CF Job market

[dazzlindonna]

Two to three years ago, it wasn't all that difficult to find ColdFusion programming jobs in my area of the US (south). When the tech jobs started drying up, the CF jobs did too, and they never seemed to really return here. But I've been working from home for over a year now, so I haven't really been paying attention lately. Does anyone know if the market is still there for CF programmers? Has it had a resurgence as the tech field has gotten a bit stronger, or not?

[samaru]

CF_Jobs (:)) are still out there, but nowhere as near as Java/.NET related jobs. If you do a job hunt on dice.com, monster.com, and many other IT job web sites, you'll see that CF is not that strongly in demand compared to other SUN/Microsoft technologies. It's a shame too. CF is such a powerful app server and its CFML language makes it so much easier to develop than JSP, ASP.NET, PHP, and Perl, that you can really save a lot on development costs. I hate to say it, but it's a shame the ColdFusion Web App server isn't free. I believe if it was free, it would have an even greater reputation than PHP and thus give a greater need for CF developers. Every time I tell my clients their options, they always choose either ASP.NET/Classic ASP or PHP because they're free. They never think about development costs even though I tell them. In my eyes, PHP will always dominate web applications for small to mid-sized businesses, and ASP.NET/Java for mid to large-sized businesses. As far as CF, I've only seen it in big-sized businesses/organizations. Even then, they were mostly used for intranet software.

By the way, CFML is my favorite language, but currently I'm stuck with PHP. Soon I will either move to C#+SQL Server or Java+Oracle since they have the most earning potential I believe.

[dazzlindonna]

Sounds pretty much like what I expected then. And yes, even when I was out there doing CF programming for companies, it was mostly intranet stuff, which made it difficult to build up any sort of portfolio to show potential clients. And I agree that the cost of CF is prohibitive. Heck, it wouldn't have to even be free, just substantially cheaper to gain more popularity.