simplicity and trying to be "too clever", trying to do too much. This really had nothing to do with LightFront, but instead dealt with my own pitfalls with the model - the OO.

I'm not going to go into it more right now... this is just a teaser!

As FW/1 has built a following, it's also started to diverge from the direction LightFront is going. Both frameworks are still quite similar, but I definitely do see big differences in how we deal with views, and LightFront's push towards greater flexibility, especially with existing applications, over opinionated software development. The philosophy's different. I've made a career being able to make things work that other people couldn't, or couldn't as easily, so my tendency is to figure out a way how to do something instead of saying that's not how you do something and leave it at that. Rather than giving an opinion, LightFront gives you a chance to form your own software opinions using the framework. That's not, in any way, a slam on FW/1 or trying to say that LightFront is better. It's just different.

Although it's production ready, the documentation and how-tos need a lot of work, and the meetup I did several months back could have been a lot better. My hope is that my schedule will continue to be light enough so I can start making some strides toward building the docs and making some screencasts, and doing another meetup or two.

There are a few people using LightFront, too, besides me. Unfortunately, they aren't bloggers, so you probably won't hear much out of them, at least for now. However, they are very enthusiastic about LightFront, just like I am, and see its potential.

I think LightFront's turning out to be the framework I wanted, but I've got to spend more time showing that to you.

To those who have asked, yes, I am doing a presentation on my Object Oriented ColdFusion talk on the meetup soon. Unfortunately, thanks to scheduling conflicts, it won't be until June. With that, there is a new sample app that has been written three ways: One that shows spaghetti code, one that's a Mach-ii/ColdSpring version, and one that's a LightFront version. I've got a little bit of cleanup left on that, now that 0.4.4 is out, and I'll post the code once it's cleaned up. However, here's that presentation: