On Monday, Oct 14, 2002, at 16:06 US/Pacific, Mosh Teitelbaum wrote: > Macromedia's perceived lack of response has been a fairly popular > topic on > this list. While I don't completely agree with the perception, > anything > that allows developers greater interaction with MM (such as a JCP-like > program) would be awesome.
Anyone who has been involved with Sun's JCP - particularly in the early days - will have plenty to complain about. As someone who spent nearly ten years working on programming language standards - including the abortive attempts to persuade Sun to follow either the ISO or the ECMA path - I shudder to imagine ColdFusion developing in two incompatible ways! > Again, this is exactly what > Netscape and MS did with their browser-specific HTML variants and > we've all > suffered as a result. And more recently when MS tried to extend Java in ways not compatible with Sun's specification (remember the 'delegate' keyword?). It's why MS doesn't have a Java product any longer - because what they were selling under the name 'Java' was not really Java. Now, I personally think that Sun's approach (stopping MS from selling a Java-based product) was a little heavy-handed and was not, overall, good for the industry. Many C (and C++) compiler vendors have tried this in the past. Microsoft usually at the forefront of such abuse, Digital being another classic offender. It just creates ghettos in the programming world of people who can write X-variant of some language Y. It isn't good for the industry. I used to maintain a 250,000 line C / C++ code base that had to run on about 20 OS / hardware combinations. It was very hard to write portable code because of the differences in implementations! Having said that, I think it's terrific that Blue Dragon exists - it validates ColdFusion in a very important way, reducing the stigma of 'proprietary language'. I know New Atlanta have promised MX compatibility as well - again, an important validation of the direction Macromedia is taking ColdFusion. "Conform! Consume! Obey!" -- Mr Snaffleburger : http://www.matazone.co.uk/theotherside.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Archives: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/index.cfm?forumid=4 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/index.cfm?sidebar=lists&body=lists/cf_talk FAQ: http://www.thenetprofits.co.uk/coldfusion/faq Signup for the Fusion Authority news alert and keep up with the latest news in ColdFusion and related topics. http://www.fusionauthority.com/signup.cfm
