ColdFusion is the Sparta of Programming Languages

Now I know what the Spartan Warriors in the movie 300 felt like fighting a seemingly unwinnable battle.  This feeling comes after responding to yet another forum question on LinkedIn this morning where 10 PHP and Ruby developers decided to pile on and declare ColdFusion dead.  And they did so to such an innocent and harmless question that it begs to wonder:  what the hell is wrong with people?

I wasn't going to write another post on this.  When I last wrote a post on this topic, a few ColdFusion people sent in or posted comments about not paying this type of nonsense any mind.  But it is getting harder and harder to ignore the mindless banality.  This one being particularly hard, as one of the commenters to this LinkedIn question was a person that was present at my Developer Ignite speech, in which I came to the defense of ColdFusion and declared my ColdFusiontology crusade.  (Don't worry, I sent my colleague an email calling him my new arch nemsis for his answer)

This one was also hard due to the question being asked.  The question came from a dad asking if it is ok to encourage his son, as his son wants to start learning ColdFusion.

"So my kid is trying to convince me that cold fusion is the development tool that he wants to study. And that it will be a great thing to learn in the future. CF has been around for a while... is it the future or passe? "

I was eager to answer this one when I read it first.  What a great thing, a dad making sure his son is learning the right language.  That is very commendable.  And I fully expected the PHPers and the Rubyists to chime in and suggest learning their language instead.  I actually applaud them for doing so.  But did they really have to answer an inquisitive father with 'when I think of ColdFusion, I think of a dying platform'.  Most of them offer suggestions without having any real info on ColdFusion to base their opinion off of.  And ultimately, that is the most frustrating part.

When is the world going to realize that ColdFusion developers are not the autoworkers of the web industry.  CF is not an obsolete language.  We are an army of 800,000 strong, and we are not going anywhere.  THIS.  IS.  COLDFUSION!

ColdFusion is the Sparta of Programming Languages
posted by Bret on 08/05/2009 at 7:08 AM    
categories: nerdish - coldfusion - adobe - linkedin - ColdFusiontology

15 Comments

Gary Gilbert wrote on 08/05/09 7:51 AM
Brice,

Coldfusion has been a dying platform since Macromedia took it over from Allaire, that's an aweful long time to be a dying platform. Since then we have 2 new players on the market (Bluedragon, Railo) along with Adobe, and Railo open-source is now part of JBoss.org.

Yes it's annoying, very very annoying, but hey they are php developers they don't know any better.


David wrote on 08/05/09 8:08 AM
It's not annoying - it's a massive competitive advantage. We've recently been awarded work that was taken away from a competitor simply because we get things done faster, better. Yes, our management structure is a big part of that, but so is our choice of technology - ColdFusion. Clients don't want to hear about technology choices, they want to hear about TCO and timelines. The fact of the matter is that there is noting we CAN'T do with CF, and we compete VERY well against those that use other technologies (to the tune of new business, worth a lot of money)

Don't get mad, don't get pissed off - kick some ass.

Cheers,

Davo


James Brown wrote on 08/05/09 8:41 AM
People have been saying ColdFusion is dying for the past 10 years. Why would a company as big as Adobe be putting time, money and resources into it if it was dying? Why would there be over 800K developers? I stopped worrying about it years ago and just kept writing code.


Bret wrote on 08/05/09 10:12 AM
@Gary, @David, @James...thanks for proving the CF Army is still strong! You are right...don't get mad. Get motivated!


Todd Rafferty wrote on 08/05/09 12:00 PM
The problem is that there's no "facebook" or "twitter" or "{insert popular social media website}" using ColdFusion. So, thus, it's perceived as a dying platform. Flex breathed new life into ColdFusion as did the open source CFML engines Railo & Open BlueDragon.


calen fretts wrote on 08/05/09 7:44 PM
@todd, actually MySpace uses CF.. a "plus" I suppose for the CF community, but MySpace is dying in the same way CF is. they're dying together, that's so sweet.


Troy Allen wrote on 08/06/09 7:16 AM
More to Calen's point, for today's group of ADD Web Developers, their development language of choice seems to be selected just like their current favorite Social Networking Site: "What is the New Hotness? Really? OK...THAT'S what I am using now then...and I am going to say everything else is DYING!"


Troy Allen wrote on 08/06/09 7:19 AM
Wow...talk about "form over function". I am sorry, Brice, but converting entire comments to all lowercase letters is extremely lame. doing so converted my a d d acronym to the word add. really man?


Ben Nadel wrote on 08/07/09 7:24 AM
@Troy,

Funky - it looks like it's actually a text-transform CSS property on the body. Your text is actually in proper case.

And, ColdFusion rocks! As Seth Godin points out, things that are criticized are, by fact, worth being talked about. Meaning, no one talks about crappy things because they are not interesting. ColdFusion gets a lot of flack because it is so awesome and the people who are disturbed by its ease of use need to put it down.


Bret wrote on 08/07/09 12:05 PM
@Troy...thanks for commenting. sorry you dont like the lower case. @Ben is correct, it is a site wide CSS text transform. It was a style preference for the site (and in general for that matter), but you bring up a valid point for at least making the comments section not transformed. I will see what I can do, as I don't want to take away from anyone's point even if I don't agree with it.

On to your point, and calen's point...I think it does have merit. But more often than not, people don't care what language a social networking site is written in.

Ultimately, I agree with Ben and not just because I read his site on a regular basis. ColdFusion truly kicks ass. Most of the naysayers haven't ever used it, they just tear it down. If you have used it, and you say it isn't for you then so be it. I accept that...I don't like melted cheese when it seems like 98% of the world does. But, I tried melted cheese to know I don't like it.

To each their own, but don't bad mouth others in the process. I like PHP, and I encourage my Rubyist friends in their projects. I just prefer ColdFusion. And so I intend to stick up for it when I see some less thought out people expressing uninformed opinions.


Bret wrote on 08/07/09 12:11 PM
@Troy...I am to please. The comments are now style="text-transform:none;". The rest of the site stays lowercase because I am a nerd like that. :)


Troy Allen wrote on 08/07/09 12:29 PM
@Bret: Much better. The rest of the site is fine...it is yours to control of course, and you know going in that you might have to "adjust" your content to read correctly for all lower-case. But like happened to me, commenters probably will not realize it until it is too late.

And for the record, I think ColdFusion is the best Web Language and Platform...PERIOD! I went from CF to leading a team of highly-talented Dot Net developers. Even with their skills, everything in Dot Net was either more difficult, took longer, or both when compared to CF. And the Web code it created is incredibly BLOATED. Just use the Dot Net "Post Back" methods for a Data Grid to see what I mean.


Bret wrote on 08/07/09 12:38 PM
@Troy...You definitely had a point. When I constructed the site last year, I wasnt in the habit of posting and so no commenting on the site. Now that I have people commenting, I can see how it gets used!

We do a lot of PHP development, and like it. But CF is so much faster and friendlier. And I don't want to get into .NET. I went into it eager to learn and came out of it enjoying it less than COBOL, which means I enjoyed it about as much as a root canal. That said, SharePoint is awesome so I can see why some like using .NET. I am glad CF9 will afford me the ability to use CF for webparts now.


Todd Rafferty wrote on 08/07/09 12:45 PM
@calen: MySpace uses "Bluedragon.NET" it used to be ColdFusion, now it's some... dying hybrid apparently. :P Thanks for playing. I don't think that any of us CFers will ever point to "MySpace" as a "ColdFusion Example" - Tom might have been our friend, but he wasn't really 'our friend.' ;)


Bret wrote on 08/07/09 12:51 PM
@Todd...I actually apologized to an audience for MySpace when I spoke at a Developer Ignite on CF. They all laughed. But then I pointed to eBay. eBay is, for all purposes, one of the very first social networking sites out there. And it is something CF can be proud of, even if they aren't still using.

But hey...if they want a new CF driven social networking giant, who are we to argue. I'll get to work this weekend. :)


Write your comment