I responded to an open call for panelists for one of Brian Meloche’s Birds of a Feather Sessions, titled “Fixing ColdFusion Perceptions and Reputation.” I’m in.
I looking forward to it, especially since I disagree with a lot of the solutions I hear to solving the problem. A quick preview or my opinions:
- I don’t think Adobe has to give away production-ready ColdFusion
- I don’t think Adobe should sell an IDE.
- I don’t think Adobe should take over CFEclipse (I’m not against them throwing some pounds Mark Drew’s way)
- I don’t think magazine or journal articles are the problem
My thoughts aren’t fully fleshed out, but I think it has to do with the fact that ColdFusion’s niche isn’t clearly defined. If you’re a Microsoft shop, you use a .Net solution. If you’re a startup you use Ruby or PHP. If you see yourself as providing enterprise solutions you use full blown Java. Caricatures to be sure, but I think close to the mark.
I think if you asked most ColdFusion programmers why they use it, they would say, “Because it makes my job easy.” But people who like things to be easy, is a sort of hard niche to get a hold of, I mean who doesn’t want that.
Anyway, these are just ramblings. Feel free to argue with me either here, or next week in Chicago.
tpryan.blog 
So, you didn’t mention why you use CF. How can you bring anything meaningful (seriously) to the topic without an opinion? Oh, your holding back! Post what happens after MAX if you will. (please)
I can tell you that one of the reasons people use CF is as you said. It is easier. Yet what are the reasons people use other tools. Many of the MS tools are about seperating processing from markup. In fact there are some new Flex/Air tools being presented at MAX with the same goal in mind. That is alos what I am doing with COOP. This is an open source project that goes to RC1 next week. It provides (but doesn’t demand) seperation of markup from processing.
What is my point. The power of ColdFusion is a mix of CFCs and Custom Tags… in addition to the easy stuff. In fact in general CF is so easy that many developers have been to lazy to innovate and make it easier still. Ruby isn’t “easy”… but RoR improved the picture. dotNet isn’t easy… but the IDE improved the picture for startup users. (Note: The deeper you go the more challenging it becomes. It should be the deeper you get the easier it becomes.) That is what I have found by returning back to the use of Custom Tags with CFCs.
LikeLike
I’ve answered this question in my latest post.
http://www.numtopia.com/terry/blog/archives/2007/10/ why_i_use_coldfusion.cfm
LikeLike