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A quick message for the ColdFusion community

December 15, 2014 coldfusion

(This post is more than 2 years old.)

You've been warned - this video has no educational value.

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Archived Comments

Comment 1 by Adam Cameron posted on 12/15/2014 at 9:16 PM

Old sook

;-)

Comment 2 (In reply to #1) by Raymond Camden posted on 12/15/2014 at 9:18 PM

Damnit, now I need to learn another UKism. I'm assume it isn't this: "a female crab."

Comment 3 (In reply to #2) by Raymond Camden posted on 12/15/2014 at 9:18 PM

Oh heh, I imagine it this? http://www.urbandictionary....

Comment 4 (In reply to #3) by Adam Cameron posted on 12/15/2014 at 9:21 PM

Yeah. But not as mean-spirited as that makes it sound.

Comment 5 (In reply to #4) by Raymond Camden posted on 12/15/2014 at 9:25 PM

I knew better. ;)

Comment 6 by Mark Kruger posted on 12/15/2014 at 9:36 PM

I'd totally agree with you on all points Ray. I feel the same way.

Comment 7 by apgillespie posted on 12/15/2014 at 10:04 PM

+1 Ray - I haven't seen the comments your referring to but the CF community has always been very very good to me... thanks for say it. 8-)

Comment 8 by Dan Kraus posted on 12/16/2014 at 12:10 AM

It's certainly not as big or large as other programming communities, but I can't say I've had any real complaints about the people in it. Quite positive actually. Most of if any complaints I have are by-products of the size, not individuals. I'd love for more open source projects, tools, etc. Yes, I should be doing something myself to contribute. But to be honest, CF is my day job and I play with other stuff in my free time. OS contributors are the extreme minority of any community, but more people means a bigger minority. That said, I've really tried to keep better tabs on blogs, Twitter, and CF related Google Groups to comment and contribute where I can. I've significantly upped my Twitter game because it seems like that's where a lot of the interactions happen.

That said I think the stuff we do have is pretty great and has been becoming more aware aware of other technologies and tools out there to shape and influence them rather than exist in a total vacuum as CF and consequently CF devs have been in for a long time. Those reasons could be explored in a whole 'nother blog post I'd imagine. I think we all know CF has some catching up to do.

I feel like I'm in a bit of a minority in the CF community. I really began CF programming in 2008 as an developer intern in my last college semester. I've been doing CF (and the rest of the web stack) full-time ever since. So I feel like it's put me in a spot where I'm not stuck doing things the "old way" because that's simply the way I/"the company" always done it or something. Rather, wanting to apply modern, widely accepted and preached, practices heard in other software development circles to CF and integrate them with newer tools and technology. It helps I've worked for companies that explore other types of newer technology. At the end of the day, it's just a tool and CF is the sharpest one in my shed. So, I owe a big thanks to you, Ray, and many others for helping me along the early parts of my career, not just how to use this particular tool, but software development on the whole.

Sure, there's plenty complaining about the product (I agree with most of it anyway, but I've moved on to 100% Railo but that still means I need to be cognizant of what Adobe is doing). But the community, the actual people? All good experiences although I haven't met many personally outside my immediate network of co-workers from the last few years. Maybe the rest of you are all old, crotchety, and mean ;)

Comment 9 by Gary F posted on 12/16/2014 at 12:17 PM

No Ray, no! You can't make a video without any Christmas decorations at this time of year! Put some tinsel on your Tie Fighter or something. ;-) I agree with your comments, the CF community might be small but it's full of nice, helpful people in 95% of my experiences. Community = good. Product = needs refocusing and for Adobe to listen to developers more. Decorations = you need some.

Comment 10 (In reply to #9) by Raymond Camden posted on 12/16/2014 at 12:58 PM

I actually have some lights and a small tree, but they were in front of me. :)

Comment 11 (In reply to #9) by Adam Cameron posted on 12/16/2014 at 1:01 PM

"Put some tinsel on your Tie Fighter". Is that a euphemism?

Comment 12 by Jae Jung posted on 12/16/2014 at 1:24 PM

I've been programming in ColdFusion since 1998. I would not be where I am in my life without ColdFusion. For the longest time people have said, "ColdFusion will die out." However, 'till this day ColdFusion is still live and stronger than ever. I see progresses like Railo, ColdBox, and Mura which lets me know the movement is still continuing. Although at times I wonder when will the run end but I'll worry about that when it actually happens. For now I will continue to enjoy programming in ColdFusion.

Sorry to hear that you heard such negativity about the ColdFusion community. Personally many of the "good" people I have met is from the ColdFusion community.

Comment 13 by RogerTheGeek posted on 12/16/2014 at 1:58 PM

I've heard negative things said about ColdFusion by folks outside the community, but the CF community seems to be mostly supportive. The negative stuff is due to it being a commercial product rather than open source mostly.

In my experience, most of the tech communities I have had experience in have been very positive, both locally and on-line. You do get the trolls at times. Of course, we should make vendors accountable when they make mistakes, but most people are honest souls.

I have made a lot of good friends with TACFUG and through NCDevCon. The on-line community can be challenging at times (especially CF-Talk), but nice people do help people there.

Comment 14 (In reply to #13) by John Matthews posted on 12/16/2014 at 3:14 PM

I started doing Coldfusion when I joined the original company Allaire. I loved the product and went full bore into using it for my websites. It was well ahead of its time and easier to use than PHP. I loved the database connection tags and the custom tag library you could write. Sure it had its products that were questsionable, remember Spectra! I had always found that the User groups and community in genereal were very friendly. I remember the Toronto UG was especially nice giving that I was lecturing to them with 102 fever. But all in all CFML earned its place in the history of the web and deserves to continue on. I hope I will always come across sites that still use it like autobytel.com and many others that still believe in the language. Thanks to the brothers Allaire for coming up with such a great language. Too bad they sold it to Macromedia who eventually choked it out.

Comment 15 by Aaron Longnion posted on 12/16/2014 at 3:29 PM

Maybe CF sentiment isn't as bad as it seems sometimes (with no shame, I love it!)... at least according to this Twitter analysis tool: http://www.csc.ncsu.edu/fac...

Comment 16 by 911truthnow1 posted on 12/16/2014 at 5:46 PM

When I offering future advances in coldfusion server, which 99% are now common features in CF i.e the suggest of embedding Java database the CF community was openly hostile and I got phone calls from one CF members which were not friendly. I still sell old my CF products "Coldfusion Gateway with Java Gtalk and AJAX" which now are now embedded into Coldfusion as the gateway product. Java database is embedded. Coldfusion has never acknowledge anything I have done. So I dropped out.

My Programs that didn't get embedded. Java TTS

Coldfusion 10 Talking Text Voice Kevin Kill all humans tutorial part https://www.youtube.com/wat...

Coldfusion 10 Speech Synthesis engine and talking CFML Example
https://www.youtube.com/wat...

What Coldfusion has not done is make the shopping cart easier to make and with that comment the phone should start ringing again .. "stop this nonsense at once!" Interestingly this behavior exists everywhere. i.e for 9/11 Truth i.i.e unediting the sounds of explosions, thermite reactions and showing molten rivers also get the cold shoulder from the Truther movement for not being effective controlled opposition.

9/11 symphony of perfection
https://www.youtube.com/wat...

Comment 17 (In reply to #16) by Raymond Camden posted on 12/16/2014 at 5:48 PM

I'm sorry you had such a bad response. I certainly don't mean to imply *everyone* in our community is a saint. The point of this blog entry was to share what I thought of our community as a *whole*.

Comment 18 (In reply to #17) by 911truthnow1 posted on 12/16/2014 at 6:11 PM

I never got any good feedback. Not a single member. If that's not the whole community then I don't know what is. Maybe embedding java database still has people angry.

Comment 19 (In reply to #18) by Adam Cameron posted on 12/16/2014 at 6:45 PM

How long ago was this, Dan?

Comment 20 (In reply to #19) by 911truthnow1 posted on 12/16/2014 at 7:08 PM

Why has things changed since that time? Should I go back and start making things again? I made a web site that uses a few CF Tools

web scraping array, Ajax etc
http://www.investingnideas....

Comment 21 (In reply to #20) by Raymond Camden posted on 12/16/2014 at 7:10 PM

Dan, again, I'm sorry you had a bad experience. I do not believe your experience is indicative of how the greater community acts. That's my opinion.

Comment 22 (In reply to #21) by 911truthnow1 posted on 12/16/2014 at 7:17 PM

I agree but the few bad apples is all it takes to out weight the people who 1. don't care 2. might like new things but say nothing.

Comment 23 by hefterr posted on 12/16/2014 at 7:46 PM

I think the community has always been great - but I am concerned about your feeling ColdFusion isn't here it stay. Do you have any insight on Adobe's future for ColdFusion?

Comment 24 (In reply to #23) by Raymond Camden posted on 12/16/2014 at 7:47 PM

Err... I said that? I think I said, "I don't know if it will be here forever..." - that is a pretty open statement. I wasn't trying to hint at anything I may know.

Comment 25 by Henry Ho posted on 12/16/2014 at 8:13 PM

Ya Adam Cameron, stop being so mean. ;-)

Comment 26 (In reply to #25) by Adam Cameron posted on 12/16/2014 at 8:33 PM

Oh yeah, make this all about *me*.

No... really... can you make this all about me, please? ;-)

Comment 27 (In reply to #24) by hefterr posted on 12/16/2014 at 8:42 PM

Well, maybe I read into it, but there was a reason you said it (you didn't have to). It is an issue that you can always find on the web about ColdFusion. Came off a little like a eulogy to ColdFusion (to me).

Comment 28 (In reply to #27) by Emmet McGovern posted on 12/16/2014 at 9:04 PM

Same sentiment. I'm not sure what inspired the video, but it did seem like a send off once you said that Ray.

Comment 29 (In reply to #28) by Raymond Camden posted on 12/16/2014 at 9:47 PM

Ugh. I was willing to blame hefterr for perhaps not being an English speaker, but I know better with you Emmet. -sigh-

To be clear: I work at Adobe, but I am a peon. I have no knowledge of Adobe killing ColdFusion. My comment about not knowing how long it will last applies to *every* technology out there. It was generic, nothing more.

Comment 30 (In reply to #29) by hefterr posted on 12/16/2014 at 9:57 PM

You are hurting me Ray :) I was born and raised in NYC. Not sure what language we speak in Bayside/Queens NY haha. We actually spoke on the phone once. My boss (from Shreveport, LA) was also on the phone.

Comment 31 (In reply to #30) by Raymond Camden posted on 12/16/2014 at 9:58 PM

Sorry, I was a bit frustrated and meant no offense. I thought I was being clear, but when you said, "there was a reason you said it", I thought it was a bit pushy. Not sure how many different ways I can say it.

Comment 32 by Tim Badolato posted on 12/17/2014 at 4:55 PM

Great video Ray, totally agree! Now its time for a follow up video rallying the troops to get involved and push towards the future of cfml, not a dystopian one but one of renaissance. To do this we need people to blog, tweet, create open source, post on hn, etc. If everyone in the cfml community did just one of these things it would go along way in changing popular opinion and helping people to take another look and reconsider. Look at the rise of RoR, great marketing campaign, together we can do that.

Comment 33 (In reply to #32) by Adam Cameron posted on 12/17/2014 at 5:33 PM

Yep. The community def needs to buy-in a bit more.

I feel guilty I don't submit pull reqs to any OS projects, but I *do* try to feed the various bug trackers as much as I can. And the blog (although that might fall under the "dystopian" view you mention ;-). And I do try to "keep the discussion going".

What about you, Tim? Money where your mouth is mate... blog? OS projects?

--
Adam

Comment 34 by Edward Beckett posted on 12/17/2014 at 5:51 PM

Personally I think the CF community as a whole is pretty awesome... I don't use CF as much anymore but CF was my gateway into development so Im thankful that I had the opportunity to grow and learn from working with it. I learned a lot just from studying your code samples and BlogCFC, LightHouse App, CFAggregator, etc...

Thanks for all your patience and tolerance over the years for my relying on you for CF info...

Comment 35 (In reply to #33) by Tim Badolato posted on 12/17/2014 at 6:23 PM

Haha, yes, I had been challenged by various voices in the cfml community years ago to get involved. Now I'm not much of a blogger but since then I've contributed to various projects like CFWheels, and released Wheelie CMS. My projects can be seen at http://github.com/timsayshey -- I think it can all be overwhelming that's why I just want to encourage everyone in the community to do just one thing. Go comment about cfml on a Hacker news story, tweet about the new bitnami project, create a cfml github project, contribute, just one thing. If we all did just one thing, that would be huge.

Comment 36 (In reply to #35) by Adam Cameron posted on 12/17/2014 at 6:35 PM

Def. I was not questioning your creds, btw: just following up your own comment.

Being the complete CF celebrity like Ray is difficult (author, blogger, speaker, coder). But just tweeting away, raising or answering questions on stack overflow, posting to forums, doing the odd commit to a github repo... each individually is a) rewarding; b) easy; c) accessible to everyone.

I'm formulating a blog post on it.

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