Just to further the "alternatives" and "one size does NOT fit all": some of our sites use a combination of ColdFusion and PHP. The charting in CF is wonderful. The graphic manipulation in PHP is wonderful (and other "good things" from both of them).
Beverly On 10/24/08 2:09 PM, "Stefan Gonick" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in whole or in part: > Hi Scott and Robert, > > I agree that it really depends on the types of clients and applications that > we > are developing for. I don't build super high traffic sites. My > clients also don't > care what language I use. I agree that RoR is limited for high traffic sites. > That is true for Witango as well. > > I want a language that is actually fun to program in and that minimizes my > programming time. Witango has fit that bill for a long time, and I'm > still using > it. If I was going to switch to another language, I would use RoR because it > is also fun to program in and saves on development time. Minimizing > development > time (ie. cost) is of top priority for my clients, so Witango and RoR is great > for them. There are certainly applications and types of clients where RoR > would not be acceptable. Webdude would have to evaluate his own needs > in that department. > > Also, Robert, RoR is getting more mature every few months. It's very usable > now (much more so than when you first evaluated it), and it keeps getting > better. It's quite adequate for many applications. Also, the NetBeans RAD > environment really speeds up development even further for RoR. It's pretty > cool. > > Stefan > > > > At 01:32 PM 10/24/2008, you wrote: >> Hi Stefan, >> >> I apologize if my comments were not received well. I guess I just >> measure the viability of a language or tool by a different yard-stick. >> I may work in a different arena than some of us, and I should be >> careful about that when giving advice. >> >> To explain, I try to steer clear of marketing, hype and studies. I go >> by what my customers are actually using. And given that my customers >> are big corporations where my focus is internal business applications >> - few people have even heard of Ruby, let alone using it on a >> mission- critical installation. >> >> I recently saw a free open-source PHP app used in a corporate >> environment for an internal discussion board about project >> development, it failed so miserably that these customers don't even >> want to learn how to spell PHP. >> >> Business customers are not forgiving, and won't tolerate bugs or >> down- time. Not like some public-facing systems where users complaints are >> taken with a whole different attitude. >> >> Sorry. >> >> Scott, >> >> >> >> >> >> On Oct-24-2008, at 1:27 PM, Stefan Gonick wrote: >> >>> Hi Scott, >>> >>> I do agree that ColdFusion is probably still viable. It's just not a >>> vibrantly growing platform. It's probably safe to switch to that >>> language >>> though, and I agree that it would be the easiest to switch to from >>> Witango >>> of all of the other languages. >>> >>> I take issue with the idea that RoR is a fringe language. As I said >>> before, >>> studies have shown that it is the fastest growing language out there >>> currently (this is not true of Python). Much of the growth is from >>> new developers >>> and people switching from PHP. I would provide a link to that study >>> if I had >>> bookmarked it, but I didn't and a quick Google search didn't find >>> it. RoR is >>> not one of the big 3 languages yet, but I'm guessing that it will be >>> one of >>> the "big 4" languages before long. >>> >>> Best regards, >>> Stefan >>> >>> From: Scott Cadillac <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >>> Sent: Friday, October 24, 2008 11:45 AM >>> To: [email protected] >>> Subject: SPAM-MED: Re: Witango-Talk: Open Letter to Phil and Sophie >>> >>> Hi Stefan, >>> >>> Just a quick comment here, in my experience ColdFusion seems alive and >>> well in the Corporate Intranet world. I see it all the time, including >>> lots of new big projects. >>> >>> In fact, if I ever got bored enough with ASP.NET I might go back to >>> learning it all over again. I actually did ColdFusion 3.0 before I >>> learned Tango starting at version 3.5. >>> >>> Thanks. >>> >>> Scott, >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> On Oct-24-2008, at 11:39 AM, Stefan Gonick wrote: >>> >>>> Hi Webdude, >>>> >>>> I did a lot of research on alternative languages to Witango. I >>>> personally really >>>> didn't like ASP and PHP, so I ruled those out for me. I ultimately >>>> settled on >>>> 2 languages: ColdFusion and Ruby on Rails. >>>> >>>> If you want to get up to speed as quickly and easily as possible on >>>> a new >>>> language, then I would definitely recommend ColdFusion as the >>>> easiest language >>>> to learn. It's also very easy to convert Witango code to ColdFusion >>>> code. I've >>>> done it for a couple of sites. In fact, when I built a ColdFusion >>>> site, I actually used >>>> the Witango builders to get started and converted the results html >>>> to Coldfusion. >>>> That was faster than doing ColdFusion from scratch. :) >>>> >>>> ColdFusion also has many practical features built right into it. For >>>> instance, it has >>>> the easiest PDF function of any language. You simply generate css >>>> based html >>>> like you normally would and then surround it with ColdFusion's open >>>> and close >>>> pdf tags. That's it! It's very cool. >>>> >>>> One downside to ColdFusion is that it is just a page-oriented >>>> language. There >>>> is no built-in way to organize your application's higher level >>>> structure like you can >>>> with taf's. However, there is an open source framework called >>>> Fusebox that you >>>> can use for doing that. It also enforces the model-view-controller >>>> way developing >>>> applications, which is good. However, Fusebox then becomes another >>>> thing that >>>> you need to learn. There are some very good books for learning >>>> ColdFusion on >>>> Amazon, and it's free to download the developer edition. There are >>>> also open >>>> source RAD environments available for it. >>>> >>>> Another potential downside to ColdFusion is that may not have long >>>> term viability. >>>> If it weren't for the fact that Adobe is supporting it, it would >>>> probably be on its way out. >>>> Its user base is relatively stagnant. However, as long as Adobe >>>> keeps supporting it, >>>> it will probably stay viable. >>>> >>>> Ruby on Rails (RoR), on the other hand, is an exciting up and coming >>>> web development >>>> language. I'm surprised that no one else has mentioned it. It is the >>>> fastest growing >>>> language out there, and many PHP developers are moving to it. >>>> >>>> RoR has a longer learning curve than ColdFusion. You have to first >>>> learn the Ruby >>>> programming language. You then learn the RoR platform. What's really >>>> cool about >>>> RoR, though, is that like Witango, it tries to do a lot of the work >>>> for you in order to >>>> minimize development time. It succeeds at this better than any of >>>> the other languages, >>>> and it may even be faster than Witango. Once you get fully up to >>>> speed with RoR, >>>> you will be able to develop applications faster than you can on PHP, >>>> ASP, and ColdFusion. >>>> >>>> There are tons of free modules available for it like there are for >>>> PHP (though not as many >>>> as PHP yet). As I said, there is a lot of excitement about this >>>> language/platform, so >>>> there is a lot being contributed to it and it is growing rapidly. >>>> There are many many >>>> good books available for learning it. There are a number of >>>> different open source RAD >>>> environments available for it as well. I would recommend NetBeans >>>> from Sun. >>>> >>>> The one downside of RoR is that, like Witango, it is a relatively >>>> slow interpreted language >>>> instead of a compiled one. This means that you have to put in a >>>> bigger effort to support >>>> very high volume web applications. However, we are already used to >>>> that with Witango. :) >>>> >>>> Since you are starting out looking for a new language, I just wanted >>>> to share the results >>>> of my many hours of research into language alternatives. Good luck! >>>> >>>> Best regards, >>>> Stefan >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> At 12:47 AM 10/24/2008, you wrote: >>>> >>>>> Janet, >>>>> >>>>> I feel your pain. I have been busy downloading stuff and poking >>>>> around. I have read hundreds of pages on just the install stuff for >>>>> Apache, MySQL, PHP, ColdFusion, .NET... I even spent a day on >>>>> nothing but open source. I have a spare server I have been thinking >>>>> of using just to try some stuff out. What is really daunting is the >>>>> pages upon pages and gotchyas on just an installation... not to >>>>> mention the additional downloads needed to make it work in Windows. >>>>> Funny... I have about 60 sites, some getting well more then 100,000 >>>>> page views per day... well over 1,000,000 visitors per month in all >>>>> - all on one MSSQL dedicated server and two dedicated Witango >>>>> servers runninng Witango 2000. Never a slowdown and has been rock >>>>> solid for over 8 years. 16 e-commerce sites, 2 Data Access >>>>> Managements sites, 4 forums, 12 internal employee sites for some >>>>> very large corporations, one very large directory site, 2 online >>>>> streaming PDF sites and a smattering of... well, just websites. Now >>>>> I am losing sleep because I am so worried about what direction to >>>>> go. I spent a very large amount on the corporate license thinking >>>>> that this was the way to go and have spent much time and resources >>>>> in developing all I have going. I never upgraded because of the >>>>> 20,000 plus I dished out and I remember the days when it was >>>>> discussed that the editor would be able to output ASP and possibly >>>>> PHP code... but that never happened or was just a pipe dream. >>>>> Frankly, I thought it would have been a great idea to port output >>>>> of the editor to more popular languages. Anyway... enough crying in >>>>> my beer. I went this route and now I am going to have to do >>>>> something about it. I just spent most of the day trying to install >>>>> PHP and getting the "hello world" to work. Tomorrow, I might try to >>>>> see if I can actually connect to a database. This is going to take >>>>> me a little while... >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> -----Original message----- >>>>> From: "janet" [EMAIL PROTECTED] >>>>> Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2008 15:55:41 -0500 >>>>> To: [email protected] >>>>> Subject: RE: Witango-Talk: Open Letter to Phil and Sophie >>>>> >>>>>> I was wondering what to say until I saw this email from Webdude >>>>>> >>>>>> "Well, I have a problem and maybe some of you could help me. I >>>>> have been >>>>>> using nothing but Tango and Witango since I started developing >>>>> many years >>>>>> ago" >>>>>> >>>>>> Yes this is my story also. >>>>>> Pretty good at SQL ( MS SQL) triggers, stored procedure, views, >>>>> groupings >>>>>> , maxvalues etc just a happy place for me, also HTML and Witango. >>>>> I found >>>>>> that if I had good array results then the Witango stuff was easy. >>>>>> So I have looked at other RAD visual products. With ASP.net you >>>>> end up with >>>>>> blocks of code either in VB or C+, there is s Borland PHP RAD, >>>>> Cold fusion >>>>> >>>>>> and Dreamweaver etc. But it seems that the builder tools all >>>>> create either >>>>>> PHP, VB, C+ or something. >>>>>> How come Witango shielded me from all of these languages? >>>>>> I know Witango is an XML code generator so why isn't there any >>>>> other >>>>>> products creating XML? I am asking the wrong question? ________________________________________________________________________ TO UNSUBSCRIBE: Go to http://www.witango.com/developer/maillist.taf
