Can someone please respond to this guy?

This is an article written by David A. Utter, "Hey ColdFusion Pros, Why Use It?" that was published today. http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/topnews/wpn-60-20060913HeyColdFusionProsWhyUseIt.html It is FULL of infuriating, uninformed remarks, like: "Java, Ruby, ASP.NET, PHP, Python, these languages all get the buzz when it comes to online application development. I am curious about why ColdFusion even matters today." At the end of the article, he asks for CF Developers to chime in.  I did.  I would ask any amount of you that constitutes "a slew" to do the same.

not sure it's even worth it.  sounds like a troll trying to get some publicity. ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more -----

I think he asks some interesting questions, like the job market, Lexington doesn't have anybody wanting CF developers. The companies that were doing custom CF work are now gone, either out of business or doing .NET or Java. There are some companies that are running CF internally, but it isn't very common, and they aren't hiring. If you want a programming job around here it is either Java or .NET ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more -----

Without reading that clown, I can echo Nick's experience here in KC too. Our company just approved a 5 year contract which will see all of our legacy CF programs re-written in .NET, removing the last of the CF remnants from our apps. Ex-coworkers of mine who went for new jobs the last few years around here were required to learn either Java or ASP.NET for their new positions. They were basically hired only because the company had faith in their ability to transition from CF to another language. Do these trends make CF worthless or ineffective? Hardly. I still think CF can be one of the best application languages out there.....but locally anyway, it's becoming more and more scarce. Just an unfortunate reality i'm afraid. ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more ----- -- "Ma Teresa joined the mob, and is happy with her full time job."

I can say the exact opposite. Here in DC there are always jobs for CF developers available.  I just did a monster.com search and 525 current CF openings in the US.  Not bad considering.  I will say that these jobs seem to be focused in big cities. ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more -----

But if you search for .NET or Java you get more results than Monster can display. There are 389 Java listing for DC alone. My point was that new programmers looking at what they want to learn will find far more opportunities with .NET or Java > I can say the exact opposite. > > Here in DC there are always jobs for CF developers available.  I just did > a > monster.com search and 525 current CF openings in the US.  Not bad > considering.  I will say that these jobs seem to be focused in big cities.

there might be more openings...but there also might be more developers to fill those openings (which isn't necessarily a bad thing...) as far as the number of CF openings...i was recently in the job market and was pretty pleasantly surprised.  Had a few interviews in FL (where I was living at the time), a phone interview with a company in CT, applied to a job in DC, and interviewed with/accepted a job in CA (oh yeah, and emailed a guy in Omaha) :) and the fact of the matter is i wasn't even looking too terribly hard (I got -very- lucky in that the first job I applied to was the one I really wanted...so I checked out a few other places just so as to not put all my eggs into one proverbial basket).  If I really started sending out resumes and scouring the job boards, I'm sure I would have had a lot more opportunities available to me (I did see quite a few in NC as well as a few other locations that I didn't apply to). basically...i felt as tho I had my choice as to where in the US I wanted to live, and still be able to work with CF. so there may very well be more Java/.NET openings...but the ratio of developer to available opening has to play a factor as well. ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more -----

They're always going to find more opportunities with .NET and Java. Java is a full-fledged application language and is not in the same category as ColdFusion. It covers many more things. .NET is not as good as ColdFusion, but it's Microsoft -- what do you expect? The popularity of those languages are hardly an indicator of a problem for ColdFusion. In fact, I just did  a wonderful interview with Jeff Whatcott at Adobe which will come out as soon as we get it transcribed (The print issue is taking precedence here) where he says that many people who switched to Java from ColdFusion switched back when CFMX 7 came out, and are still switching back. The point is that none of the stats on Monster for .NET and Java tell you anything about ColdFusion. But this is all old hat and old news... People have been saying this on and on, forever and ever, and it's just getting old. Believe me -- ColdFusion isn't dying. It's not going away. .NET and Java will always have a bigger market share but so what? We'll always have a job. And there will always be more ColdFusion jobs. Judith ----- Original Message ----- > But if you search for .NET or Java you get more results than Monster can > display. > > There are 389 Java listing for DC alone. My point was that new programmers > looking at what they want to learn will find far more opportunities with > ..NET or Java

Search for ColdFusion or "Cold Fusion". 911 jobs. ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more ----- -- --------------- Robert Munn www.funkymojo.com

That's good to hear. Maybe this area is just an exception then. ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more ----- -- "Ma Teresa joined the mob, and is happy with her full time job."

By the way, the guy did a follow-up article where he took a jab at HoF and this list. http://www.webpronews.com/expertarticles/expertarticles/wpn-62-20060925ColdFusionMattersAndYourResponses.html Sorry for the crazy wrap. Judith

he's an asshat. because he doesn't want to subscribe (where he's be able to see all of our names), he says we're hiding under tne "anonymity" of the site. he closes his article with "ColdFusion deserves better".  That's particularly true of the person that webpronews chose to assign to its coverage of ColdFusion. ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more -----

I signed up over there.  Here's my post: To be honest I'm surprised to hear this question coming from someone that has obviously done some minimal research.   You mention several of our communities biggest and most well known advocates, you see the money that is being made off of publication of ColdFusion resources, now let's touch on just a bit of what CF can actually offer you. One of the biggest complaints that I hear about CF is the cost of the license.  Now, I am a government developer. This means of course that we can usually get reduced pricing as Macromedia, and now Adobe, really has seen the largest growth of CF in the government sector, and I think they would like to continue that growth. The licensing is greatly offset by the ease and speed of development and the built in integration with many cutting edge technologies such as Web Services, Flash, Flex, Ajax and the new gateways and listeners opening the possibilities into a further expansion of the technologies that CF will easily interact with. SEO complaints are unfair.  If you are a good developer and know what you are doing you can easily optimize any site or application for search engine crawling.  Any language can be badly written.  That is dependent on the developer at hand.  The fact that CF seems to have a higher number of non-traditional programmers, ones that maybe didn't go to college or didn't intended to become developers, seems to have created a glut of bad applications.  This isn't the fault of either the language or the application server.  You can see very close similarity in some of the PHP projects that are out there that are horribly written. Something else that I think is important to point out.  The majority of development done in CF is for web based applications, not web sites.  The audience for CF is working on closed systems for government and industry intranet applications primarily. Additional attention I think needs to be paid to the government angle.  A lot of the developers I know work in defense, law enforcement and intelligence.  We cannot talk about a lot of the applications we work on. They are classified.  However if you go to the Adobe site you can see the depth and breadth of the agencies that are using CF for internal software development. Anyway, I have to be honest; I think your original article was both uninformed and offensive to me as a CF developer.  I just did a search for ColdFusion jobs on monster.com and came up with hundreds of jobs.  These jobs are not low level and low pay positions with some piker web dev shed; these are senior level positions in corporate and government circles.   I am happy with CF, even though I have and continue to write other languages, it is my preference for doing browser based applications.  I make a good living, and I am able to continue to expand my skill set and my abilities. Finally, I'm Tim/Loathe, I spend a lot of time over at House of Fusion.  No one over there is hiding from you; honestly we were just discussing what seemed to be your obvious distaste for the language, coupled with your obvious lack of knowledge about CF, as a language, an application server or a community of developers. ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more -----

Good post. ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more ----- actually > offer you. > > One of the biggest complaints that I hear about CF is the cost of the > license.  Now, I am a government developer. This means of course that we can > usually get reduced pricing as Macromedia, and now Adobe, really has seen > the largest growth of CF in the government sector, and I think they would > like to continue that growth. > > The licensing is greatly offset by the ease and speed of development and the > built in integration with many cutting edge technologies such as Web > Services, Flash, Flex, Ajax and the new gateways and listeners opening the > possibilities into a further expansion of the technologies that CF will > easily interact with. > > SEO complaints are unfair.  If you are a good developer and know what you > are doing you can easily optimize any site or application for search engine > crawling.  Any language can be badly written.  That is dependent on the > developer at hand.  The fact that CF seems to have a higher number of > non-traditional programmers, ones that maybe didn't go to college or didn't ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more ----- make > a good living, and I am able to continue to expand my skill set and my > abilities. > > Finally, I'm Tim/Loathe, I spend a lot of time over at House of Fusion. No > one over there is hiding from you; honestly we were just discussing what > seemed to be your obvious distaste for the language, coupled with your > obvious lack of knowledge about CF, as a language, an application server or ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more -----

You have no idea how hard it was to be nice :) ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more -----

Yes we do...we've all seen your less diplomatic side :) Good post. ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more -----

http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?p=325889#325889 Cheers, Erika

I love it.  Hitting the topic from all angles, community and technical. ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more -----

ok so charlie's blogging now (yes, this idiot actually got me worked up enough to write a blog entry) http://cfblog.com/cgriefer/ ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more -----

I am a bad person that copies people to look cool: http://cfblog.com/Loathe/ ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more -----

heh.  you need to pick cooler people to copy then :) ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more -----

Charlie, this sentence made my brain hurt: "that doesn't sound particularly anti-non-CF to me" LOL..how many negatives equal a positive?  I'm confused! ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more -----

lol...yeah, i paused for a good few minutes after writing that :) but if i stop too long my train of thought derails... so i just kinda forged along. ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more -----

updated :) ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more ----- -- Charlie Griefer ================================================ "...All the world shall be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, prince with a swift warning. Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed."

Yea, I'm just bustin on ya.  That was a good response, BTW.  Who knew we had so many verbose ppl in the CF community?  You, Erika, Loathe... Jim Davis' little short was pretty cool, too. ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more ----- technical. ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more -----

no worries.  i appreciate feedback. and i appreciate that people are actually reading what i wrote (even if it makes their brains hurt) :) ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more -----

How many non positives don't not equal a non negative? > LOL..how many negatives equal a positive?  I'm confused!

The guy is an ass and has always been an ass. Ben and/or I have to refute one of his posts on an almost monthly basis. He's just desperate for content and wants us to provide it. I'll do so, but on my blog. Freekin troll ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more -----

I just posted a rather lengthy reply here: http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?p=323348#323348 ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more ----- -- --------------- Robert Munn www.funkymojo.com

Enjoyed reading all the comments in this thread. It's good to see that ColdFusion still has a lot of great advocates out there! I've gotten some inquiries in the last few months if I would be converting CFWebstore to .Net or PHP since CF is "dying" (again??) and my response has always been that my sales don't reflect that and that CF is just ideal for my product. The last thing I personally want to do is try to jump to a different market where there are already a huge number of competing apps with a big head start, and currently I don't see any need for it. So many people setting up stores just don't have a lot of programming expertise, they mainly just know HTML and CF is just ideal for them to have to learn the basics of, enough to do simple edits...such as you very commonly need to do with any canned application. In fact, I just got an email yesterday from a user who raved about how easy it was for him with no CF experience at all to get his store set up and customized for his exact needs. As much as I'd like to take all the credit for that (lol) it definitely says a lot about CF and how perfect it is for these kinds of off-the-shelf products. Really the only limitation I run into sometimes is with a customer that already has hosting somewhere, and they don't offer CF support. -------------------- Mary Jo Sminkey http://www.cfwebstore.com CFWebstore, ColdFusion E-commerce

Well, I am so happy to see the responses to Mr. Utter (I'm restraining myself here) because I think they do great credit to the community, and to ColdFusion. Tim, Erika and Robert, I thought each of your posts was gold. (Robert, I assume you were CFMunster.) Thanks, Mary Jo, for your perspective on CF and how well it's doing. I hope your business continues to thrive. Charlie, I thought your blog entry was classic. Good response! Judith ----- Original Message ----- ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more -----

yes, that was me... good to see the cf community showing up to represent. ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more ----- -- --------------- Robert Munn www.funkymojo.com

>Thanks, Mary Jo, for your perspective on CF and how well it's doing. I hope >your business continues to thrive. Thanks so much...I am really excited to get my next major release done (due in 2007). Finally decided it's time to drop CF 5 support and make full use of CFCs, just really go to town with what's possible. I'm already seeing some amazing improvements in speed, even with adding tons more functionality and still having a lot of work to do yet. I'm really more impressed than I expected to be...almost makes me wish I didn't wait so long to move up, but I actually was still getting CF 5 customers on a semi-regular basis...some people just never upgrade! But I'm expecting this to be such an awesome product, people will convert to CF just to use it. ;-) On another note...a lot of people mention the cost of ColdFusion, but the basic BlueDragon server with SSL support is only $899. Still not free, but a pretty reasonable price...and it really has come a long way and is a very strong competitor to CF, IMO. I've had a number of users run CFWebstore on BD and they rave about how fast it is. Haven't gotten to try Ralio (sp?) yet but I'm curious to see how it would do on that as well. --- Mary Jo

Have you seen CF-Jobs? We've been getting more and more every day. Have you noticed that Flex app on the side of HoF? The one to Developer Circuit? There are ColdFusion jobs galore. I'm even trying to get companies to fund free training in return for advertising.