Although we get lots of these arguments too, I'm sure we get more students understanding programming because of it. CFC's (basic OO programming) especially so.
Robin Hilliard could jump in here and point out the "paying for worthwhile technology" argument and the dev edition being free, etc (the students only argument remining might be lack of free CF hosts/CF hosting costing more than PHP, etc) <- my point -> my worry is that after teaching CF as a tag-based language, how transferable are these skills to other languages? </- my point -> eg: last year was the last time we taught ASP - it died out. sucessful students were able to pick up another language (eg: PHP) and get a job because they knew how web programming worked and they were skilled in an un-typed procedural language. I personally haven't a problem dealing with new languages, but the jury is still out on whether students can easily migrate to another language after only learning CF's tags. eg: I didn't teach CFINSERT and discourage students from using it. They'd be better off using CFQUERY and an INSERT INTO sql statement. There are not many CFINSERT equiv in other languages so it's use for me is very limited. -----Original Message----- From: Mark Stanton [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, 20 October 2003 10:17 AM To: CFAussie Mailing List Subject: [cfaussie] RE: Rates for start-up I tried to get CF into TAFE when I was teaching there, but was met with some pretty negative feedback from staff & students. The logic behind there argument was why should we be learning/teaching something that costs $$ when there are "free" products (I am aware of the counter arguments) in the same space. I thought this was a fair enough considering that most of the students were looking at getting up & running with web dev stuff on their own or in their businesses with a minimum budget. The part that really didn't make sense was the insane investment in M$ products that TAFE were more than happy to make & push. AFAIK M$ were *very* supportive of TAFE. I would have loved to have got CF in there because I really think students would have been able to learn & achieve more in their time there. But at the same time I can understand the students reluctance. These people turning up on their own time 3 nights a week for a year - working their guts out.... the lower the barrier to entry (dollar wise especially) for these people, the better IMHO. In the end we went with php.... Cheers Mark --- You are currently subscribed to cfaussie as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] MX Downunder AsiaPac DevCon - http://mxdu.com/
