Developer's Opinion about CF?

[senexom]

I've been doing web dev for the past few years and have gotten to a few languages, but not CF. To be honest it always interested me to know, but I just never had the will or the opportunity to learn it. Coming from a Java background I'm interested because it's a lot simpler then Java (ideal for simple web dev) but I imagine since it runs on Java it has a lot of power under the hood as well.

I want an honest, not bias opinion about Cold Fusion, is it worth it? What advantages are there over other popular languages like PHP. ASP.NET, etc.

[techniner]

I stay as far away from windows as possible.

CF is no different if your looking to go with widnows enviornment.

Other then that.. CF4.5 for Linux is just fine.

Interesting language.

Not really an advantage but Iw ill say it is ALOT more forgiving on syntax of things.

Almost liek XML coding..

<cfquery>

SELECT * from table
</cfquery>

And of course your logic is in there but my point is... you can do like

<cfquery>
SELECT
*
FROM
TABLE
</cfquery>

LITERALLY like that and it has no problem..

As far as functionality.. nothing you can't do in ANY other language... (PHP of course being my choice)

But if your interested in it I say go for it ... you will 100% like it.

[senexom]

Thanks techniner,

I'll give it a shot one of these days. How is demend for CF developer?

[techniner]

Demand?

Its pretty low at this point in time but I expect CF to take off in the commuity..

Those who use it are pretty coonfined to using NOTHING BUT it so you do gety the loyalty factor.

[Torch7]

I have to disagree with the windows observation, I ran 3 pretty high traffic webservers on WIN2K, and ColdFusion... I never had any issues with ColdFusion...The JVM gives can be a bit of a memory hog... but If you have atleast a Gig of Ram on the webserver you should be fine.

There is not a great demand for ColdFusion Developer, you would find many more ASPX, Jobs out there...

ColdFusion is a solid app, and just gets better by leaps and bounds every release. MX 7 is awesome. Coming from a Java background you should consider ColdFusion a application written in java that compiles its syntax to java byte code...a wrapper class if you will. ColdFusion apps can be compiled into an .ear file and deployed on a J2EE server... Runtime and all.

I hope you don't get offended by this next statement as MOST Java developers I have come in contact with do... COLDFUSION IS JAVA... plain and simple. Its a development time decision as opposed to a runtime decision. I was even told by some guys from IBM that ColdFusion runs better on there server platform than jsp.

I moved from ColdFusion to Java... (Management Decision) and ColdFusion definately has advantages over the Java implementation in web environments... and whatever the coldFusion tags can't do... you can simply do it in java, and invoke it through coldFusion.

If the server price tag is an issue... take a look at BlueDragon, from http://www.newatlanta.com

Hope this helps.

[senexom]

Thanks Torch,

Do you think CF developers should be worried that Macromedia is being acquired by Adobe?

[techniner]

Point taken Torch.

But also with Windows in place you must take into account a few things..

Since it is the most widely used OS it is now the prime target for virii & exploits.

A Windows Update taking down your server (ie.. IIS patch that takes down the server)

Windows and its notorious memory leaks...

Like I said thes epoints can be made both ways but if you ask me.. Unix/BSD/Linux are the way to go when running a webserver. (This includes database on another system running unix/bsd/linux)

I am well aware that heavy sites running windows handle just fine but things such as my next implmentation are the reasons I stay away from it as much as possible.

MFG Corp running an older ERP package... ok Current System..
HP-UX 11.0 with dual risc processors and 2GB of ram... 36GB total Hard Drive space.. runs the entire corp of about 350 users.. FAST and efficient..

Rough idea this corp makes 65M per year roughly so its no mom and pop operation...

To uopgrade to the next version... requriments for the SAME setup in windows enviornment..

Quad Xeons... 2GHz or better.. 4GB RAM.. and the database ratio is 7:1 (meaning 7 megs for every 1meg allocated now)
They request 10 Drives to get a Raid 10 setup.

Then they require App Servers which are single processor servers but same ram and 5 hard drives...

They then request a SQL Server of same if not better then the com server.

OK mind you this ONLY gives us the latest version in windows enviornment...

If the UNix version was available.. no hardware changes needed... just software upgrade..

Hence.. the reason I find windows to be a big giant PITA

[senexom]

Those who use it are pretty coonfined to using NOTHING BUT it so you do gety the loyalty factor.

:-| No offence, but from personal experience loyalty doesn't always pay the bills. I originally was all about open source, but when I moved to Seattle, where microsoft is king, I found my self reading .Net books 'cause most companies use MS technologies. Weather I liked it or not, I had to shift my skill set. ;)

[techniner]

:-| No offence, but from personal experience loyalty doesn't always pay the bills. I originally was all about open source, but when I moved to Seattle, where microsoft is king, I found my self reading .Net books 'cause most companies use MS technologies. Weather I liked it or not, I had to shift my skill set. ;)

If you do not adapt you get stepped on.

I totally agree I am forced into Microfot enviornments all the time.

But preference in my case my company.. my setup... we stay nix.. always and forever..

..until Microsoft Linux of course hehehe

....stable version that is....

[Torch7]

Techniner,

My repsonse was in now way a Microsoft Endorsement... I was just saying the CF works fine if you have to use it in a microsoft setting... Just a well as any other product running on Microsoft.

I personally could care-less one way or another...which implementation someone utilizes as long as I am paid for my services I am flexible.

However if I did have my own company and infastructure, that would be a different story. :mrgreen:

CF is a solid product, it takes a black-eye in perception alot. But I use it whenever I get the opportunity because of the Rapid Application Development aspect.

IE: JDBC example of a query.

Class.forName(sun.jdbc.odbc.JdbcOdbcDriver);
Connection jdbcConnection = 
             DriverManager.getConnection
                 (jdbc:odbc:Access);
Statement sqlStatement = jdbcConnection.createStatement();



String sql = "SELECT * FROM CUSTOMERS";


try
  {
  ResultSet results = sqlStatement.executeQuery(sql);


  while (results.next())
    {
    System.our.println("Field One: " + 
                       results.getString(1) +
                       "Field Two: " + 
                       results.getString(2) +
                       "Field Three: " + 
                       results.getString(3));
    }
  }



catch (Exception e)
  {
  System.out.println("Problem with Sending Query: " + e);
  }

ColdFusion Example:

<CFQUERY DATASOURCE="DataSourceName" NAME="QueryName">
SELECT * FROM Customers;
</CFQUERY>

<cfoutput query="QueryName">
#Field1#, #Field2#, #Field3#
</cfoutput>

A novice developer can understand what's going on here. And its doing the exact same thing as above.. The Power of Java, just much more simplistic.

I have used PHP, and ASP.NET as well, and have no gripes against them.

I guarantee if you were to use ColdFusion MX 7 and familiarize yourself with CFC's and CFscript; You would probably use ColdFusion at any given opportunity as well.

Check out the ColdFusion Page on Macromedia's website.

As well as http://www.cfmeasy.com to get started if you decide to tackle.

[Shaun Hannah]

Another point to consider here is the ease of multi-threaded programming in Coldfusion. If you have ever tried to pull this off in other languages you know what I mean. CF is naturally multi-threaded out of the box, this saves you from manually coding in all the hard stuff; instead you just use shared locks, or exclusive locks on variables that may be the target of races conditions. CF7 is good as doing this for you if you forget; but I'd use locks always just to be safe. Bottom line is threading is tough, and threading well is REALLY tough; but with CF it is as easy as a CFLOCK tag. Can't beat it.