I’m starting my journey learning how to build a Coldbox 8 app in Boxlang after many years of using Coldbox + CFML. However, I ran into some pain points that I want to share because one of the great strengths of Ortus has always been the quality of documentation and trainings (both in-person and online videos).
I started at coldbox.org, which looks great and has a nice prominent “Quick Start” button, but that currently goes to a missing page in the docs.
The “Learn” button points to a CFCasts series that is now over 6 years old, and it feels like that probably needs a refresh too. With BoxLang becoming such a central part of the story now, it might make sense to have a two learning paths. Maybe one for people already familiar with CFML who want the hybrid approach, and another for people looking for a more pure BoxLang experience.
After that, I manually went to the Getting Started
docs and made it as far as “Application Templates & Features” before I hit my first snag.
I ran:
coldbox create app myApp skeleton=modern
and got:
ERROR (6.3.2+00857)
Please don't mix named and positional parameters, it makes me dizzy.
So unless I am missing something, the docs should probably show this instead:
coldbox create app name=myApp skeleton=modern
That is a small thing, but it happens really early in the process, which can create frustration in new users.
The other thing I noticed is that when you create a fresh app with the modern skeleton, the folder structure looks pretty different from what is described on the Conventions
page. That made me pause and wonder which parts reflect the current recommended approach versus older conventions.
This is not meant as a rant. I am mostly pointing it out because the first-run experience feels a little rough right now, especially for someone trying to approach ColdBox through BoxLang. The framework may be moving forward in a really exciting way, but the onboarding flow still needs to feel smooth.
Anyway, sharing this in the spirit of wanting to help. I really want ColdBox and BoxLang to succeed, and I think improving the first 15 minutes of the experience would go a long way.