Comments on: Is ColdFusion a dirty word?

By: Adrocknaphobia

Adrocknaphobia — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 14:50:11 +0000

I can tell you that when I kicked off the North American tour in Toronto, everyone in attendance heard plenty about ColdFusion. This tour is really focused on the Flex/AIR/BlazeDS (all new products), so CF is not going to be at the forefront. However, I think it’s silly to think that a PHP/.NET developer will not understand the concepts just because CF is on the back-end. After all, ColdFusion is the easiest language to learn and the code is _very_ easy to read (even for novices).

By: Mike Rankin

Mike Rankin — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 15:27:39 +0000

I certainly don’t have a problem with the flex evangelists touting the backend integration capabilities with java and .net and others. Just, when you present that laundry list of technologies, don’t leave CF OFF the list. It’s one thing to not emphasize it, it’s another completely to attempt to hide it.

Take for example, the integration tutorials that pop up when you install FB3. There is no mention of CF at all. I think it should at least be given parity. I would think cross-sell opportunities alone would rate at least an honorable mention.

By: Anuj Gakhar

Anuj Gakhar — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 11:01:48 +0000

Neil, I was at the event as well last night. I agree to you that the mention of CF was minimal. I had expected more mention of CF there. But As Serge explains, their reasons for catering to the rest of the industry in an attempt to promote RIA, are valid as well. But still, it was a good opportunity to promote CF with AIR/Flex as well, I think.

By: Serge Jespers

Serge Jespers — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 05:13:34 +0000

Hi Neill,

If you were under the impression that we were “hiding” CF, than I apologize. I think it’s more what Barry says, it depends on who the presenter is actually. We all have our own style and flow of doing this presentation and we can also talk about so much in that given time.

Yes you are right, CF is also a perfect companion for Flex. That’s also why I mentioned it in the appropriate demo.

I do hope you had a good time last night and hope to see you at these types of events again.

Take care,
Serge

By: Michael Long

Michael Long — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 04:00:34 +0000

As I wrote in May of last year, ColdFusion might be the preferred backend, but don’t think for a second that Adobe is not going to provide extensive Flash/Flex support for .NET, Java, PHP, Ruby, and Python.

Because if Adobe is going to take over the RIA space, they can’t afford not to do so. They need those people to adopt their tools, and the ColdFusion developer base simply isn’t large enough.

Besides, come on too strong about CF/FF integration, and the non-CF types will assume that you HAVE to use CF and lose interest.

It’s a problem.

See: http://www.cfinternals.org/blog/2007/05/will_adobe_do_a.html

By: Adam Fortuna

Adam Fortuna — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 03:04:57 +0000

Yeah, in our Flex3 Prerelease tour half raised their hands, and some of the questions at the end were about CF integration. That straight line just kills me though. There's no doubt that relative to the rest of the industry, the number of CF jobs isn't keeping pace. What's impressive is that CF has been on the rise on the Tiobe Index. In other words the amount of information on the web about CF is growing relative to other languages, while the amount of jobs isn't. Seems like some of the 3+ year programmers you mentioned are starting blogs of their own, and becoming more advanced cf developers and it's skewing the scale perhaps.

By: Derek Wischusen

Derek Wischusen — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 02:53:34 +0000

At the Prerelease event in Philadelphia both Tim Buntel and Dave Gruber spoke a good deal about ColdFusion and Tim used it as the back-end for all of his examples. So I think Barry is correct, it all depends on who is doing the presentation.

By: Rachel

Rachel — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 02:46:14 +0000

Barry has it right – lots of the Flex people just don’t know that much about CF or care to talk about it. For that matter, most of Adobe doesn’t really understand CF. Internal marketing has been an uphill battle for the CF team.

By: alan.d

alan.d — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 01:59:33 +0000

I’m in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area. I’m like you, I like CF and have never had a problem finding a job doing it. I recently activated my monster.com resume by accident and got 5 emails and 5 phone calls over the next couple days. PHP is free, and ASP.NET is too if you are already paying microsoft in other ways, I think that has a lot to do with your growth curve above…

By: barry.b

barry.b — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 01:50:56 +0000

IMHO it depends on who is talking about Flex, I suppose.

Ted Patrick is a known PHP person. I doubt he’d feel capable of talking about a server platform he doesn’t use every day.