Hey I'm just glad my email wasn't just flatly ignored! @David: Well good point - and I think I overstated the user-defined prefix as sufficient, in and of itself, for a concerted effort to re-brand the platform. It'd just be a feature, like OpenBD's new Catch-all Email. That said, I think I've heard of CFML being branded as the "fast way to do Java" for years and am not sure it's working. I just figured the user-defined prefix would be so easy to accommodate, makes for pretty dramatic but low-hanging fruit.
@Matt fantastically thoughtful response as usual and ends on a great note! I tried to emphasize that the CF prefix would be supported by default, so nothing's getting thrown out. And I'm not so sure that everybody cares about the platform, to the point of grilling you on Your Markup Language's origins. Consider the "app store for government" at http://marketplace.civiccommons.org/apps, where the technical requirements are listed almost as an afterthought, completely overshadowed by the main points IT decision makers care most about: "What does it do?" and "Who's used it successfully?" And isn't the platform less relevant than ever in the cloud? What IT managers want more than anything is the new beautiful single-click war deployments to Jelastic stuff. They don't care what it's built on when they see other cities deploying it successfully. Government agencies all over are deploying Drupal, for instance, despite not having PHP developers on staff. Totally agree we'd never fool the more technically-minded. I really had in mind just the bozos who ignorantly propagate all the ColdFusion is dead memes. All that said, I'm very inspired by your rally to reclaim the proud history of the language. I agree we have to do that regardless. But wondering if we can do both. It's just a prefix. It's nothing more than empowering you to configure your server to parse .someOtherFileExtension for CFML, or to i18n your views to speak Mandarin. It's just a little feature that gives you a little more control over your brand. BTW Im not at all convinced it's a good idea - just curious to hear folks thoughts. I do think re-branding in general works though, which is why companies and political parties do it all the time. :) -J On Tue, Mar 13, 2012 at 12:16 PM, Matthew Woodward <[email protected]>wrote: > On Tue, Mar 13, 2012 at 3:28 AM, Jason Blum <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Because "CF" carries so much baggage in so many peoples' minds > > > For some reason what comes to mind when I start thinking about this is > that live recording of U2 doing "Helter Skelter" where Bono says, "This is > a song Charles Manson stole from The Beatles. We're stealing it back." > > Here's my two cents on it. While the notion of starting with a clean slate > might be appealing, it's totally a case of throwing out the baby with the > bathwater and does nothing but give you a whole new set of problems to > overcome. Breaking with CFML's past simply trades old problems for > different ones, specifically trying to get people to try a "new" language > and get the existing users to change what they're doing for the sake of > marketing goals that (from my perspective anyway) are of dubious value. > > In other words, just changing the name isn't going to make all the > challenges we have magically go away. > > The Jeremy Allaire video that you had the absolute genius to secure for > OpenCF Summit (thanks again for having that brilliant thought!) really > struck a chord with me as I'm sure it did many others. It was so great to > hear the original inspiration behind CFML directly from one of its > creators, and all of what he said still holds true today. Even with all the > new languages that have come along in the interim CFML is still light years > beyond so many of them in terms of simplicity, accessibility, flexibility > ... it's fantastic technology and if we all didn't believe that, we'd go > off and use something else. > > But I'm sure we're all in agreement that we don't have a technical > problem, if we have any problem at all (as we discussed at length at OpenCF > Summit) it's a perception/image problem. And you don't fix that by slapping > a new name on it. > > Let's say we do rename things or allow user-defined prefixes. What you get > into then is conversations like this: > > "So what's this ?ML stuff?" > > "Oh it's a great new scripting language for the web." > > "Never heard of it." > > "Have you heard of CFML or ColdFusion?" > > "Yep, I remember that from back in the day." > > "Well this is that, with a new name." > > "Oh." > > *** crickets chirping *** > > My point is that for people to understand what the hell it is, you'd > *never* get away from referring to its history. > > And frankly, though I realize perception is everything, screw the haters. > I'm proud of CFML's history and even prouder about where it's going these > days. To me we'd lose WAY too much if we detached ourselves from our past. > It's far more good than bad, and I think it's far more easy to fix the > perception issues we may have than it would be to try and start over (which > honestly isn't feasible in my opinion). > > It's like rebranding high fructose corn syrup as "corn sugar." You're not > really fooling anyone, and attempts like that can easily backfire. Not to > mention if you turn the language into a free-for-all of user-defined > prefixes, I don't see what that really gains and from my perspective it > introduces a host of issues. > > Instead of trying to start over, I'd much rather spend that energy > focusing on education, grassroots marketing, and an image makeover for the > fantastic history we do have going for us than lose all that for the sake > of what ultimately is just semantics. A rose by any other name and all that. > > Specifically, I'd like to see: > * more friendly, introductory tutorials and screencasts (I have some ideas > on these) > * an online book building an app from start to finish (one of the goals of > openbdcookbook.org) > * a trycfml.org site, which Mike Henke suggested at OCFS (I bought the > domain name, and the code already exists in the Mach-II dashboard. would > love design help!) > * an online manual like PHP has (the OpenBD manual goes a long way towards > this and comes straight from the engine code so it's always up to date) > * Case studies. These are huge. As Alan can attest there is some seriously > high-traffic stuff running on CFML, so we need to highlight that stuff > wherever possible. > * Related to case studies, a "who's using" list. Even if we can't get case > studies from everyone there are some seriously big name organizations using > CFML. > * Reaching outside our bubble. We had .NET developers show up at OCFS! > That's huge because now they see we're doing some very cool stuff. We need > more of that. > > In summary, I think a name change or syntax change is dumping the great > CFML history (not to mention running the risk of alienating the CFML > faithful) in favor of the hope of bringing new people in simply because the > technology has a new name. That to me is not a good value proposition, and > I feel our time could be much better spent polishing what we have instead > of trying to start over, which from where I stand would introduce far more > difficult problems to overcome. > > Let's steal CFML back, take it back to its roots, work very hard on > building the things we know people want and need to get into CFML, and take > this great technology to the next level. > -- > Matthew Woodward > [email protected] > http://blog.mattwoodward.com > identi.ca / Twitter: @mpwoodward > > Please do not send me proprietary file formats such as Word, PowerPoint, > etc. as attachments. > http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html > > -- > online documentation: http://openbd.org/manual/ > google+ hints/tips: https://plus.google.com/115990347459711259462 > http://groups.google.com/group/openbd?hl=en > -- Jason Blum http://twitter.com/phenotypical http://phenotypical.com -- online documentation: http://openbd.org/manual/ google+ hints/tips: https://plus.google.com/115990347459711259462 http://groups.google.com/group/openbd?hl=en
