I come from the days of Everyware and Pervasive using the Tango technology. Same idea as CF being a tag-based language with an application server. Tag-based is easier to learn and has many benefits. When Macromedia bought CF, it was a God-send to integrate CF and Dreamweaver together without having to use Homesite or the bulky Allaire CF editor. Unfortunately, Macromedia bombed when it came to marketing Cold Fusion. Remember Ultradev? Macromedia's response to a WYSIWYG java, html, database application which was supposed to replace Dreamweaver? Macromedia focused too much on Ultradev and ignored the much needed CF marketing.
Fast forward to Adobe (The document and printing solutions company) with failing web products to buy Macromedia. Like everyone, I was hoping for a re-brand of CF. Nothing happened. They never marketed it. At a trade show in New York (Internet World) I went to the Adobe booth. No one wanted to talk about CF, and there was one brochure with a paragraph mentioning CF that's it. Adobe came out with Cold Fusion Builder which is sort of nifty, but not nearly as good as Dreamweaver for building CF websites. Now Adobe is pushing their Creative Cloud (copying Office 365 are we?) which I would never use because of the continuous hacks to Adobe's servers and private information breaches. So what are the alternatives? PhP..... Not secure, messy code, can't load balance between multiple servers unless you BUY an app server for it. Most PhP hosters throw the web server, database server and email server on the same box and call it a day. I programmed PhP code for a year and will never do it again. The problems with hacking, SQL injection attacks, URL hacks etc... take up time to fix at the developer's expense. PhP, Linux, MYSQL, Cpanel, Wordpress Joomla and many others are free. You get what you pay for. A proper coded CF site won't get hacked if the code is well written and the server is configured properly. There's ASP.net but personally I don't want to program something for 3 months in .NET that takes 3 weeks in CF. Plus Microsoft changes things around way too much, and Visual Studio is stupid expensive. Sure there's Expression web (does anyone really use it?) and some plugins for Dreamweaver. There's Dot Net Nuke if you have lots of time on your hands too. Most of my clients don't want to wait. And .NET developers are the snobs of the development community expecting high hourly rates. Content Management Server was a nice touch if you had deep pockets and lots of staff to maintain multiple servers but Microsoft did away with that too. Is CF dying? It is dying a slow death in my opinion. Adobe has dropped the ball with marketing. Heck, they don't even use it on their own site! PhP is the internet king for programming, and Wordpress is keeping developers making thousands of plugins for it. In the technical colleges and universities they teach PhP, Java, and .NET. New developers aren't even exposed to CF anymore. When you say Adobe, the first 2 things that come to mind are "PDF" and "Photoshop". I'll continue to use CF for as long as I can, then just leave the web development game since the only player is PhP and I don't have the time nor desire to get into that technology. Kind Regards, Rick Sanders T: 902-401-7689 W: www.webenergy.ca -----Original Message----- From: Jon Clausen [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, March 18, 2014 11:32 AM To: cf-talk Subject: Re: CFML tags was: "The long tail of ColdFusion fail" On Mar 18, 2014, at 10:17 AM, Adam Cameron <[email protected]> wrote: > > Tag-based code is godawful anywhere other than in a view, or some > other situation in which text-processing is needed. Which does not > describe an awful lot of CFML code out there. > > That Macromedia/Adobe pushed the tag side of CFML over the script side > is probably the worst strategic move they ever made. Agree, now. I think at that moment in webdev history, it served a purpose, which was ease of entry in to development. Now, it's a liability, seems antiquated, and is unnecessarily verbose - especially if you are coming from a different programming language. I do like wrapping an entire content block with <cfoutput> and just double escaping the pound symbols, as necessary, compared to having to deal with <?php echo $variable?> or PHP short tags <?= $variables ?>. I haven't written a tag-based component in a long while though, as I can build something out faster in script - especially when I'm coming back to CF after using a different language for a bit. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Order the Adobe Coldfusion Anthology now! http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Coldfusion-Anthology/dp/1430272155/?tag=houseoffusion Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/message.cfm/messageid:358031 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/unsubscribe.cfm
