Brian Swartzfager  on April 11th, 2008

The question that always comes to my mind whenever this topic is discussed is: should we care?

We want the “pointy-hair boss” types and the technical architects to understand that ColdFusion is a smart web development option so they implement ColdFusion/CFML in their shops, but should we worry about what ROR/PHR/Python programmers who can’t be bothered to do a bit of research think about ColdFusion? Probably not: we don’t want people like that developing in ColdFusion anyway.

Mitch  on April 11th, 2008

Overpriced?

Dave Brown  on April 11th, 2008

I used ColdFusion for a substantial project back in 1997-1998 (v 3) when it was still sold by Allaire as “Cold Fusion.” The main reason I chose it was because it was the only web scripting language I could find that would interface with some Access databases.

I still have to maintain that code. Frankly, I hate it. I’m sure it’s come a long way, but the inability to write user-defined function was (is) incredibly painful. Custom tags helped some, but I could never figure out how to get a return value except by setting a value in the caller scope. Messy, confusing, HomeStudio didn’t do anything besides completion of language built-ins to help. Even in the “MX” version we’re running now, the “Debugger” isn’t really… it just dumps some variables and tells you how slow it was.

Anyway, around the time we finished that project, PHP3 was released. PHP3 had basic support for objects back in 1998; ColdFusion didn’t get that ’til Macromedia took over in 2002. Haven’t really looked back; became one of the first thousand Zend Certified Engineers a couple years ago. From what I’ve read, ColdFusion has made really important gains, but never as much or as fast as popular open-source solutions move.

Combine that with a big price tag, ever-more-compelling competition from Microsoft .Net, and it’s really hard to get excited about ColdFusion. Not sure how interested Adobe is… I just bought a CS3 Master Collection license and they don’t seem to include the Developer license to ColdFusion that came with Dreamweaver MX.

Too little, too late, and too much $?

Brian Swartzfager  on April 11th, 2008

I’m always bemused by how folks who don’t use ColdFusion anymore or don’t like ColdFusion still read and follow blogs dedicated to ColdFusion.

@Dave: I think maintaining ColdFusion 3 code would make even full-time ColdFusion developers cranky. And HomeStudio is essentially a dead product: most of us use the CFEclipse plug-in with Eclipse to do development.

Russ  on April 11th, 2008

If it wasn’t for Coldfusion, I propably wouldn’t have started server side coding/integration until a lot later in my developer life. And I haven’t looked back… It was about 6 years ago, and I remember not being able to wrap my head around PHP(ok, so Im not the brightest bulb, but that is my point). Coldfusion was straight forward, here is the tag for this and this and presto, dynamic web pages! And then I started getting into Flash and Remoting came out, and they play so nicely together, I had no reason to pursue the other platforms. Sure it is expensive, but that has never really been a snag. You got to remember, Coldfusion isn’t just a programing language, its an application server..

Dave Brown  on April 11th, 2008

Brian, I am a little amused, too; I noticed this blog while looking on Adobe’s site to see whether there was still a developer version of the CF server. Wouldn’t say I read/follow the blog, but the subject line was interesting.

I’m glad for you all that CF and its tools have improved over the years. It just didn’t improve fast enough for me.

todd  on April 11th, 2008

why is it that CF and Perl guys only seem to want to use one language? I’ve never understood that…especially since CF and Perl don’t seemed to be used that much (in relative terms, though I do see more CF than Perl these days). Yeah, give RoR or Django a try…or even .NET but you use CF, don’t bother with Java :)

J.J. Merrick  on April 11th, 2008

Wow great comments!

@Dave I would agree with Brian that working with CF3 code would make ANYONE want to pull every last piece of hair out. :-)

As far as the developer edition they do have one and it is free. I don’t know why they didn’t include it on the CD.. maybe space? It is up to like 300 megs now.

@Mitch Yes price does come in to consideration but I have yet to have that be a hurdle to any project I have come across.

@russ Me too. I was a designer turned developer and CF just made sense to me. That was 10 years ago so I have moved past the designer mindset and it still meets my needs.

Thanks guys!

J.J. Merrick  on April 11th, 2008

@todd lol yeah I dont’ know if I am smart enough for Java…

Russ  on April 11th, 2008

@Todd it’s not that we don’t want to, it’s that we don’t need to;)

Brian Swartzfager  on April 11th, 2008

@Todd: Yep, what Russ said. :) I call on some Java objects in my ColdFusion apps that interact with our Java-based portal, but otherwise I’ve never really needed to make use of another web programming language.

Dave Brown  on April 11th, 2008

Just in case anyone hits this discussion looking for that Developer Edition I was hunting: http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/tdrc/index.cfm?product=coldfusion will get you there with a free Adobe ID.

Josh Nathanson  on April 11th, 2008

Weird how you never see CF’ers going to PHP blogs and saying how much PHP sucks. Maybe I should start doing that to even things out a bit.

When I started at my current job, a bunch of the code was PHP, and I remember slogging through it and wishing I could rewrite everything in CF and cut down all the cruft.

I finally wore my boss down and we went to CF. We now have a much leaner and more nimble operation over every part of the business, and we were able to get rid of some third party crapware that was bringing down our fulfillment capability.

For anyone who hasn’t checked out CF for a few years, it now has full blown OOP capability as well as all the other things that made it great in the beginning (easy database interaction via CFQUERY), well defined scoping characteristics, Application framework etc.)

Skipper Krackensack  on April 11th, 2008

I’ve been coding CF, .Net and PHP for years and can say for SURE that CF is my preferred choice. PHP doesn’t natually integrate with other things like PDF, Flash, etc. and I don’t like the syntax. .Net is horribly painfull to code what should be simple things like looping over a query or displaying a list of checkboxes. I challenge anyone to search the internet for .Net examples on how to do anything in .Net and then you will see how frustrating that language is. The CF community is smaller but more organized which is better when you need help. .Net and PHP is flooded with millions of people (tons of indians) and mostly beginners posting tons of shitty code. I don’t use visual designers and hand code everything, and I don’t think you need to create complicated OO frameworks to get 95% of large projects completed or maintained. CF has speed, simplicity, complexity when needed, control and flexibility…not to mention integrates with PDFs, Flash, Flex, Java, .Net, all the major databases, etc. to do just about anything I have ever needed for the last 10 years. Anyway you look at it each has a compromise or strong suit but CF to me was the best investment of time so far. And stop using cost as a weak point. They all cost money in time and CF sames me the most so far and there are plenty of people that host it for 20 bucks a month. People who complain most likely havent used all of the languages to compare properly but I have (except ROR to be fair, it’s still in the fanboy stage). CF wins for now.

Dave Brown  on April 11th, 2008

Just to be clear, I wasn’t trying to say that CF *does* “suck,” but trying to help answer the question of why so many folks regard it with such disdain — it left a pretty bad taste in the mouth once you got past a certain point back when this web application thing was taking off.

One of the first decisions for any project is always what tools to use. The more options, the better the choice can be. And to make a wise decision, you need to keep tabs on what’s available… thank you all for your comments on how CF has progressed and its strengths.

todd  on April 11th, 2008

@jj – wasn’t insinuating that you weren’t smart enough…just seems with CF running on top of Java, what’s the point (seems like that’s what java is good for, a platform for running other languages). At work, we’re open source, so we moved from mod_perl to RoR. Contract work I do .NET. I don’t touch Java :) I have to admit, I worked with a company that had a horrible experience with CF, but that was like CF 5. I have to admit – I’m a big Flex fan, and I’m considering learning CF. But I’m already doing C#, Ruby, Javascript, and Actionscript…and eek, some PHP here and there (contract).

rob  on April 12th, 2008

I wouldn’t worry about it too much. I don’t think IBM websphere is free, but it seems to do OK against other free J2EE solutions.

When I start a project that has no budget (currently) I rule out CF because it costs money (development time saving et al doesn’t matter when you physically do not have the money). When I have a project that has a budget, CF is in the running.

If something is free, and you have no money, you’ll likely go with the free thing – hence RoR, PHP etc. People / companies that actually have money to spend on projects care less about the freeness of the underlying technology (in my experience anyway).

So the question becomes: are you/they upset because startups, and people who have no budget very infrequently use CF?

I see CF used on real projects with real dollars involved, and I almost never see CF used in basement startups. Is that bad?

Josh Nathanson  on April 12th, 2008

Even if a project has no money, you could host on a shared server that already has a CF license. Hosting fees can be as low as $10/month.

If you can’t stomach a shared server, there are a bunch of companies that already have a CF license that can set you up on a dedicated server or a VPS. Generally the cost of their license is rolled into their fees for hosting. Obviously this will cost more than a shared server, but you get the whole server (or a segment if VPS) for yourself.

So, there is always a way to get CF involved even on a low-budget or no-budget project. Personally, I’ve never directly paid a cent for CF, and I have an application running on a shared server that I pay around $20/month in hosting for, that generates around $800/month in income.

Some people say “never run CF on a shared server” but with server monitoring advances in the last few years (SeeFusion, FusionReactor, plus CF8′s own server monitoring), this is much less an issue than it used to be.

Ryan McIlmoyl  on April 14th, 2008

For those talking about small budget projects, the Blue Dragon open source J2EE product should fit the bill. While I haven’t tried it, from what I’ve read it covers a large portion of the current CF feature set.

Adam Tuttle  on April 14th, 2008

Seems like you really struck a nerve, JJ. I thought it was a good observation. :)

Howard Fore  on April 14th, 2008

@Dave: Does that code still run on the same server you deployed it on?

David K.  on April 15th, 2008

This same argument has been around for years, and it always amuses me that people devote large amounts of time evangelizing their own points of view…often unsolicited.

The bottom line is that you have to use the tools that make sense to you and help get your job done. I started coding with ColdFusion about 10 years ago, and it has been my language of choice ever since. That seems to be the case for many people like myself who never had any formal background in programming. Those who came to web development by way of C or some object oriented language seem to prefer the structure that PHP and the like offer.

Of course you also have the die-hards who frequently drink the open-source kool-aid. They turn twelve shades of red if you even mention using a commercial product. “Ease of use be damned…we aren’t paying for it!”

More often than not, the people screaming the loudest are the ones with the least experience and understanding…of their own tools, let alone a competitor. Bad code is bad code, regardless of the language it is developed in. You can write crap CF code and end up with a MySpace, or you can write beautiful code and end of with a Bank of America. And in the open source world, for every BaseCamp you’ll find a Twitter (which I adore as a service, but despise it’s reliability).

ColdFusion’s reputation stems from one thing: It’s low learning curve. It is so incredibly easy to write code and have a dynamic website with very little effort. As a result, we end up with a lot of people getting only the basic understanding, and writing really bad code that doesn’t scale. The basics are a great place to start, but you can’t make a living there.

Sean  on April 15th, 2008

• Overpriced
• Undersupported
• Not OOP (until the latest version, 10 years too late)
• Not scalable
• Not very cross-platform … at all
• A pure Windows man’s dream
• Did I say overpriced?

Brian Swartzfager  on April 15th, 2008

@Sean: Good thing you threw in 3 arguable, opinion-based points (points 1, 2, and 7). Otherwise you’d have been completely wrong.

Sean Gates’ Blog » Coldfusion and bad-for-you-coffee  on April 15th, 2008

[...] Read it here: JeremiahX on Coldfusion [...]

J.J. Merrick  on April 15th, 2008

@sean I see your point but I have to disagree with you on a couple of points…

1. Pricing does remain an issue to SOME. I support a product that has a subscription rate of around $30k a month so pumping out $600 a server for CF8 was no big deal. Especially when due to CF we only have to have 1 developer (Me! :-)

2. Still not seeing this one. Adobe and the CF crew are fanatic about their support.

3. Actually it was 2 versions ago and about 5 years.

4. Um well what do you call scalable? The ability to handle millions of users across hundreds of servers is what I have experienced… but then again I may not know what scaleable means.

5. Ok… Windows, Linux, Sun, 32 and 64 bit… heck even OSX… am I missing some? I mean you can’t run it on a Commodore 64 but I don’t think we can mark that against it as not being cross platform.

6. Yes it does run will on Windows… but last time I checked windows rules most of the tech world, so is this an issue?

7. See #1

Oh well I guess I just disagreed on all your points :-)

Jason M.  on May 7th, 2008

I am not sure how great is CF today, really. The fact that at the time i had a hard time using CF5 and CFMX, that stopped me from using CF anymore.

Crazy amount of bugs was the major and main issue, i say crazy compare with .NET/Java/PHP at that time; if u want to talk about the capability of being OOP, CF was just a joke — don’t tell me u had method and object in CF, OOP is much more than just this.

The way how i see CF, it is a fast development tool to make ideas into application; easy to learn for those who have no/little programming knowledge.

CF is not that bad, it is the people that make CF looks bad. A lot of CF developers has very little programming knowledge, they write ugly codes.

i agreed that CF was low in scalability, but that was my CFMX knowledge so it may not apply to today’s CF.