Those are good points, however even with a staff of experienced CF developers my old company made the choice to go to .NET
The main reason was because that is what our clients wanted. None of them had heard of CF, however they had heard of Java and .NET When we went to outsource some of development to an Indian firm, they all knew .NET, we couldn't find anybody that was able to do CF. There were Java Developers. -----Original Message----- From: Robert Munn [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, August 21, 2005 5:16 AM To: CF-Community Subject: Re: Microsoft targetting CF A few years ago my company bought a large number of server licenses from Macromedia. Some client (CF Studio, Flash, DW) licenses, too. A couple of years later when VS Studio.NET first came out, Microsoft sent a fully licensed copy of VS Studio.NET Architect edition addressed to me at my office. The retail value of that package at the time was around $2,300, if I recall correctly. Coincidence? I think not. I have no way of knowing for sure, but I would be willing to wager that the large volume license purchasers of CF got the same deal I did. You have to admire MSFT as a competitor. They are totally relentless. As for the net effect? We've all certainly heard of shops that have dropped CF in favor of .NET, but we have also seen a lot of new entrants into the CF market, esp. since CFMX came out. I am amazed at the vigorousness and seriousness of the CFMX programming community these days. Frameworks, serious debates on the value of MVC, Ajax, CFFORM-based RIAs- we are seeing a new wave of really, really cool stuff built around ColdFusion. What gets me going the most is when I see young software developers who are serious about their craft building advanced stuff in CF. It's great! >From a business standpoint, MSFT has done a great job convincing corporate managers to go with .NET, but what about developers? All I see is open .NET jobs going unfilled because people don't have the skills. And unlike Java, C/C++, PHP, Perl, and CF, you have to run Windows to run .NET, and I believe that has locked out a lot of developers from countries like India and China. Developers who want to learn CF can download CFEclipse (they probably already have the Eclipse platform), download a developer copy of CFMX server, and go to town. If I had any advice to give to MACR, it would be to encourage that kind of behavior as much as possible, because developers in Asia (with 50% of the world's population) are the market for sustained future growth. As to the search term thing, MSFT has great lawyers. They might argue that ColdFusion is a valid search term for them to advertise precisely because it is a competing product in their space. I did a bunch of other Google searches for languages. ColdFusion pulled up the VS Studio ad. So did JSP. Other searches- Java, Perl, PHP, J2EE, Python- turned up nothing special. Clearly there is no profit to be had in beating up on free competitors like PHP and Perl, and J2EE seems to have missed the cut because MSFT is targeting people searching for the language, not the platform. The scripting wars continue. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Find out how CFTicket can increase your company's customer support efficiency by 100% http://www.houseoffusion.com/banners/view.cfm?bannerid=49 Message: http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm/link=i:5:170591 Archives: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/threads.cfm/5 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm/link=s:5 Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.5 Donations & Support: http://www.houseoffusion.com/tiny.cfm/54
