On 10/27/06,
Clement Cervenka <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Hi All,
Yesterday afternoon, while reading my SitePoint
Tech Times #151 - New Browser Wars / State of
ColdFusion, I throught that you will might find
this article very interesting. Sorry, that the
charts didn't copy-over. If asked, I will email
this entire issue to you, just post email.
Thanks,
Joe Cervenka
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
The State of ColdFusion
In issue 145 of the Tech Times, I offered some advice
on which web technologies beginners should invest time
in learning. Ben Forta, the Senior Technical
Evangelist at Adobe, felt I misrepresented ColdFusion
when I described it as "relatively stagnant." Having
done some homework, I've now changed my thinking a
little.
First, here's Forta's objection:
You are correct about the gentle learning curve, but
can you clarify "relatively stagnant"? Just to be
clear, the Webster definition of stagnant is "not
advancing or developing". ColdFusion was first
released in 1995, ColdFusion MX 7 was released in
2005, 7.0.1 later that same year, and 7.0.2 in June of
2006. In addition, the ColdFusion team is hard at work
on the 8th major version of ColdFusion (currently
codenamed "Scorpio"), to be released in 2007.
Obviously, we are both advancing and developing
ColdFusion, and so the term "stagnant" is utterly
inappropriate. As such, I must request that you update
and correct your statement.
Forta goes on to point out that ColdFusion sits atop a
Java foundation, and as such benefits from the full
power and flexibility of that platform. My thinking
here is that to take advantage of the Java platform
beyond what ColdFusion exposes directly, you need to
learn Java, which makes it a moot point in a
discussion of what a beginner should learn first.
Getting back to Forta's main point, there is, of
course, no arguing with semantics. If the measure of
health for a server-side platform is the frequency of
releases, then ColdFusion has life in it yet. But even
when considering this meaningless metric, compared to
the release schedules of competing platforms like Ruby
on Rails, PHP, or the dazzling array of Java web
application frameworks, ColdFusion comes off looking,
well, "relatively stagnant."
How else can we measure the health of a platform?
Well, one way is to look at book sales (something we
do at lot at SitePoint). O'Reilly showed the results
of the past three years of book sales at OSCON 2006.
ColdFusion didn't even make the graph, but when asked,
Tim O'Reilly replied: "ColdFusion would be showing as
a flatline at the bottom if we were to graph it." Of
course, a platform might not need books if it were
especially well-documented, and perhaps that's the
case with ColdFusion. Or perhaps it's just that
ColdFusion isn't evolving rapidly enough for people to
need new books written about it.
Perhaps the way to measure a platform's health is to
look at the job market surrounding it. I've seen a
smattering of reports that the ColdFusion job market
has perked up recently, so let's take a look. When
measured against Ruby jobs, ColdFusion looks like a
solid enough choice for now.
Note that the numbers for "ColdFusion" and for "Cold
Fusion" are roughly equal, so you can effectively
double the ColdFusion numbers if you don't mind
working for a company that can't spell.
When you throw in other more established platforms
like PHP and ASP.NET, it's clear that ColdFusion isn't
the best choice if you're playing the numbers for a
new career.
Even if you double up the ColdFusion line on this
graph, it's still only about 2/3 the size of the PHP
job market, while ASP.NET and Java (not shown because
it overwhelms the others) are even better choices.
But no, I wasn't talking about any of these forms of
stangancy. Rather, my description of ColdFusion was
based on an impression that the platform's development
had slowed to the point that it was unable to respond
to the changing needs of real-world web developers in
the same way as its aforementioned competitors. Even
in major releases like ColdFusion MX 7, changes to the
platform seemed to consist mainly of tacked-on
features of interest to a small minority of developers
(e.g. integrated reporting) or tie-ins with
Macromedia's (now Adobe's) other properties (e.g.
Flex).
Based on Forta's message, however, I thought it best
to revisit that premise. I perused a number of
ColdFusion blogs, read a ColdFusion developer journal,
and spoke with some active members of the ColdFusion
community. And I have to say, on some points I was
pleasantly surprised.
One trend I observed on ColdFusion-related blogs
recently was a spate of ColdFusion 8 wishlists. Dave
Carabetta published a particularly comprehensive one.
These lists give a pretty good feel for where
ColdFusion's power users hope the platform is headed.
Certain items are worrisome:
Eleven years in and ColdFusion doesn't have anything
built-in to it to really work with images on any sort
of useful level.
ColdFusion needs a professional IDE. I have been
working with Flex 2 lately, and it's downright
appalling to see the level of professional polish on
the Flex Builder IDE versus the CFEclipse IDE.
Something that's not on these lists that I expected to
see, however, is a more powerful application
framework. This seems to be one area where the
ColdFusion community has really taken charge: Fusebox,
Model-Glue, Reactor, ColdSpring, Unity, and many other
projects exist as the foundation for different
approaches to building ColdFusion applications.
Next I sat down with the Summer 2006 edition of Fusion
Authority, a free copy of which serendipitously landed
on my desk a few weeks ago. First, let me say that
this is a top notch publication, with just the right
mixture of big names and enthusiastic upstarts writing
timely and practical articles.
Refreshing my knowledge of ColdFusion code through the
pages of the journal, I gained a renewed appreciation
for the "hide the hard stuff" approach that's
exemplified by the platform. If you're the kind of
person who just wants to get the job done without
getting drawn into the technical details, ColdFusion
may be uniquely suited to your style.
An article by Kay Smoljak, who I met at Web Directions
South last month, attracted my attention, however. In
"An Honest Look at Integrated Reporting", she
describes the problems she had making real-world use
of one of the flagship new features in ColdFusion MX
7. The severity of the bugs she describes are frankly
shocking, and although it sounds like Adobe has been
responsive to her bug reports, correcting many of the
issues in the recent 7.0.2 release, one has to wonder
a) how Adobe could release a flagship new feature that
was so fundamentally flawed, and b) how nobody but Kay
Smoljak seems to have noticed.
In my mind, this signals a disconnect between the core
development of ColdFusion and the real-world needs of
its user base. The reason there wasn't public outcry
as a result of the bugs in the integrated reporting
features of ColdFusion MX 7 is because few people
bothered to use the feature. When Macromedia/Adobe
spends its time building integrated reporting that
nobody uses instead of fundamentally useful features
like dynamic image generation, there is something very
wrong.
The good news is that Adobe has announced that
ColdFusion 8 will have dynamic image generation built
in. Nevertheless, I had to ask Kay Smoljak what she
thought of all this.
I was actually a ColdFusion developer long before I
was anything else, and really my impression of
ColdFusion as a whole is pretty positive. [...] Don't
get me wrong - ColdFusion integrated reporting is a
steaming pile of turds. But I'm still a fan of the
platform. Perhaps they don't give the right impression
to the wider community of developers, but there is a
lot of stuff happening. [...]
I have some ideas about the type of developer that is
attracted to ColdFusion, which I think contributes to
the "stagnant impression" - they tend to be "get the
job done and move on to the next target" type people
rather than coding enthusiasts - they're just not
vocal like Ruby On Rails, PHP and .NET fanatics.
...which is all pretty reasonable, as far as it goes.
The question I keep coming back to is this: what
exactly are you paying for when you choose to develop
for ColdFusion? Lest we forget, Adobe's ColdFusion
server costs a pretty penny to license, and that's
money that your employer won't be putting into server
hardware, developer tools, or, ultimately, your
pocket. Just what is it that you're getting in return?
It isn't quicker bug fixes, it isn't a larger job
market, it's not a richer feature set, and it's not
rock-solid reliability. It might be timely support,
but other platforms offer that too, and without the
up-front costs.
In the end, the only solid reason I know of for
choosing ColdFusion today is if you simply prefer its
way of doing things. But, when we compare ColdFusion
to competing platforms, I do honestly believe that the
core development of ColdFusion has been stagnant for
some time. It may be that this is all about to change
with the release of ColdFusion 8 next year and, thanks
to Adobe Labs, we should be able to tell long before
this new version hits the streets. But based on where
the platform is today, I must stand firm in my
recommendation that newcomers to web development look
elsewhere, at least for now.
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[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Blogging @ http://ev.instantspot.com/blog/
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