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Happy Birthday, ColdFusion

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Posted in ColdFusion | Posted on 07-10-2007 | 4,261 views

I'm a bit late on this, and I wasn't even aware it was coming up, but apparently today is ColdFusion's 12th birthday. Not bad for a technology that has been on it's death bed for the past few years. (And yes, that's sarcasm in case any ComputerWorld "journalists" are reading.)

My first experience with ColdFusion was around 95 or 96 I believe. I had been doing all my web applications in Perl before that. (I still have a great deal of respect for Perl. I once spent a few months at Netscape where my entire job was working on one Perl script meant to facilitate a web site update.) I had been doing my "database" work in flat text files. (Scary, I know.) The web shop I worked for (Einstein Digital Media) got a client that needed a "real" database, so I picked up ColdFusion (3. something I believe) to see how easy it would be. That was the first time I used ColdFusion, and the last time I used anything else. (Ok, so I did play some with JSPs, ASP, and PHP.)

How about you? What was your first experience with ColdFusion?

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Greg Nilsen said on 07-10-2007 at 9:26 AM #
My first experience with ColdFusion was three years ago when I got a job with a research study who was running their data collection, participant scheduling and study management using CFMX 6.1 with a MS SQL database. I started the job part-time as I finished up my Masters in CS at Pitt. Up until then, I had done most of my coding in C++ and Java for projects in school, and I hadn't played with much else, but I was able to become comfortable with CF in just a few weeks.

In fact, CF won me over so much that just a year later I was taking my CF 7 Certification exam and not looking back.
Gary Gilbert said on 07-10-2007 at 9:28 AM #
I came a bit late on the scene compared to you Ray. My first experience with Coldfusion was 4.5 back in June of 2000. I had been developing in ASP prior to that and hating every minute of it!

I got a contract at a Government site in Washington DC and got my first taste of Coldfusion and thought "It can't possibly be this easy can it?" as it turns out it was, and still is and like you never looked back. Until that is, I moved to Germany, where CF is virtually unknown, and the market terrifyingly small.
Jim Priest said on 07-10-2007 at 9:30 AM #
95-96. I had been tinkering with HTML/Perl and at work began tinkering with IIS. At the time ASP was just coming out as well. I took a look at that but it was too hard to figure out :) I dug around a bit and found Cold Fusion! Comparing the code it took to do simple queries and form based things it both languages it was a no-brainer on which one to pick! I initially replaced a few Mac based Filemaker applications, and went on to build a corporate Intranet for the company.
Lola LB said on 07-10-2007 at 10:11 AM #
My last company had an in-house programming language that was very similiar to CF, on a more basic level, and that's what I started out with when I switched over to programming from web design (html). For a variety of reasons, the in-house language was abandoned in favor of CF and gradually moved over to ColdFusion with each new project. I think we started out with 4.5, or 5, can't rememer which version it was when we started working with ColdFusion. But my knowledge of the language really grew once Sean came up with a way to install CF on OS X systems (thanks, Sean!) and I was able to install it on my laptop so I could play with it at home (kept too busy working on projects to really experiment at work).
Shimju David said on 07-10-2007 at 11:30 AM #
Coldfusion was the first server-side script I learnt while I was doing an ecommerce course after coming out of my Business School (M.B.A in Systems and Marketing). I was truly amazed of its easiness and power. It was version 4.0 and year was 2000. My interest over it increased in double after learning the next server-side technology which is ASP coming under same course. I became a Coldfusion addict and I spend most of my time in computer lab doing small apps using coldfusion while my colleges used to tease me saying that it don’t have much job scope as Indian market was dominated by MS and Sun Java. I never listened them and developed my first shopping store which was a small book store in the same lab.

After the course I placed as a Coldfusion developer in a company associated with the same computer education center and I worked on a portal in coldfusion 4.5 with that company and left to Mumbai in search of better opportunities and funny thing is that I got job there as a PHP developer :)

After working for 1 year with them I return back to my home town and started my own consultancy. I initially picked PHP as my tool of trade as I targeted small customers and later when my business grown I eventually picked Coldfusion again which was still my favorite in my heart. The year was 2002 and since then no look back...
Steven Gongage said on 07-10-2007 at 12:02 PM #
My first time with Coldfusion was in my last I held before graduating college back in '99. I had taken a little gig working on a defense contractor's website and they taught me Coldfusion (version 4.0) on the job. Up until that point I had been working in C++ and Perl mainly.

The funny thing was, I had taken the job there working on websites only to get my foot in the door to work in one of their simulation and training teams, developing in C++. I was hooked, and within 6 months I was working full time for an emerging dot com working with CF full time.

I haven't looked back once!
Alirio Boquín said on 07-10-2007 at 12:02 PM #
Hi there,

I had been working in Web since 2000, I had been developing in Fox Web (http://www.foxweb.com/), then ASP and some JSP. In 2001 my first experience with Coldfusion, and the way I work really change, I become comfortable with CF.

I will like to take a CF Certifation exam.

Happy Birthday !!!
Rick Smith said on 07-10-2007 at 12:35 PM #
I too began with Perl, but moved to ASP, then PHP and finally found ColdFusion with Macromedia's acquisition of Allaire in v5. I wasn't too impressed at first, but v6 had me fully converted from its beta stages and I now program ColdFusion and ASP full time. Ideally, the ASP will eventually go away, but I have no plans to go to .NET or JSP any time soon with CF8 around the corner.
Josh Nathanson said on 07-10-2007 at 4:58 PM #
I started out doing freelance web design around 2000, and the first couple of clients I took on were using CF, so I had to learn it. As I started to pick it up, other clients wanted more functionality in their websites, so I bought the Allaire CF 4.5 boxed set of manuals and went to work.

I only really appreciated the beauty of CF after starting a new position where the boss had written a bunch of PHP scripts that I inherited. What a nightmare compared to programming in CF!

It took months but I convinced the boss to go CF for our next shopping cart launch. A year later we are ultra-nimble and are enjoying a tremendous advantage over our non-CF competitors, as our time-to-market for new site features is virtually nil, and I am the only developer on staff, easily handling the entire site front to back. Thanks and happy birthday CF!
Chad Fenske said on 07-10-2007 at 7:03 PM #
My first experience with ColdFusion was back around 1999 during the big Y2K scare. The company I worked for had a DOS application that used a dbase database I believe, that they wanted converted. They had been using ColdFusion for a while but the other developer and myself hadn't had a chance to use it. In fact, I hadn't even wrote any HTML let alone ColdFusion, as I started out writing and supporting Access applications and working with MSSQL 6.5. Anyway, we asked for some training and what we received from them was a CD from Allaire that taught you the basics in about 30 minutes. From that point forward the other developer and myself figured out that ColdFusion was probably the coolest damn thing we had ever used!!!

Happy Birthday CF!!!!!
Mike Brunt said on 07-11-2007 at 4:51 AM #
I started in 1995 or 1996 with CF version 1.54 and O'Reilley Website as the web server, in fact Website was the first Windows web server way before IIS. Since then I have worked with every version of ColdFusion, worked for Allaire and Macromedia.

Happy Birthday ColdFusion
Dave Ferguson said on 07-11-2007 at 8:39 AM #
I started back with version 2, late 1995 I think. I had an accident (not car) where I crushed my ankle and could no longer do the job I had. I needed to find a new career so I started reading books about this internet thing and this other thing called HTML. I got a gig doing a website for a company and a friend of mine said "You should do that in ColdFusion". I have not looked back since.

--Dave
Jim Priest said on 07-11-2007 at 9:07 AM #
@Mike B

I totally forgot about O'Reilley WebSite!! I started with that too! Boy that was a long time ago! :)
DaveCozens said on 07-11-2007 at 11:26 AM #
I started back in '96, when I was doing basic web design for a local "cybercafe". A guy I used to do some graphics work for came in and asked if I'd be interested in a project using ColdFusion and MSQL.

Thought I'd give it a go and the rest, as they say, is history. It's been CF all the way since then.

Hopefully the UK CF scene will pick up off the back of CF8 too! It's been getting some really good tech press...
Kevin Benore said on 07-11-2007 at 11:48 AM #
I thought it was July 13th? http://www.adobe.com/products/coldfusion/special/b...
Raymond Camden said on 07-11-2007 at 12:04 PM #
You got me there. I was just following along with everyone else saying it was the 10th. :)
Dave Cordes said on 07-11-2007 at 12:12 PM #
Mine was back in 1999. I convinced my boss to buy ColdFusion (4.0 I believe) and I built my first ColdFusion application, a corporate Intranet. I was hooked after that and I have never looked back!
Kevin Benore said on 07-11-2007 at 12:15 PM #
Forta says it's today and that they celebrated the 10th birthday on the 13th to get everyone together. So it is today. Thanks!
Don Li said on 07-24-2007 at 4:49 PM #
How come this name, Raymond Camden, sounds so familar? Ok, I'm a long time CFer as well, haven't been in this 'scene' for a while (about three years, worked for a fed contractor). Hope everyone is doing well.

CF, I absolutely love it, probably started around 1995 time frame while worked at Dept of Labor for User Technology Associates (I was one of the two architects, particulary me, for DOL's first generation web site...)

Anyway, I have background in int'l business and want to pick it up again before getting too old, it would take some time to boot, so, would like to do some CF work to keep things moving...

Love the pic/the scene, hope one day would live in a place like that...

Cheers.
Rob Greer said on 10-02-2007 at 6:43 PM #
Ok. Now here's the behind-the-scenes story of how Ray was introduced to Cold Fusion. As the President and co-founder of Einstein Digital Media, I was attending Internet World in 1996 (which was held in Los Angeles that year). I was walking by the Allaire booth when I noticed that they were offering really cool t-shirts as giveaways. And although I really couldn't care less about their software, I sat through their presentation in the belief that I'd get a free t-shirt if I hung around during their dog and pony show. Low and behold, as I was soon to discover, the t-shirts were used as bait to get people to sit down! Only a few folks received a t-shirt in the end of the presentation! The agony of it all!

Not to be foiled, I stuck around and chatted up some marketing guy, making him think that my Web design company would be really interested in a product like his and that we were really shaking the trees in terms of technology use and client acquisition. To make a large story short, my ploy worked beautifully. He gave me a free t-shirt. He also gave me an evaluation copy of Cold Fusion so that I could it back to our programmers. When I returned to Louisiana, I dropped the box off on Ray's desk and told him something like, "When you get a minute, check out this software and see if it's any good." The rest is history.

BTW, I kept the t-shirt for myself.

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