Simon Horwith

I was really busy for several weeks prior to CFUnited and am back on the road again... but there's a silver lining.

I'm basically done with my first round of SAM docs and I will be making those available very soon; I have the code and stories/advice to post as well - I just haven't had the time. I do promise I'll be blogging and posting interesting stuff very soon, though.

Frameworks vs Methodology Debate
I am interested to know what's on the agenda for the "The Big Framework and Methodology Debate" session at MAX (www.adobe.com/events/max/sessions/wd301s.html) since all of the listed speakers are framework advocates. I also want to take a moment to publicly state that, as much fun as I've had creating controversy and being a human pi–ata in the interest of encouraging developers to think, I feel like the whole "methodology vs frameworks" debate is being beaten to death.

I believe that people should go with whatever works for them and there is no such thing as a silver bullet. I don't generally use frameworks, though I know a lot of good developers who do. One reason I don't generally prescribe to any one framework is the simple fact that I spend the bulk of my time modeling business domains and coding and architecting the really complex stuff...and that has absolutely nothing to do with frameworks or whether or not a framework is being used on a project.

Because I'm a little tired of debating about frameworks, I'm not going to be quite so vocal about them anymore, aside from a few possible special events that are planned, and/or if people prompt me to discuss them (for good reason). This isn't me "throwing in the towel" and I still feel the same way I've always felt, but I think that the community is now discussing these topics more, hopefully as a partial result of all the "trouble" I caused. I now feel like moving on and spending time and energy on more productive ventures, including getting back to releasing code.

Speaking of code, if there's anything that folks would like me to write and release, let me know. No promises, and it's not that I don't have plenty to work on already, but I'd be interested to know what you all would like.

Shoot the Guru
At CFUnited last year, in addition to other games in the community area, my company - AboutWeb - had "Shoot the Guru." Conference attendees received a nerf gun and had to shoot and knock over small cardboard cutouts of CF Gurus in order to win prizes.

This year, at CFUnited, Shoot the Guru was back, only this time we had a Flash version of the game. Gurus popped out of cubicles (on a big screen TV) and conference attendees shot them with a laser gun (a USB gun that from a programmer's view acts like a mouse-click whenever you pull the trigger).

Kelly Brown has just released "Shoot the Guru" on his blog for folks to play... and he made the code available as well. The blog entry URL is www.kellyjo.com/blog/index.cfm/2006/7/11/Shoot-the-Guru. Have fun!