And the winner is....

  • by: Abram Adams
  • Feb 10, 2014

First off, huge thanks to all that submitted tutorials!

In total, there were over 30 tutorials that were submitted within this contest period that were considered ( not counting about 30 more that were submitted with something along the lines of "testing this tutorial thing out..." ). Unfortunately, some just didn't make the cut - or didn't get the tutorial approved in time. In the end there were 11 tutorials that did get approved and were considered for the grand prize.

The "judging" process included myself and my son Sabin. We both separately review and "graded" each tutorial based on how effective it was a teaching the subject. His results were very close to my own, but there were a couple that I was surprised by.

Before I announce who the grand prize $300 visa gift card winner is, it is fitting to say that each of the tutorial authors have already won. Not only do they get global recognition for pioneering the live example teaching style for ColdFusion that will no doubt help many newcomers for years to come, but thanks to the support of Adobe they also get a free ColdFusion Builder license! Here are all of the contestants (in alphabetical order):

Congratulations for wining a ColdFusion Builder license!

Now, what you've all been waiting for.... the winer is...

Wait, first... let me give you a little more insight into the selection process. During my initial reviews of each tutorial, I had some preconceived ideas of which tutorials I thought had a real chance at the money. Honestly, all the ones that made it through approval were very good, so I knew selecting just one was going to be tough. Fortunately for me, I had decided at the onset of this contest that the ultimate judge would be my 16 year old son, Sabin. He more closely matches the target for these tutorials: someone with little or now programming experience trying to learn server-side web development.

Now, I've been writing cfml (good/bad/ugly ) for around 14 years now, so I was very curious to see how well these tutorials held up to Sabin's critical eye. He's not entirely new to programming ( having taken VB and JavaScript college classes ), but he is fairly new to cfml - only having small bouts with it here and there over the past year or so. Perfect for judging how well these tutorials teach their subject. After he reviewed each tutorial, he had narrowed it down to three:

  • Scott Steinbeck's Looping Over Data
  • Gavin Pickin's CFML - A Dynamic Language - What does it mean?
  • David Schaller's Conditional Statements with Booleans and Operators
  • His final decision, and the winner of the very first TryCF.com tutorial contest is.....




    David Schaller for his tutorial: Conditional Statements with Booleans and Operators
    Woot! Congratulations David Schaller!!!

    Sabin's comments on this tutorial was that it had good grammar ( which is strange, since Sabin's 16 and all kids do now is text... ), clear explanations and was very effective. I have to agree, David you did a stellar job! Thanks for teaching Sabin some things about conditional statements, and for many more students like him to come.

    For everyone else you entered, huge props. You all did a great job. For those that didn't submit a tutorial, that's ok we're still here and accepting new tutorials! Now that the pressure is off, and the first round of great tutorials are here as a guide, you are better staged than ever to start investing in tomorrows developers.

    I will be getting in touch with each of the winners here in the next day or so to connect you with your prizes! Look for my email soon!