Eben Hewitt

In recent years we've witnessed a trend in which organizations gather, codify, evaluate, and disseminate seemingly endless lists of "Best Practices" - guidelines that help promote the success of their business, the consistency of their actions and, presumably, the general cheerfulness of their employees. Best Practices are cherished by neophytes and mentors alike for many reasons. For beginners (or those toiling fiendishly into the night, alone in their basements, who can't help but cackle, "It's alive!" every time their application runs without crashing), Best Practices offer a coherent and consistent mode of communication with fellow coders who might inherit their work. They also offer guidelines that hasten the debugging process, and they create a compendium of deve... (more)

A Banner Ad Custom Tag

The banner ad is a bit of a curious creature. It wasn't so long ago (say, 1998) that the pundits who had for so long decried the gluttonous, indelicate banner ad were immersed in self-congratulation. Click-through rates were dropping below 1% down to .5% by the start of 2000. Users don't even see them, the pundits claimed. They've learned to block out the banners and scroll past them; pe... (more)

The Logical Stack Trace

"Contrariwise," continued Tweedledee, " if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic." - Lewis Carroll To elucidate a manner in which ColdFusion programmers can write better performing, cleaner, and more sensible applications, this article will illuminate the noncoincidental relationship between the discipline of logic in philosophy and ... (more)