On Thu, 13 Jan 2005 11:49:22 -0500, Michael Dinowitz
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> As for community, this complaint has come up on the MM forums, the HoF
> lists, non-HoF lists and at just about every CF conference that exists.
> These places combined makes the CF community and while the entire community
> is not upset with the loss of Homesite, a good portion of it is.
You're right. This is a fairly long-standing issue and a large(?)
number of CFers are not happy with the MM party line on this. This is
a thorny issue with no really good resolution.
Let me just be crystal clear here that what I am about to say is my
opinion and may well not reflect MM's policy/plans/whatever. I'm not
in the tools division. I don't actually have much insight into MM's
future plans in that area. I just want to comment on what I perceive
as some of the possible business issues behind this issue, as I see
them, as a CF developer.
Furthmore, I've used DW, UltraDev, CF Studio, CFEclipse and He3. My
tool of choice was UltraDev until DWMX. I never liked CF Studio (and
now don't even have the option of using it since I'm on a Mac). These
days I use CFEclipse for most of my CF development and DW for all my
UI work.
So...
When MM acquired Allaire, MM inherited JRun Studio, CF Studio and
HomeSite which were three separate variants of the same Delphi code
base (Windows only). Oh, and Kawa. MM already had DW and UltraDev
(Windows and Mac; also variants of one code base). UltraDev was
effectively MM's offering for server scripting development. Looking at
this from MM's point of view, would you want to support five variants
of two code bases (plus Kawa), of which three (four?) were not
cross-platform? The UD functionality was effectively merged into DWMX.
JRun Studio was dropped, as was Kawa (lots of competition in the Java
IDE space so no money to be made there really, in my opinion). CF
Studio was renamed HomeSite+ and bundled with DW (meaning you could
now buy CF Studio for $100 less than it used to cost and you got DW
for free!).
A lot of CFers will never accept DW, no matter whether it eventually
supports everything HS+ does. Choice of IDE is a very personal and
often very passionate choice for a lot of people. They perceive DW
(rightly or wrongly) as "bloatware" because it does all the 'designer
stuff' that they don't want. That means that there is actually less
and less incentive to support, in DW, *everything* that HS+ does - and
only incentive to support features that are important to CFers who
either use DW today or would switch to / upgrade to DW tomorrow based
on some killer feature. See, if you all switched to DW, there would be
more DW customers that wanted CF support but all the time you stay
with HS+, you're actually holding back CF support in DW... :)
And so to HS+... It's certainly not going to sprout new CF support
features that DW doesn't have (what about MM's Mac CF user base?) and
it's unlikely to even sprout additional CF support features that have
already been added to DW (e.g., CFC support)... I mean, where is the
financial benefit of duplicating those features in Delphi for a
product that is already given away free with DW?
And then there's CFEclipse. Free. Code-centric. Supports CFCs. Aimed
at *developers*. Likely to be a migration path for CFS/HS+ users who
would otherwise just stick with CFS/HS+ forever. If all the CFS/HS+
users migrate to either DW or CFE, MM would no longer have to support
CFS/HS+ at all (hurray! those folks working on the Delphi code base
could spend their time enhancing CFMX which would benefit all of us!).
Also, the better DW and CFE support CF, the more that enhances CF's
reputation ("it has really good IDE support, so it's definitely worth
using CF").
At least, that's how I see it. If you think there really is a good
business case for major work to be done on HS+, let's hear it. Or
perhaps some other approach?
--
Sean A Corfield -- http://www.corfield.org/
Team Fusebox -- http://www.fusebox.org/
Breeze Me! -- http://www.corfield.org/breezeme
Got Gmail? -- I have 5 invites to give away!
"If you're not annoying somebody, you're not really alive."
-- Margaret Atwood
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~|
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:4:190279
Archives: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/threads.cfm/4
Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm/link=s:4
Unsubscribe:
http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=11502.10531.4
Donations & Support: http://www.houseoffusion.com/tiny.cfm/54
