Blog

I have always been puzzled by many web developer’s reticence to learn and fully take advantage of JavaScript and SQL in their applications. I know many people are comfortable with these languages and use them frequently, but I often run into people that say something like this: “I HATE JavaScript and I avoid it at all costs”, or this: “I never really learned SQL, and anytime I need to do anything complex I ask my SQL guru friend.”I believe that many applications built by such developers have inherent weaknesses due to the developer’s lack of good skills in these languages. I won’t name names, but I have even heard some of the “super stars” of the ColdFusion community make comments like the above. This truly amazes me. I am no JavaScript/SQL expert, but I know enough of both languages to enjoy leveraging them in my applications.And on a related topic, while I think that tools like ORMs and JS frameworks are very cool (even though I don’t use as much as I should), I honestly believe that a developer is doing themselves a disservice if they use these tools WITHOUT having a fundamental understanding of JS/SQL. Because otherwise, how can you trust that your tool is really giving you the results you want, if you don’t understand the underlying technologies that it uses? I think it’s a big mistake to use these tools as a “crutch” because you don’t like to “mess with” JavaScript/SQL.