I know it's dangerous to say this in this forum, but I would have to agree that CF is a dying (though not dead) language based on my own experiences with the CF industry. The fact is that teaching institutions (Universities, TAFE etc) are churning out java / php / asp.net developers' at large rate. No one I have met has learnt CF unless the company they were working for was already using it. This has created a shortage of developers, especially in Perth.
The company I work for has many old CF projects and a few current ones being finished off, and I have had the misfortune of working with this code as much of it is largely procedural / mode based without any inkling of functions / methods / objects (CFC's are a much spoken of hidden treasure). Once these projects are finished we will probably never start a new CF project and instead use ASP.NET or PHP. The reasons? Financial costs, personnel, and portability. The cost of CF Server is prohibitively expensive when you compare it to IIS or PHP (both free). The IDE is also not free, and let's face it, Dreamweaver or Homesite are pretty average. That's not to say we don't mind paying for good products, but the advantages of CF Server and the benefits of upgrading just aren't tangible enough. CF developers are quite simply impossible to come by - well at least with any amount of experience. It's easy to find a competent developer, but then you have to go through the time and expense of training them in CF. If the industry is only churning out .net or php developers then that's what we have to work with. We have attempted to outsource to contractors in the eastern states with appalling results - we were jerked around by two separate contractors; one who assured us they were working on the system only to vanish (literally), and the second came back several weeks after the briefing to say they would be too busy for the next four months! Suffice to say we will only be using local resources from now on. We didn't lose any money, but we did lose 2 months development time and ended up with a peeved customer. Portability speaks for itself... many (all?) hosting companies have IIS or PHP servers, but the number of them that support CF is dwindling. The number of companies supporting or developing in CF is also dwindling. If our customers want to take their website to someone else, they will be severely restricted in where they can go - some may see this as a good thing, but we don't believe in making ourselves indispensable to the detriment of the client. It's the same deal with ASP (not ASP.NET) - a lot of companies simply aren't supporting it anymore. CF has a lot of nice features, but discovering them can be a painful process. Anyway, these are just my experiences - I expect to get some flames for this... :) schlub --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "cfaussie" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/cfaussie?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
