“Programming ColdFusion” is an excellent reference source for those wanting to understand how to develop ColdFusion web applications. In the preface, Brooks-Bilson identifies his primary audience as current ColdFusion developers while also stating that all other web developers interested in web application development using ColdFusion will also find this book useful. I would have to disagree with this. Brooks-Bilson hits his primary target audience but misses the beginning web developer and a lot of the existing web developers that may wish to move towards a ColdFusion development environment. The book assumes a certain level of tacit knowledge about web development, in particular using ColdFusion.
In general, I found this book is very well written with clear descriptions of the various features and how to use them. The major failing is that while many examples are used to describe the various features of the ColdFusion tags, there is no unifying web application development. The addition of an application development that would span the features throughout this book, would go a long way towards increasing the target audience to include web developers from non-ColdFusion backgrounds and beginning web developers. The inclusion of a unifying example would go a long way towards driving home the points being developed and the advantages of using ColdFusion. If I take a simple example liking using the CFIF tag. Coming from a primarily ASP web development background, this is the same as using the IF function in Vbscript. What is the advantage towards my using CFIF vs. Vbscript? There were many places where the author showed examples of individual features where I basically had the same response.
In summary, this book appears to be an excellent reference for the active ColdFusion application developer and not a resource for the beginning developer or for a developer experienced in a different web application technology. One limitation of this book is the assumption that the reader is already convinced that ColdFusion is the way to go. There is no discussion about the benefits of ColdFusion over competing. Another limitation is that since this book only covers the individual aspects of ColdFusion, how one would tie these all together into an integrated application is not really discussed. In all fairness, Brooks-Bilson does address his primary target audience of practicing ColdFusion web application developers.
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