Reinventing The Wheel As A Reflection Of Skill Level (RE: Mark Mandel)

Posted February 20, 2007 at 9:03 PM by Ben Nadel

Tags: ColdFusion

In response to something I heard last night at the NY CFUG meeting about Blue Dragon, I set off to figure out how I one could test to see if a SQL value was NULL or if it was actually an empty string. As it turns out, Mark Mandel had solved this problem months ago in the same fashion (with arguably more elegance). At first I was bummed that I had "reinvented the wheele". Then I was double-bummed to find out that not only had Mark already figured this out but that I had in fact commented on his post back in September (clearly demonstrating to myself that I was not fully aware of what he was talking about).

But then, I realized, if Mark Mandel did it... and then I did it... I MUST be on the right track! So from now on, instead of looking down on reinventing the wheel, I am going to look at it as a litmus test that I am getting smarter :)




Reader Comments

Feb 20, 2007 at 9:16 PM // reply »
24 Comments

Now I'm all blushing.... awww stop it ;)


Feb 20, 2007 at 10:51 PM // reply »
92 Comments

Ben don't lie to us. You are a terrible liar. You loveeee reinventing the wheel! Why do you think we get... what was it? About 5-7 blog posts today alone? Come on Ben admit it, you enjoy reinventing. :) By the way I'm in no way criticizing the fact that you are an active blogger, if anything you need to keep at it.


Feb 21, 2007 at 7:51 AM // reply »
11,238 Comments

Hello, my name is Ben and I love reinventing the wheel :)


Post A Comment

Comment Etiquette: Please do not post spam. Please keep the comments on-topic. Please do not post unrelated questions or large chunks of code. And, above all, please be nice to each other - we're trying to have a good conversation here.

Please review the following issues:

Author Name:


Author Email:

Author Website:

Comment:

Supported HTML tags for formatting: <strong>bold</strong>   <em>italic</em>   <code>code</code>







  • Help Wanted - Find Your Next ColdFusion Job
Ben Nadel's Company - Epicenter Consulting Recent Blog Comments
May 21, 2013 at 11:51 AM
Ask Ben: Parsing Very Large XML Documents In ColdFusion
Looking at my first ever XML document that I have to parse and put into MS SQL 2000 with CF8. I get it to list the desired Field name, many times over, and have a long list of this field name displa ... read »
May 21, 2013 at 9:25 AM
Turning Off and On Identity Column in SQL Server
you are awesome..i am lucky to get this blog between such a garbage one....Thanks, Prashant ... read »
May 20, 2013 at 4:38 PM
Using A Dynamic Column Name With ValueList() In ColdFusion
@Dana, Your confusion is well founded, since this is a very confusing features. In fact, it ONLY works if you use array notation. Meaning, that this: arrayToList( query[ "columnName" ] ) ... read »
May 20, 2013 at 4:34 PM
Using A Dynamic Column Name With ValueList() In ColdFusion
I was thinking chicken and the egg, I wouldn't have expected it to work in the valuelist going in I guess. Maybe I just need a beer, long day :) ... read »
May 20, 2013 at 4:29 PM
Using A Dynamic Column Name With ValueList() In ColdFusion
@Dana, That's if you're trying to reference a specific row. In this case, we're trying to reference the entire query column as one cohesive value. So, you are correct that if you wanted to output a ... read »
May 20, 2013 at 4:24 PM
Using A Dynamic Column Name With ValueList() In ColdFusion
I thought when you used array notation to reference queries you always had to have the row or it would throw a similar error as well? ... read »
May 20, 2013 at 11:45 AM
Using jQuery's Animate() Step Callback Function To Create Custom Animations
This is really useful. I found out that you don't actually have to use a dummy css property (surprisingly). To animate a property in a linear-gradient for instance I did this this.css('someLinearGra ... read »
May 20, 2013 at 10:51 AM
Using A Dynamic Column Name With ValueList() In ColdFusion
@Josh, Oh snap! You're totally right! I'm not sure I've ever tried that. I did know that you can call a number of other array-methods on ColdFusion query columns: http://www.bennadel.com/blog/167 ... read »
InVision App - Prototyping Made Beautiful With Prototyping Tools