I posted a comment to their feedback section. I always wonder what "experts" they ask for this information.

what do you think of this article?

http://www.joelonsoftware.c...

All I can say is that stuff like this just pisses me off.

--Dave

I've gotta say that in IRC yesterday Adr0ck had a great discussion with a couple of us over sharepoint and how with further integration it could really have a negative impact on asp/CF/php and the like. He briefly mentioned the CF .net integration as a start to combatting that level of integration that technologies like SharePoint offer.

Anyhow proof is in the pudding. Put CF on your monster.com resume and watch the calls roll in. If it was truly dying I wouldn't get 5-10 emails/phone calls a day from agencies etc.

Reporters and publications like that are actually the dying breed.

(btw, if you link to their print version, then there are fewer ads and it's all on one page.)

jd

Jay: He makes a valid point in using what you are good at. Since CF runs on Java, I would hope he counts that as Enterprise. :) My intent was not for folks to start their comments with 'CF is great!', but more to reply to the specific mistakes/inaccuracies brought up in the article.

JD - added a link to the print version. Thanks.

I was the feeling the same way reading some of those comments. Seems like a lot of the issues around CF are just stupid perceptions that only logical, level headed reasoning can get through.

- Adam Fortuna (dyogenez)

But, isn't the point here that ColdFusion represents a tiny percentage of the broader web application development universe? Is there any doubt that Rails, PHP, ASP.NET, etc. vastly over-shadow ColdFusion in terms of overall market share (even individually)? Being a niche language doesn't make it a bad language, nor does it mean there aren't lots of good jobs for talented ColdFusion developers, but just because there are thousands of CF developers doesn't mean it's not a niche language when you look at the big picture.

What is really killing Coldfusion is the fact that it is a "Pay" application.

Now I dont think $800 is allot of money for most businesses, But the pure fact that there are thousands of hosting companies out there, charging $12 a month for great hosting but only offer PHP, Rails, ASP.

I truely think that if adobe released CF8 as a free server (maybe free for the standard edition) we may start to see a HUGE increase in the sites that are using Coldfusion.

Another thought is, With the Flex/CF integration, great things can and will be made. But again, making CF more accessible is the key.

CF8 will be adobe's first release. And it is Adobe's first time owning a share in the internet programing space. I just hope they promote it and do what is best for the language.

@ND - I won't deny PHP overshadows CF, but I think there is a difference between saying "PHP has more developers than CF", and "CF is going to die out..." A niche market doesn't mean a dieing market.

Explain why they are quoting the president from an IT consulting company with 794 hits on their homepage and this in view source:

<meta name="Microsoft Theme" content="blends 111">
<meta name="Microsoft Border" content="none">

http://www.footepartners.com/

I work in the Health system in Sydney Australia, and I can tell you that in NSW, Health have officialy stopped using CF for new projects.

Why?
Because they did a deal with the devil (M$) and are now an MS shop.

Coldfusion is dead here - and I am retraining in .NET :-(

Other than 9 obvious mistakes, Ms. Brandel hasn't got a clue, especially when it comes to ColdFusion. She is exactly 180 degrees from the truth. It is also very clear, from the entire article, she did exactly no research. I can't believe IDG published this dribble. This reminds me of a story. It was 1996 at ISPCon. Bob Metcalf was a guest and had requested access to our local Ethernet before the show. Of course we were happy to give him anything he wanted, so we hunted down the techs that were bringing in the line. Bob told the tech what he wanted and the poor, dumb dweeb went of on a rant, to explain to Bob Metcalf exactly how Ethernet work and that what Bob wanted would never work. Well, this writer must be his sister. Please Bob, come back and put ComputerWorld on the right track.

At this piont, all I can think of is Dan and Jane on SNL... Jane you ignorant sl...

GAH! I expect to see this kind of dribble in the forums/newsgroups from trolls who just want to play "my language is better than yours" - but SERIOUSLY! I have been programming for nearly 20 years ( and I have a plethera of languages under my belt ). My resume is posted on Monster (as someone else mentioned) and I get on average 5 to 10 hits a day looking for CF or Flex Programmers (moreso the CF). Pretty good for a "dying" language I would say.

Ok,

While it's not dead, I think it is on a decline at the moment. Unless Adobe spend some marketing money or make it free or inexpensive, then this trend will continue.

ASP.NET has both serious marketing dollars and is free, PHP is Free, JSP is Free, Perl is Free.

Honestly, I haven't seen Adobe do much with ColdFusion, back in the good old days I used to get ColdFusion marketing guff hit my desk monthly, funnily enough one day I tried it and liked it.

I am a big user of forums, Experts Exchange for example, a lot of top posters in there in CF land are disapearing, when I check there profiles, they have moved to Java or .NET generally.

Hey, before you have a go at me, it's just how I see it. Have used .NET and JSP a lot and ColdFusion is much easier and more powerful. So my take on this is price, also if your going to write a cool Open Source project, you won't use ColdFusion as you can't distribute it to anyone without cost.

I've said this before, but the other thing that really hurts it is the fact that you can't write non Tag based code. Every Java or .NET developer i've ever shown it, just goes Yuck!

Every other language has a similar syntax, but ColdFusion for some reason is special persisting with it's tag based aproach. If they were smart they would have done both years ago and made CFSCRIPT complete.

Dale - you can write OS apps for free in CF. There is the developer edition. Nothing prevents you from doing this.

As for tags.... what do these same Java/.Net folks do when they need to work with HTML? Do they turn up their nose at it?

You can't distribute a Coldfusion OS app to anyone. If I have an idea for the worlds greatest open source CMS (ala FarCry) it won't take off as the worlds greatest as a large percentage of people will NOT use it because of the cost.

As for tags, there is a big difference between writing OO code and doing a VIEW. The HTML is the View. Coldfusion should be the Code.

Um, you can distribute a CF app to anyone. There -are- cheap CF hosts. Not as many as PHP, but they exist. If you want cheap, you can find cheap. Personally I'd rather put my business on a _dependable_ ISP, but the cheap ones exist.

CF can very much generate both the view and be the model. CF may not be OO, but it hasn't stopped my from building plenty of web sites, and building them well.

One of the creators of CF was quoted as saying he wanted CF to be a practical language, not a beautiful language, and frankly, I'm glad he did.

Dale - not to beat a dead horse here - but one of the reasons I USE CF and train other programmers in CF is that it can do BOTH (View and Code) and be used for BOTH purposes (as can PHP and ASP). However, because it IS Tag-based - it's easier to cross-train the web programming, straight HTML folks, in it's use AND still provide my OO programmers the power to write the "code" on the backend.

Just my opinion.

Can I write PHP and ASP? Yes. Can I field an entire App in half the time using CF? Yes. Can I integrate my code with other pages? Yes. With technologies such as JSON, XML, WebServices, SOAP, etc - the "language barrier" gets slimmer and slimmer. I have CF code that feeds ASP/JSP pages. I have ASP/JSP pages that feed CF Applications. This is all much hoopla over nothing (again - in my opinion).

If you are looking for a free and opensource CF Alternative - allow me to direct you to:

http://www.smithproject.org/

I don't agree at all.

People are being trained OO at schools and Uni, when they come out, teaching them non OO tag based script is harder.

I'm not interested in a free half ass version of ColdFusion. In fact I don't even care that it's not free, my company pays for it. But it is the cost that is hurting it in numbers of sales. Regardless of how you argue it, that's just a fact. If it were free more people would be using it both commercially and for open source projects.

As for OS argument, not everyone hosts their solution. Worked for a company that wrote a really good intranet tool in CF, couldn't sell it as the additional cost of corporates to buy CF made it too expensive.

Hey, these things are facts, not my opinion. If you can somehow show me how.

Free Coldfusion wouldn't be more widely used.

I'd be intersted to see how.

PS: I just blogged about this, the 5 things Coldfusion needs to survive, have a look if your interested. And remember I am a long time ColdFusion user and supporter and would like it to remain that way.

Here is something interesting.
The article claims that their data is from Foote research.

why then is coldfusion listed as one of their "2007 Hot IT Skills and Certifications Pay Index"

http://www.footepartners.co...

Are you serious?

Cobol is on this list, I think it's every language and how much you earn in it.

I agree with Mike E and Dale on the point that CF just will not be able to draw in the market share like ROR, PHP or ASP because of the price. I love CF and have been using it for over 10 years now but, as I posted over on Sean Corfields blog last week, until there is a free version of ColdFusion produced by Adobe it will continue to stay niche and deal with the criticism of folks like the idiots that published that article.

Think of how many more programmers there would be writing opensource apps in CF if it were free!

Im wondering how this is going to affect the integration with things like Flex and Apollo as well. If the Flex data services will support ROR, PHP and ASP, then CF is the only one thats not free in that list. So if Im a company looking at getting into the RIA world, do you think CF would be my first choice?

"Think of how many more programmers there would be writing opensource apps in CF if it were free!"

Yeah, then we could have a plethora of abominations like PHPNuke that anti-CF people could criticize. Joy.

@me: You should post that comment to the article.

@Dale: "But it is the cost that is hurting it in numbers of sales."

Then why are sales up for CF? Or do you mean if it was cheaper it would sell more?

"If the Flex data services will support ROR, PHP and ASP, then CF is the only one thats not free in that list. So if Im a company looking at getting into the RIA world, do you think CF would be my first choice?"

Price is not the only thing a company is going to consider. A company should also consider development time, support, and abilities. It would be silly to use PHP if it takes twice as long to build. (Not saying it would, just using it as an example.) The price of the software is only one consideration.

It would be silly to expect Adobe to release CF for free when they've poured so much money into developing CF8. I mean - look at the statistics that Forta posted on his blog. I agree that pricing structure could be a bit more flexible. But really . . .

What Adobe needs to do is do a better job marking CF to the decisionmakers - those who make the decision whether or not to go with CF in their website and such. Make developers more aware of the fact that they can take advantage of the developer's version

Well a few things were correct:

SNIP:

This once-popular Web programming language -- released in the mid-1990s by Allaire Corp. (which was later purchased by Macromedia Inc., which itself was acquired by Adobe Systems Inc.) -- has since been superseded by other development platforms, including Microsoft Corp.'s Active Server Pages and .Net, as well as Java, Ruby on Rails, Python, PHP and other open-source languages.

:SNIP

I mean FFS CFML is at least as old if not older than "ASP". And of course now being built on Java (thanks to Macromedia for that major gamble) and now Adobe are running with it!

Mike E I have to say do not expect ColdFusion (as a server platform) to become free. But stranger things have happened.

But think about it. The forthcoming CF8 is a conglomerate of technologies that work well together - mainly due to the J2EE path that Macromedia wandered down - and Adobe picked up and are running with.

Nope. CF should cost a sum of "sum" sort.

People like Dale Fraser keep saying that .Net etc is free technology?

OK so how much for SQL Server 2005, Visual Studio 2005 etc. Still free? No way.

Peter...

That's not a good rebuttal to Dale's argument, because most Coldfusion shops will ALSO pay for SQL Server 2005.

As the Technical Manager of one of the worlds largest niche job boards, we have been using CF for many years and version.

I myself am from a Java, C(and variants) and for web used to be PHP/.NET background.

I started working with CF about 2 years ago now, and generally have'nt looked back - yes to do some fancy stuff i will extend with Java/.dll's but anyway not that often.

When I was asked to 'convert' (learn) CF i was actually dreading it... Like others I had a preconception of it being a 'language for graphic designers' to build sites with. How wrong I was... I can build in a fraction of the time what may take days or weeks using JSP, PHP or .NET... and with less debugging and more productivity. Recently we have hired an additional CF developer, and out output in terms of new features and bug-fixing has basically trippled if not more.

Still got a good few bgs to erradicate from previous less skilled CF developers... but almost there now!

The only gripe I have with CF is the cost and licensing... we're running a cluster of servers and the licencing cost has always been a issue. We are in the process of upgrading from 6.1 to 7.2 on our servers (though been developing internally on 7.2 for some time), and the upgrade cost is still quite oppresive. I did think about going straight to 8, but never like adopting too early!

If Adobe can more realistically price the standard and enterprise more people would definatley use it... I have shown/relayed my experainces with other web houses i know and they too would adopt CF if it were better priced... I think personally it's about a third too expensive. But we're 'stuck' with CF so will have to pay what we have to pay anyway now!

One thing that bothers me is the CF portion references Foote Partners information. If you do more digging you see the same research group listed CF as a hot tech skill in fourth quarter 2007.

http://ita.infoedge.com/pro...

Pretty shady research on this one, not just the CF portion either.

fourth quarter 2006* I meant.

Brian, with all the news that Ben Forta has been cranking out, you may want to reconsider the "we never like adopting too early!" statement. ;)

I think that considering CF's price as a limiting factor is a little naive. There are many costs to consider in developing and deploying an application, rather than CF's cost alone. For example, OS, hardware, webserver software, CF software, time/cost developing app, time/cost debugging, time/cost maintaining app, training developers, etc. An intelligent manager should be able to produce a matrix totaling the cost to deploy an application in each language. The reduced time for developing, debugging, and maintenance of CF apps is a huge cost saver that can easily topple other languages total costs despite them being cheaper or free for the server software. Also, there are other ways to offset the cost, such as coupling CF with Linux, rather than using M$ server. Each solution has its cost advantage/disadvantages that should be weighed to come up with a competitive solution. Further, Joel Spolsky's article made a good point that all these programming languages are powerful enough to accomplish what you want to do, but is more of a function of your hired programmer's abilities.

Now, about the article. This is what pisses me off about journalists sometimes. Just another example of cheap lazy journalism passing off popularity polling as a news story, with a cover yer ass statement so as to deflect any criticism about the journalists function to do RESEARCH and to report FACTS. Just drops the story, then runs away and watches in glee at the chaos that ensues, never to return and correct wrongs, or be held accountable for damage (to Adobe) these falsehoods cause.

@Ray

I think you missed my point completely. Im not saying that price is that much of a concern for companies. I think that the corporate world is fine with paying for an application server. Especially since there are LOTS of companies that actually pay for Opensource technology just so they can have support. Thats the whole mentality of it.

My point is that not having a free version for either non-commercial use or free with no support options, or whatever is hindering the developer community and the opensource growth that Coldfusion really needs. Im SO pleased right now that the involvement in opensource CF is better than it has ever been, just look at the number of projects on your RIAForge and on Brian Rinaldis opensource list! But why is it taking SO long to get to this point? My belief is that its the price.

By having something like CFStandard as a free version even it was ONLY for non-commercial use would in my opinion be the shot in the arm that CF needs to continue to grow into what we all know it should and could be.

Am I crazy or do I remember correctly, wasnt there a free version of the CF server available at one point for a short time when Macromedia took over? Like a scaled down version or something?

I agree with a lot of that Russ.

What would give CF a real boost would be a flexible license that hosting companies could make use of to allow non-commercial users to play with CF... i.e. for personal domains... I am using PHP on my own site at the moment, but if I was able to use CF i would use it, this would encourage more people to experiment with it... and grow to like it!

Which in-turn could mean more people will be encouraged to use it in their business environments too once they've been introduced to it and see how easy it is to work with.

The hosting company I am with at the moment is very cheap, but if i wanted CF would need a dedicated box with them. I know there are CF hosting out there but it's kinda pricey still... Cheapest one i seen is about £20 p/m while my current hosting costs about £25 for the whole year. (OK i *could* use my company's servers but that'd be cheating :P).

I believe even the more recent versions of Plesk include CF support... so there's a good opportunity there if server admins don't need to do much work to get it running on a box too.

Brian,
hostingfest.com has a cf,php,mssql windows setup for as little as $7 a month.

If you have a development environmentsetup the dev license is free and can be run standalone or you can add-in IIS from your control panel if you're windows.

Both scenarios allow a non commercial user to play around. Its not really CF's fault you went with a host that doesn't offer coldfusion is it?

I see about a new CF opening / day on average in the Denver area about one RoR / month and I'm supposed to believe RoR has upsurped CF?

Allen,

1600 people attended last week's RailsConf. That speaks volumes. And you know businesses are always slow to adopt any new technologies.

Sure, but I fail to see how it's up and coming in the context of the article. I like some things about Rails (ya, Rails, not Ruby) but I don't feel it's proper to assume that it will gain a foothold in the business world especially anything like what CF enjoys at this point in time.

I don't mean to belittle RoR. It's just in the context of this article I don't think having 1600 folks around for a conference means it's worth listing as having passed up CF & somehow that CF is dying.

The same with Python. It's been around for what? 15 years? 20? 25? I fail to see how it's passed CF up.

@Ray yes if there was a free commercial version it would open people up to the world of CF and result in them at some point wanting more and buying a better edition. If you think about it, just like Java. It's free but after a while you want to buy an App server.

I blogged this.
http://dalefraser.blogspot....

Now, when I say survive, I mean long term. Coldfusion will survive, CF8 will probably have a big market, I know i'll be buying it as soon as it's released. But still Adobe need to do more. This is their first release and they get one shot at a dramatic statement.

And we know this works, how many people played with Flex when it was $20k. Not me, but as soon as it was free, I purchased the IDE and away I went.

So you spent 500 for Flex Builder because you saw that it helped you develop Flex apps quicker. But 1300 for CF is wrong somehow? Both are tools to help you deliver a product. Why do you say 500 is ok but 1300 is not? Ok, it is 800 mre, but the idea is the same I think. You are willing to pay money for a tool that helps you get stuff done.

Have you seen their website?

http://www.footepartners.com/

Wow! That is sooooo bad!

@Ray,

I think your missing my point a bit, the cost should be on the developer, not on the running of the application.

Think how many more people would use BlogCFC or your forum software if they could just get a version of CF for free, install it on box and run with it. They didn't develop it, but they can run it for free.

People download PHP and play with stuff, knowing that if one day their stuff turns into something good, they can show the world without having to have to fork out money.

I'm more at the Enterprise end, so still expect to pay for that. But the standard edition should be free. Perhaps it's even another edition.

Standard = Free
Professional = Standard type pricing
Enterprise = Enterprise type pricing (although lower)

My thoughts are that giving away a decent version for everyone to play with would both result in IDE sales and ultimately upgrades to the better versions.

The limiting factors should not be features, but perhaps simultaneous connections or similar. So someone who is running a blog or small website, doesn't care that the 11th viewer's request is queued.

However where this is a cost to Adobe for say licencing Verity or similar, this should not be included in the free version.

Things I think users would pay for

CF Builder
Report Builder
Chart Builder

or all this as a package. In my case you would still get an enterprise licence plus licences of all this stuff for each developer. So it's not about saving me any money, it's about getting this great product out there on more servers and being developed by more developers.

And if someone really doesn't want to pay for the IDE, then they can use NotePad of standard Eclipse and not get things like a Debugger, Report Builder etc.

PS: In reality people won't use notepad or similar to develop if there is a feature rich IDE.

How many .NET developers do you know who don't use Visual Studio. How many Flex developers do you know who don't use Flex Builder.

It's a very small number, as produtivity is important.

Dale, that isn't exactly true. A person can run PHP and CF both, for free, on their own local server to play. But if you want to host, you will have to pay. And as I and others have said, you can find cheap hosting for CF. Perhaps not as much as PHP, but if cheap is what you want, then you can find it.

A person can NOT download and install BlogCFC and run with it on their own servers without cost.

A company can NOT download and develop a small intranet on their own servers without cost.

A developer can NOT develop a great OS application using CF and get any sort of penetration as there is no free version to run it on.

BD actually missed the boat on this one, if they had continued with their free version they could have made an impact. The free version would also appeal to people playing with Flex 2 for backend stuff.

Adobe has an opportunity to do a huge CF8 launch, with a great feature set, a free version and publically announce their long term support for the product.

This would be huge, for both the existing community, the newbies, the exisiting Adobe customers and the uninformed and misguided media.

I'm actually hopeful that Adobe have already had these type of discussions and will make a big deal of the CF8 launch.

Actually you can.

>>
A person can NOT download and install BlogCFC and run with it on their own servers without cost.
<<

Just not public facing.

>>
A company can NOT download and develop a small intranet on their own servers without cost.
<<

Yes but with a maximum of IP connections.

>>
A developer can NOT develop a great OS application using CF and get any sort of penetration as there is no free version to run it on.
>>

Yes you can and there is. The Developer edition. And yes it is restricted and puts ugly watermarks everywhere - so generate dynamic Word docs instead.

Raymond will no doubt (or has done repeatedly) let Adobe know this is the time for some sort of CF Lite. But CF is now a major part of Adobe's product lineup so I would them to expect serious revenue to continue to develop it futher.

@Hilary Bridel - switch to the federal government Hilary! They're putting new CF systems in place all over. Most recent notable system is the Do Not Call register ( http://www.donotcall.gov.au ). Ausindustry and others are using CF as well.

I work in the NT and our local government is slowly seeing the light - though we have an uphill battle getting them to update their CF servers, more and more departments are getting involved. I just rolled out a system for Police, fire and emergency services. The Chief Minister's own newsroom system is CF(bugs being ironed out as we speak (related to server version!)). And everything within our primary industries and fisheries department seems to be almost 100% CF (Hi Mark, if you read this :) ).

A WIN! - Well Mostly... at least a rebuttal article in CW...

http://www.computerworld.co...

Dale and Brian both brought up points that were echoed several times in the comments to that ComputerWorld article.

I just wanted to respond to some points that Brian the tech manager brought up.

CF is an enterprise J2EE Web Application server.

If you were to be PHP or .Net shop, you should price out what 3rd party tools you would have needed to do the various things CF can do out of the box. Such as PDF generation on the fly. Built-in Report Builder. Chart builder. Built-in Flex engine for simple flex forms. But to do all the things CF can do out of the box, you will end spending more than $1200 or $3000 to do the same or similar things with .Net or PHP. In addition to this, one must add the price of being a Java Application Server and all the things that involves. The price of Websphere is well over $10,000 I believe.

I think Ben Forta had an article or Blog post where he compared CF to a number of competing technologies and spelled out all the things CF Server comes bundled with. In terms of cost out of the box, plus the cost to develop in it, it ends up costing much less to invest in CF.

Brian, I hope my comment does not come across as harsh. I don't mean it to.

As an IT manager myself. I'm just suggesting that if you are someone who has invested in CF, and your company has also. Then you owe it to yourself to do the research, to validate your decision, so that you feel confident in defending it yourself first, then to others.

People seem to get confused as to what a FREE version is.

A free version would be

Free to Download
Free to Develop In
Free to Use Commercially

If any of the above isn't true, then it's not free.

I did state that it should be limited, but a free version with decent functionality would open CF up to a whole new market.

Have a think about new developers looking to use some technology, was speaking to someone recently who asked what he should be learning. I answered by saying it depends what you want out of a language.

He said, I want to write some code and play around at making my own website. I said well .NET and Java are good and powerfull, but complex. PHP is less complex that .NET and popular. CF is the easiest to code and feature rich.

To which he replied, yeah but PHP is free.

Can you imagine a feature / price comparison matrix comparing JSP, .NET, PHP and CF if there was a free version. Also compare code to achive similar common tasks.

Coldfusion would win hands down. Still it's not going to happen if people can't get past the "It's not free mentality".

There are interesting results on my survey on issues selling CF to clients. See <a href='http://teratech.com/blog/in... for the partial results. I will be giving the full results at my CFUNITED-07 talk on this topic

It's back for a 2nd wave. Global knowledge has included this "article" as part of thier newsletter to clients.

It's finally starting...after running Coldfusion for 5 years with no resistance, I'm finally beginning to hear the old "Coldfusion is outdated", "Coldfusion is dead", "Coldfusion is going away" comments. Basically, there's an opinion circulating that Coldfusion is not a viable language and that we need to dump it asap. This doesn't seem to be based on anything valid, but the damage has already been done. Yet, it's hard to convince anyone otherwise when they've never heard of anyone else using it or seen anything written about it. I know this is the same old, same old but I hope Adobe can address this somehow soon so I am not stuck writing .NET crap for the next 10 years.

And yet *another* factless article on the "dying" of ColdFusion

http://blogs.techrepublic.c...

"Well, I did a job search and there aren't that many positions out there for ColdFusion"...now that is some in depth, hard-hitting tech journalism.

I don't think this is new - I think it is just a repub. Screw em and ignore em. The # of developers keeps growing. The product is being updated. I'm not worried about our future. :)