Watch the video version you YouTube: https://youtu.be/Gt0NnfzPVM0
Gavin Pickin interviews Jon Clausen, one of the creators of the CommandBox Docker Images, Senior Software Developer for Ortus Solutions, about his Containerizing CFML Applications Workshop at Into the Box 2020 in Houston Texas, May 2020.
Find out what the workshop is about, why you should attend, what you need to know before you attend and what you'll learn while you're there.
You can support us on Patreon here https://www.patreon.com/ortussolutions
For the show notes - visit the website https://conference.modernizeordie.io/episodes/modernize-or-die-conference-jon-clausen-containerizing-cfml-applications-api-itb2020-episode-7
Music from this podcast used under Royalty Free license from SoundDotCom https://www.soundotcom.com/ and BlueTreeAudio https://bluetreeaudio.com
Transcript:
Gavin Pickin (00:31):
Welcome to the Modernize or Die Podcast, Conference Edition. And today I'm talking with Jon Clausen about his workshop at, Into the Box in May. And so, uh, Jon, thank you for joining me.
Jon Clausen (00:41):
Absolutely. My pleasure.
Gavin Pickin (00:42):
Your workshop is Containerizing CFML application. So do you want to tell us a little more about it?
Jon Clausen (00:49):
Well, it's, I mean, as we all know and are aware at this point, if you're, if you're not aware, you're kind of living in a kind of a tunnel or something, but the container space just continues to expand and blow up. And there are a lot of options available to you now. And even since last year, we've got, you know, more expanded usage of a lot of different containerization strategies. What we want to do is provide one day of giving, users, CFML developers, an opportunity to understand how to containerize their applications, what are the logistics of it, you know, software, you know, hardware, requirements, things like that. How to, actually, deploy your code in those containers. And then how to handle, consistency between multiple tiers of your applications deployment. So from development to staging production. So we'll start off the day by giving you an overview of containers... and then as we go through the day, we'll actually do more and more things with it, to the point where by the end of the session, you will have started the process or possibly even have finished the process of containerizing one of your own applications. With its dependencies in a stacked environment. So it's a very hands on workshop. There's certainly a lot of information, so you know, come prepared to learn. But it's also something that, I think a lot of developers who have taken the workshops in the past have found very useful and has helped to jump start them in their own containerization strategies.
Gavin Pickin (02:18):
So obviously you mentioned earlier on containerization is big these days. Is there anything else that you think people should know? Like why is this workshop really important for CFML developers or developers in general?
Jon Clausen (02:30):
I think for CFML developers in general, I think that there's many of us who've been developing a language for a long time who started on bare metal hardware, big old monolithic servers, where all of our dependencies were packaged as one. And I think, I don't know that, five years from now you're going to have the tools you need to do your job, if, especially if you're a full stack CFML developer without at least understanding containers. So I think that's part of it. I think that it's an important technology to learn. It's an important technology to master. Although there's a, you know, we're not going to build a master of one day, but you should be at least on a path to help you do that. I think that's a big part of it. I think for, developers in general, I think that when you containerize your application stack, it contributes to a lot more worry-free code.
Jon Clausen (03:23):
It contributes to agile development in the sense that small iterations are tested and ready to go and pass all their health checks and they perform the same way and every tier before they, before they're deployed. So I actually think that, I find it to be essential. I mean, I think there's folks that have stinking thinking about it and one way or another, but I find containerization to be essential to keep the, you know, the consistency between deployment tiers, you know, solid, and then also be able to, introduce new features in a way that's much less worry free because I don't have to worry about the environmental aspects.
Gavin Pickin (04:02):
Yeah. I mean, another thing that I mentioned to, you know, just all throw my 2 cents in here, but, with Docker, you know, it really takes away some of the bad baggage that ColdFusion has. Cause a lot of companies these days, they know, they don't know how to maintain it. They don't know how to deploy it. And a lot of feedback we hear anyways that, you know, they've got these apps and they're DevOps people don't want to support them, but once you dockerize it and make it, here it's a container, go deploy it, they know how to do that. They know how to maintain it, they know how to deploy them and Orchestrate them. And so I think you can actually help, you know, companies keep working with ColdFusion when they're getting to this DevOps age where everyone seems to think it's a dinosaur. So, I've noticed a lot of people...
Jon Clausen (04:48):
No, go ahead. I was just saying, I think a lot of people, you know, they're, they're used to these old monolithic installations and I think the days of the, you know, monolithic server are dead if not dying quickly. And I think that, you know, containerization makes that very easy. It makes CFML apps viable again. And with, you know, open source technology like Lucy and some of the containerization licensing like that Adobe has, it's a real option for people to use.
Gavin Pickin (05:21):
Yeah. Especially with the 2020 updates coming out, where they're working on modularity and smaller install sizes and everything, they're definitely moving that way cause they know it's important. And so...
Jon Clausen (05:32):
Not to mention the fact that now in CommandBox and this'll be, by the time we do Into the Box, there'll be a release on this, in CommandBox, you can actually generate a bash script that bypasses the need to actually even use CommandBox in your containers. It's a straight script. So previously, you know, if you wanted to start a server with CommandBox, it was Java in Java. Right? That's no longer necessary because we're actually able to, to generate a script, wipe CommandBox completely from the container and then actually use that one script to run that job a process. And it's slick
Gavin Pickin (06:04):
Very cool. Yeah. So I guess that leads right into the next question. So why are you the right person to lead this workshop?
Jon Clausen (06:11):
Ah, well I guess it's probably just cause I got on the containerization bandwagon At Ortus earlier than everybody. I guess I think that, you know, I'm not going to honk my own horn here toot my own horn. But I think that, you know, I've spent quite a bit of time in this space, from the earliest development of the Docker CommandBox images. I've done extensive use of Docker, you know, personally and also professionally and day in and day out. I work with it. I mean, I don't use any other development environments when I code the CFML anymore. All of my database...
