Article at InfoQ published: Debunking Common Myths about ColdFusion

coldfusion (This post is more than 2 years old.)

An article I wrote (a few moons ago) for InfoQ just got published:

Debunking Common Myths About ColdFusion

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Archived Comments

Comment 1 by todd sharp posted on 11/20/2008 at 6:51 AM

Looks like they left the <cfqueryparam> out of the 2nd SQL code sample.

Comment 2 by Gareth Arch posted on 11/20/2008 at 7:26 AM

Cool. Nice little article. You may want to get them to escape the cfqueryparam tags in the example you gave. The lt gt tags are hiding the tag itself :)

Comment 3 by Tami Burke posted on 11/20/2008 at 7:53 AM

Don't forget the extra functionality of CF that is inherent with the product: dynamic Image manipulation, automatic PDF and Flash Paper generation, CFC documentation capabilities (show me where PHP documents anything), better server/file manipulation capabilities just to name a few.

Oh, and the biggest one I can think of: <strong>LEGACY SUPPORT</strong>. I cannot tell you the number of times a HHWD production PHP site went down due to a hosting company performing 'minor' PHP updates that killed code that was written in then normal accepted PHP coding methodologies! Most of the 'minor' updates were performed to patch and plug documented security holes and attack issues that PHP had as a result of it's open source architecture.

Honey House Web Designs originally worked all interactive projects in PHP, but when asked to write some Coldfusion tutorials for gotFusion.com in 2003, we found that to code in CF was not only 200%+ faster, debugging was easier, and overall site maintenance was better. The improvements along with the ability to be able to trust a development platform's security and performance were so significant, that HHWD dropped all development and support of PHP projects in 2004 and have migrated all of those clients over to ColdFusion.

Viva la CF!

Comment 4 by Jonathan posted on 11/20/2008 at 9:28 AM

"So unless Adobe decides it doesn't like making money off award winning products, it's probably safe to assume the product won't be cancelled anytime soon"

nice!

and captcha almost made me type a dirty word...

Comment 5 by Raymond Camden posted on 11/20/2008 at 9:46 AM

@Todd, Gareth: I pinged them about the tags.

Comment 6 by Jake Munson posted on 11/20/2008 at 10:30 AM

Great article, I sent it to a PHP friend of mine who has often repeated some of these myths.

Comment 7 by Dan Vega posted on 11/20/2008 at 7:11 PM

Really great article Ray! It get's very old hearing people put down ColdFusion with no real information to back it up. They say it's inferior too slow and a dead technology. If you have your own preference of language I get it, but to not understand whats going on in the programming world shows a lack of passion for what you do. Thanks again!

Comment 8 by Raymond Camden posted on 11/20/2008 at 8:52 PM

The typo should be fixed guys.

Comment 9 by Dave DuPlantis posted on 11/21/2008 at 12:47 AM

I liked both your article and Jason's post.

When most people knock ColdFusion, it doesn't bother me any more than hearing negative stuff about other languages ... what bothered me was looking for a job around here and having recruiters tell me that there just weren't many CF jobs in the area. (The first time, I believed it a little. The second time, I translated it to mean "Companies aren't filling CF jobs through me, but I contacted you anyway because I'm not that good and I'm desperate. I know you have all this CF experience, but how about an entry-level Java position?" No, really, that did happen. Once.)

You know, if MySpace didn't like ColdFusion, that's almost a selling point for it. :)

Comment 10 by Wayne Pankey posted on 11/21/2008 at 10:29 PM

Hi again Ray. Here's another cfgrid question for you: is it possible to assign a click (or other) listener to the page-up and page-down buttons on the cfgrid footer? The dataset being paged is HUGE and upon clicking either button there is no good visible feedback that the grid is working on the request.

Comment 11 by David Ahia posted on 11/22/2008 at 3:30 AM

I've been fighting the "Old Technology" argument at work for some time. I'll share this article with my immediate co-workers.

Comment 12 by Raymond Camden posted on 11/24/2008 at 8:38 AM

@WP: That's a bit OT for this thread, but I'll answer. I don't know off the to of my head, but I do know you can use JavaScript to listen to keyboard clicks. So you would need to use code like that to listen to the pg up/pgn down buttons. You would then need to figure out the Ext API and determine which function to call to advance/return a page. _Should_ be doable.

Comment 13 by todd sharp posted on 11/24/2008 at 8:49 AM

@Wayne:

The grid should have a loading gif in the footer that is displayed during paging. Are you saying it's not showing up?

Comment 14 by todd sharp posted on 11/24/2008 at 8:51 AM

Actually wayne - probably shouldn't have fed the off topic fire here. Why don't you post in Ray's forum and we can discuss over there?

Comment 15 by Wayne Pankey posted on 11/24/2008 at 8:41 PM

Sorry about that -didn't mean to mess up the thread. Moving it over to the forum.