OK, I think I need to make something clear after todays posts regarding the CF8 release (it’s been released if you didn’t know ).

I have been a CF developer for a long time, a very long time, and I will continue to use CF for as long as I can.  Why?  Well, partly due to 2.5 million lines of legacy code, but also because CF allows me to slap apps together nice and quick and do it how I want.  I can get as simple or as complicated with Coldfusion as I like and it will just take it.  A lot of the new functionality of CF8 also appeals greatly, namely the performance improvements, tags like CFThread, plus some other small tweaks here and there, for instance, the .NET integration and upgrade to a core Java 6 JVM.

So what do I see as the downsides to CF at the moment?  Well, performance was one of my many bugbears, as was the price.  Other than that we’re talking petty stuff, namely the buggy report builder tool, and the stability of the server being a little ropey when in the wrong situations.

However, when you look as CF8 as I beleive it should be, i.e the display tier of a much larger application, there isn’t much that can beat it (money aside).  When it comes to display layer, Coldfusion is almost unbeatable.  It will let you Ajax-ify a site in a few minutes, as well as let you generate PDF’s without any dodgy markup positioning code.

So, Adobe, it’s good that you have released CF8, and I can see it being very useful.  Whether or not I’ll be upgrading or not is yet to be seen, I have managers who I need to convince for that (incidentally Feed-Squirrel will be getting the upgrade), but I do beleive for anyone sticking with CF for their build work, the upgrade is worth it.  Just don’t screw it up with little things as international pricing problems.