Gavin has presented several webinars on the Online ColdFusion Meetup with Charlie Arehart. This series was inspired by many questions from customers and community members, wanting to learn more about code reuse, when should they write their own modules, when should they use java or coldfusion/cfml packages, and why should people use CommandBox and ForgeBox vs manually handling your 3rd party and shared libraries. This series tries to go back to basics, and explain pros and cons of each approach, hopefully shedding light and demystifying 3rd party libraries, package management, CommandBox endpoint installations, and ForgeBox being the home of all CFML, not a tool for box only products and tools. Check out this blog post for all of these sessions, and links on how to view them on YouTube.

---

May 12 - "Code Reuse in CF: Is Spaghetti Code still Spaghetti if it's DRY?" with Gavin Pickin

Find out the difference between DRY code and WET code, and what one is better, and more importantly, WHY. We write code one, but we read it over and over again, maintaining our code is 90% of the job... code reuse is our friend. You are already Re-using code, even if you didn't know you were. We'll learn about the different types of Code Reuse in ColdFusion, the pros and cons of each.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnOW6G5MVqE&list=PLG2EHzEbhy0-QirMKgSxhjkUyTSSTvHjL&index=3

---

June 9 - "When Should I Use 3rd Party Libraries vs Roll My Own?" with Gavin Pickin

There is always a trade-off between using a 3rd party library and rolling your version in software development. I often hear many of these points in discussions, but I wonder how many people know and consider them, so I wanted to share my pros and cons.

This presentation will help convince you that libraries are not EVIL like so many haters believe. Choosing the right libraries will make you more productive and efficient, not lazy. We'll look at how to identify solid use-cases for using a 3rd party library in your application. It gives you a checklist of questions to help you identify the red flags of unsafe, unreliable, poorly supported, or ill-suited libraries.

We'll even look at some examples in the CFML Landscape.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JP-_U41zW9Q&list=PLG2EHzEbhy0-QirMKgSxhjkUyTSSTvHjL&index=2

---

June 23: “How to find/install/implement 3rd party libraries in CFML”, with Gavin Pickin

In this meetup, Gavin will show you how to find, install and implement 3rd party libraries in ColdFusion / CFML. He will look at how to find them, how to install them, whether they are zips, gists, copy page, package managers, or even Java Jar files. We’ll look at the pros and cons of different approaches, and discuss the best practices for using those 3rd party libraries.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFhmcaUpzHY&list=PLG2EHzEbhy0-QirMKgSxhjkUyTSSTvHjL&index=1

---

More Gavin

If you like these videos, check out Gavin's "Publish your first ForgeBox Package" on CFCasts, or the Koding with the Kiwi + Friends on CFCasts, and keep an eye out for more Online ColdFusion Meetups on API, VueJS and Quasar, as well as speaking at Adobe Developer Week July 14-18, Into the Box 2022 Sept 6-8, and hopefully CF Summit as well in Vegas, Oct 3-5.