I probably should not join this particular thread because I will probably be
seen as very biased BUT. But I am a relative newbie as an employee of
Allaire now Macromedia. My experience with using ColdFusion and briefly
trying ASP is more relevant since I have used ColdFusion since late 1995-96.
In reality ColdFusion should have died long ago as it has an appreciable up
front cost. But it did not die in the face of alternatives that have no up
front costs. In fact rather than ceasing to exist it grew exponentially in
use. Also, the ColdFusion community has never seemed small to me as I
struggled with and was presented with solutions to challenging issues, time
and time again.
Now, we have the honeymoon and final marriage of Allaire and Macromedia. I
do not know what will eventually come out of this but I do know it will be
fed and nurtured with ideas from all the worldwide developers and users of
both former Macromedia and Allaire products and I do know that we are only
limited by our own imaginations. My personal opinion is that now would
definitely be the wrong time to move away from ColdFusion for anyone with a
desire to be involved in the future of the Internet and the Web.
Kind Regards - Mike Brunt
Macromedia Consulting
Tel 562.243.6255
Fax 401.696.4335
http://www.macromedia.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Joseph Grossberg [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Friday, April 20, 2001 12:28 PM
To: CF-Talk
Subject: Is CF still relevant?
Now, before you dismiss this as a troll, please let me elaborate. This isn't
so much an instigation or a whine as it is a call for us to take a step back
and reevalutate things periodically.
Over the course of my career as a web programmer/developer, I have worked
with a variety of sever-side languages and technologies: ColdFusion, ASP,
JSP, PHP, Perl and Python. I like some more than others, but I'm not an
evangelist for any; they each have their uses. And I recognize some of CF's
strengths: easy to learn for people who know only tag-based HTML or don't
have significant programming experience; built-in admin tool; specialized
editor; comes with pre-built tags and web-based administrator. There are
also major flaws: broken/sketchy tags; no XML parsing; not OOP; relatively
small community; etc.
Right now, I work at a web development firm that is primarily "a CF house"
(besides me). Our more senior programmers are looking at honing their CF
skills, while our less experienced webmasters are trying to learn
ColdFusion. But, I can't help but wonder whether they are wasting their
time. Would they be better off spending their time learning ASP, Java or
another non-CF solution? Why or why not?
And how would we tell if and when it was time to give up CF and try
something else, as all but the most stubborn experts in also-ran languages
(Ada, SmallTalk), applications (Netscape, Lotus Notes) and Operating Systems
(Amiga) have resignedly done?
Lastly, why do *you* still use CF? Is it because it's what you're best at,
and you don't want to try something new (where, temporarily, you'd be a
novice again)? Is it because your ccompany's legacy code is all in CF? Is it
because you genuinely think that ColdFusion is, generally speaking, the best
solution for web application development in 2001?
Joe
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