I know very little about ASP and as far as having it as a
skill im not even real worried.
Here are some reasons why I dont just jump on every
language.
YMMV however..
I have been programming for around 5 years and can
pick up any procedural language rather quickly.
(Natural|Functional) languages are another story
(Scheme, Lisp etc. etc.)
Instead of really worrying about which tool to use
I use the best one. CF fits the bill for some things,
maybe ASP or PHP does for others, depending on
server type, financial situation etc.
The idea behind CF, ASP, PHP, JSP, mod_perl etc.
functionally the same.
You need a tool to communicate with a database and
give enough programming functionality to allow for
Rapid Application Development, and reasonable
application maintenance. The client interface
is a Web Browser which means your talking in
HTML and for spiffier interfaces DHTML.
The nice thing about this model is that as a developer
my time invested in learning HTML/DHTML(Client) and Time
spent learning Relational Databases(Part of the Server) applies
regardless of the tool I use to generate my
HTML.
Many of the techniques you learn apply regardless of
what tool ASP, CF whatever you use. You are
going to be performing the same higher level
operations every time.
Generate a form, get user input post the form to a
object/tempalte/jsp/whatever that posts it to
a database.
So, WHY oh WHY must we compare CF to ASP???
Use the one you like and you can
manage the most effective but dont make it into a
pissing contest, which it obviosuly is not.
Now I realize not all people can pick up languages
as easy as others but once people really get the
idea of HTTP model of communicating the tool to
use becomes easier to select. Most of the time
it *is* CF for the functionality it offers,
the fact that many many people *pay* for CF
instead of taking ASP for free says something
to me about CF just as a casual observer.
Now to rant a little about ASP.
<ASP_RANT>
Microsoft is giving away ASP like they gave away
Internet Explorer. IE, ASP+ .NET
all of this is a part of Microsofts agenda to
push them as a premiere devleoper of Applicaton
servers provider tools and Applications Services
through Microsoft. I truly believe giving away ASP
does not hurt competition but if they make ASP+
a better tool and still give it away for
free they are STLL practicing monopolistic
tactics and I still truly believe even tho
this is seemingly counterproductive at first
that microsoft should be broken into at the
very least Applications Company and Operating System
Company.
I just think it is highly un-fair of MS to be
doing something like this.
</ASP_RANT>
Jeremy Allen
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[Insert Quarter]
-----Original Message-----
From: Gregory Harris [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Wednesday, August 30, 2000 11:32 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Has the Apocalypse cometh? (Was RE: CF vs. ASP)
In light of some of the issues regarding coldfusion as of late, I've already
taken up learning ASP and WAP (the latter having no resemblance whatsoever
to a server language, but still handy for the resume), are many other once
Cold-Fusion only people doing the same thing now? How many dedicated CF
programmers are there still out there? How many have started practicing a
new language? Just wondering as the heretics in this group are speaking of
the end, will it be so?
Gregory Harris
Los Angeles Information Technology Agency (ITA)
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 08/30 8:03 AM >>>
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> > > > Well.... I can think of one REALLY good reason why ASP
> users might
> > > > deal without nifty things like built in HTTP, etc.
> where CF users
> > > > might insist on said functionality:
> > >
> > > > Cost of ASP: $0.00
> > > > Cost of ColdFusion: $1199.95 (From Necx.com)
> >
> > > If you compare the labor costs for training and development for
> > > entry-level and mid-level CF developers vs ASP developers,
> > > that $1199, or the $3000+ that you'd pay for CF Enterprise
> > > Edition, will pay for itself in less than a week, I suspect.
> >
> > I'd like to see some actual statistics backing up that claim.
> > I hear people use this argument all the time. "CF ultimately
> > costs less because it's so much easier to learn and faster to
> > develop applications with." Well, this is definitely not true
> > all of the time, and given that there are so many people out
> > there who know VB (I think VB is still the most widely used
> > programming language in the U.S.), it's not that difficult to
> > find an ASP programmer, or to train someone who already knows VB.
>
> Unfortunately, of course, I don't have any "actual
> statistics". I'm sure
> that's no surprise to you. What I do have is anecdotal
> experience, which you
> might argue is useless. Nevertheless, I'm going to let fly with it.
I *almost* hate to continue this portion of the thread, but.... I'll
swap the subject line & give it a life of its own....
One rather major thing just came to mind which tilts the "cost"
argument back in ASP's favor:
We upgraded all our ASP servers to Win2k with no problems. All of
the code still worked afterwards with no kludging whatsoever. It
truly was a painless upgrade.
Then we tried to upgrade our CF Server to Win2k.... First we find
that 4.0.1 isn't supported under 2k, so there's some more money to
Allaire for a new version just so it works on the current OS, but
anyways....
We try the install and it absolutely DESTROYS our main application.
Everything is locked properly, no code problems that any or our
developers are aware of. Yet within minutes of rebooting the server
with Win2k & CF4.5.1, we start getting PCode errors, random exception
errors, etc. At one point, the CFML parser reported an error on line
4,598,123 or a 200 line file!!
We spent hours on the phone with Allaire tech support, and their
response was, "Sorry... We don't know what's wrong." FORTUNATELY,
we'd broken the mirror of the two drives in that machine before we
started & took out one of the drives as a contingency plan. We
simply had to put the old drive in, sync the other drive back to it,
and we were back to where we started.
At what I pay myself & my staff, that couple of days MORE than made
up for the cost difference in training, and that's to say NOTHING of
two days worth of lost sales!
(And before anyone says, "You should have tested before upgrading a
production server..." We DID. The problems just didn't show up
until you put a production load on it...)
When you add to that the inordinate amount of time I have to spend
kludging CF to make things like CFHTTP, CFMAIL, CFSTOREDPROC, etc.
behave the way they're supposed to behave.... I don't care if you
could teach CF in 30 minutes or less. I still spend more to develop
and maintain a CF app than I do an ASP app. Am I alone on this one?
The only reason I still keep CF around is the tremendous codebase
that was written for it before all of Allaire's little programming
quirks started showing up. If I could translate to ASP or even PHP,
I'd be gone in a heartbeat...
Sorry to bash the language of choice on this list, but I did want to
make that point... Basically, with all of the cost associate with
CF, there's really no excuse for Allaire not to do it RIGHT. It
seems they're more worried about their shareholders than about their
customers....
Best regards,
Zac Bedell
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