ColdFusion vs ASP NET! GET YOUR FRESH POPCORRRRN!!

I'm going to bring this one in from the Blackstone Beta thread yesterday because I think we all need to talk about this. I'm not going to rehash most of what's been said in that thread. ASP.NET is taking market away from CF! WHY? Will Blackstone fix the shift that's taking place? I say no! CF is still outrageous to purchase. The licensing for the .NET SDK is free as is the licensing to deploy. I'm not trying to attack CF here, I'm really not. I'm just trying to wake people up, because I think we've been lulled to sleep by Blackstone. Blackstone is not equivalent to .NET in power and performance. Yeah, maybe it's easy for us to code our simple CFML, and yeah that <cfdocument> is pretty neat, but there are a few factors making CF'ers like me change hats, and put on the .NET one! Will MM ever come up with a true development language like .NET? Are they going to keep putting more icing on the same cake, while Microsoft bakes fresh ones? I'll plug Tim Uzzanti's comments below. I think the man would know something about the subject, plus he'll tend to be more honest since he's not on our side of the business.   One more thing. Please don't attack me! I'm just the messenger! Tim Uzzanti: "If you believe CF can handle the same traffic loads that .NET can handle, then you are completely confused on the technologies and their infrastructure. I have no idea if 75% of fortune 100% companies use CF, I would love to see some documentation for that, but the Fortune 100 companies ARE NOT the Top 100 sites on the Internet either! Asking someone who maintains and manages 10,000 hosted applications on Cold Fusion and someone who manages thousands of .NET applications would probably give you a pretty good opinion of what they see? Is it in my BEST interest to tell a customer not to use CF, or is it in my best interest to suggest what might be the best technologies from my experiences on their requirements? Someone mentioned ediet.com which has a traffic ranking of around 280,000 and in comparison CrystalTech is around 23,000. Microsoft.com which is in the top 10 is using ASP.NET and Dell.COM which is in the top 100 is also using ASP.NET Regarding the back end of Cold Fusion: CFMX is much better than CF5 but still has many limitations and quirks that we have see and deal with every day. I am not saying that CF doesn’t have the ability to grow with larger sites because it has features like the ability to cluster machines and the classes are compiled etc. What I am saying is, if you would like to build an application that can last longer on certain hardware or run more optimally, CF is not the way to go! Cold Fusion MX out of the box has a setting to support no more than 10 simultaneous requests at one time. Macromedia suggestions that you never exceed 40 and this isn’t optimal for a large scale sites. There are other settings and issues from a server administration standpoint that hinder CFMX from out performing .NET There are other factors that one needs to think about when writing an application. Think about the ability to use Threads in .NET. Depending on your application, sitting and processing 10 requests back to back may take 5 minutes but if you had the ability to run the 10 tasks concurrently you may be able to respond back to the customer in 30 seconds. You have to realize, .NET isn’t just a web based language, it is a Development language for desktop and server applications as well. CrystalTech uses SmarterMail which is built on the .NET and it outperforms all other mail servers that are built on C and C++. One last comment that I would also provide to a potential customer who may want to move from a shared environment to a dedicated environment is that you will need to purchase a license for CFMX. If this is a large site and will expand to multiple servers then they will need to purchase a $4,500 license possibly x 2... Again, this isn't something that affects CT, but would affect the customer..."

Will, This is probably not a good place for this discussion.  It's CF-Talk, not CF-Bash. > ASP.NET is taking market away from CF! WHY? Are you sure?  Do you have numbers for that?  Either way, you're probably right, but if so, can you show that it's for any technological reasons other than the gullibility of IT managers when it comes to the Microsoft marketing machine? Secondly, would we _want_ ColdFusion to have the same market share as ASP.NET?  Macromedia (compared to MS) is a fairly small company. Almost nothing is as dangerous to small companies as over-rapid expansion.  They do what they do (provide a great server product to a somewhat niche market), and do it well.  If their market share tripled overnight, do you think the company could keep up its standards? > Will Blackstone fix the shift that's taking place? I say no! > CF is still outrageous to purchase. This is a shortsighted statement.  For most purposes, TCO for CF is usually lower.  Its development tools are cheaper, and work tends to get done much faster.  For any decent company, the price of CF is small potatoes compared to the price of getting an application developed on any platform. > The licensing for the .NET SDK is free as is the licensing to deploy. To quote a great author, TANSTAAFL - There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.  .NET is not free as in beer.  You don't think the price of your Windows license was built into the price of your server? > I'm not trying to attack CF here, I'm really not. I'm just trying to > wake people up, because I think we've been lulled to sleep by Blackstone. I think I'm pretty well awake - I've been developing for both CF and .NET for a while now, and would like to think that I have more insight into both worlds than most. > Blackstone is not equivalent to .NET in power and performance. Well, that's because comparing CF and .NET is an apples-to-oranges comparison.  .NET can be compared to Java, and ASP.NET can be compared to CF.  Java is easily as powerful as .NET, if intrinsically more so because of its ability to perform like tasks across multiple platforms. To me, CF is more power in ASP.NET in that it gives developers an easier way to abstract and build n-tiered applications through CFCs, opposed to ASP.NET's forcing "classic" ASP developers to learn VB.NET or C#  in order to build a decently architected application (on a basic level, meaning they don't so SQL in their code-behind). > Yeah, maybe it's easy for us to code our simple CFML, > and yeah that <cfdocument> is pretty neat, but there are > a few factors making CF'ers like me change hats, > and put on the .NET one! Yes, it is very easy to develop applications that do things our clients want in CF, and Macromedia identifies things that are difficult (like generating PDFs) and makes a point of simplifying them in later releases. > Will MM ever come up with a true development language > like .NET? 1.  .NET isn't a language. 2.  If you mean platform, why would they? Why abandon using one of the largest and most robust frameworks available (Java)? > Are they going to keep putting more icing on > the same cake, while Microsoft bakes fresh ones? CFMX was a very fresh cake, not using the core of CF version 1-5. ASP was a stale cake - Microsoft got behind in the market and put some new icing on (gag) VB, and called it an application server. I'll agree that ASP.NET has some very "fresh" ideas, but even Microsoft is rolling back on some of them.  The code-behind model isn't popular with a lot of 'classic' ASP developers, and we're starting to see support for code-inside and code-beside creep back in. -joe -- For Tabs, Trees, and more, use the jComponents: http://clearsoftware.net/client/jComponents.cfm

>> ASP.NET is taking market away from CF! WHY? > >Are you sure?  Do you have numbers for that?  Either way, you're >probably right, but if so, can you show that it's for any >technological reasons other than the gullibility of IT managers when >it comes to the Microsoft marketing machine? I'd like you to prove that statement.  I suppose that IT managers that use CF aren't gullible, and aren't susceptible to Macromedia's marketing machine. > >Secondly, would we _want_ ColdFusion to have the same market share as >ASP.NET?  Macromedia (compared to MS) is a fairly small company. >Almost nothing is as dangerous to small companies as over-rapid >expansion.  They do what they do (provide a great server product to a >somewhat niche market), and do it well.  If their market share tripled >overnight, do you think the company could keep up its standards? Well, yeah, I'd like to see CF have the same market share. ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more ----- Proof please?  I can develop apps faster with VS.NET than, say, DW any day of the week, but then again, that's just me, so I'd rather not extrapolate my one experience into the whole world's, which is what everybody else seems to be doing. > >> The licensing for the .NET SDK is free as is the licensing to deploy. > >To quote a great author, TANSTAAFL - There Ain't No Such Thing As A >Free Lunch.  .NET is not free as in beer.  You don't think the price >of your Windows license was built into the price of your server? Seeing as how most people use CF on Windows, this becomes a bit of a non issue. ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more ----- So do I. ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more ----- And as any Java programmer will tell you that's worked on cross platform apps, this is not nearly as easy as Sun will lead you to believe.  And of course there's Mono. .NET was the best thing to happen to Java.  It put Sun in the hot seat, and there's lots of developer push now to simplify Java (EJBs esp.).  There was a push before .NET was around, but it's really been amplified seeing as how .NET actually showed that, yes, it was possible to write EJB-like objects without, say, implementing 3 different interfaces for no real reason other than to satisfy the design gods. And there's always been Sun's reluctance on Web Services, which has given us the happy mess that is AXIS. > >To me, CF is more power in ASP.NET in that it gives developers an >easier way to abstract and build n-tiered applications through CFCs, >opposed to ASP.NET's forcing "classic" ASP developers to learn VB.NET >or C#  in order to build a decently architected application (on a >basic level, meaning they don't so SQL in their code-behind). Huh?  ASP.NET is more powerful than CF in that it gives developers an easier way to abstract and build n-tiered applications through objects.  There we go :) ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more ----- I do like how ASP.NET will have things like Master Pages, so that I don't have to roll my own layout manager.  Both companies do a good job on this, but do have a different focus when it comes what requests they want to satisfy. >2.  If you mean platform, why would they? Why abandon using one of the >largest and most robust frameworks available (Java)? To get some market share within the Windows world (e.g. places that don't use Java, and don't want to). >I'll agree that ASP.NET has some very "fresh" ideas, but even >Microsoft is rolling back on some of them.  The code-behind model >isn't popular with a lot of 'classic' ASP developers, and we're >starting to see support for code-inside and code-beside creep back in. It isn't?  I go to weblogs.asp.net every day, and I never see any mention of that.  I also go the www.asp.net forums, and I never see any mention of that. If you're talking about partial classes, hey, it seems that MS is listening to their developers, and code-behind is still in there for 2.0, so I don't see what MS is backpedaling on.

I am not going to get sucked into a flame war here, but this one line just begged a response ... > Blackstone is not equivalent to .NET in power and performance. Did you, by any chance, mean to compare J2EE to .NET, or were you really displaying such an amazing lack of understanding as to what ColdFusion MX is as to compare CF to .NET? I am hoping this was just a typo. If you want to get into a .NET versus J2EE debate, go for it. There is no winner or loser in that one, by the way. And if CF does not scale, well, neither does IBM WebSphere, BEA WebLogic, JRun, and the like. I assume that you did not mean to imply that. Does that mean that ever CF application will scale well? Nope, not at all, but well written ones will. In the past few weeks I have been personally involved in several massive CF deployments that were failing under load, and when the consulting team went in to find the causes each and every one of the problems ended up being bad code or badly configured J2EE servers. And no, I am not putting down .NET, .NET has lots going for it, as does J2EE, as does CF. Pick one, pick multiple, pick them all, pick something else altogether - whatever works best for you. But please avoid silly flame rampage postings. They serve no one. --- Ben I'm going to bring this one in from the Blackstone Beta thread yesterday because I think we all need to talk about this. I'm not going to rehash most of what's been said in that thread. ASP.NET is taking market away from CF! WHY? Will Blackstone fix the shift that's taking place? I say no! CF is still outrageous to purchase. The licensing for the .NET SDK is free as is the licensing to deploy. I'm not trying to attack CF here, I'm really not. I'm just trying to wake people up, because I think we've been lulled to sleep by Blackstone. Blackstone is not equivalent to .NET in power and performance. Yeah, maybe it's easy for us to code our simple CFML, and yeah that <cfdocument> is pretty neat, but there are a few factors making CF'ers like me change hats, and put on the .NET one! Will MM ever come up with a true development language like .NET? Are they going to keep putting more icing on the same cake, while Microsoft bakes fresh ones? I'll plug Tim Uzzanti's comments below. I think the man would know something about the subject, plus he'll tend to be more honest since he's not on our side of the business.   One more thing. Please don't attack me! I'm just the messenger! Tim Uzzanti: "If you believe CF can handle the same traffic loads that .NET can handle, then you are completely confused on the technologies and their infrastructure. I have no idea if 75% of fortune 100% companies use CF, I would love to see some documentation for that, but the Fortune 100 companies ARE NOT the Top 100 sites on the Internet either! Asking someone who maintains and manages 10,000 hosted applications on Cold Fusion and someone who manages thousands of .NET applications would probably give you a pretty good opinion of what they see? Is it in my BEST interest to tell a customer not to use CF, or is it in my best interest to suggest what might be the best technologies from my experiences on their requirements? Someone mentioned ediet.com which has a traffic ranking of around 280,000 and in comparison CrystalTech is around 23,000. Microsoft.com which is in the top 10 is using ASP.NET and Dell.COM which is in the top 100 is also using ASP.NET Regarding the back end of Cold Fusion: CFMX is much better than CF5 but still has many limitations and quirks that we have see and deal with every day. I am not saying that CF doesn't have the ability to grow with larger sites because it has features like the ability to cluster machines and the classes are compiled etc. What I am saying is, if you would like to build an application that can last longer on certain hardware or run more optimally, CF is not the way to go! Cold Fusion MX out of the box has a setting to support no more than 10 simultaneous requests at one time. Macromedia suggestions that you never exceed 40 and this isn't optimal for a large scale sites. There are other settings and issues from a server administration standpoint that hinder CFMX from out performing .NET There are other factors that one needs to think about when writing an application. Think about the ability to use Threads in .NET. Depending on your application, sitting and processing 10 requests back to back may take 5 minutes but if you had the ability to run the 10 tasks concurrently you may be able to respond back to the customer in 30 seconds. You have to realize, .NET isn't just a web based language, it is a Development language for desktop and server applications as well. CrystalTech uses SmarterMail which is built on the .NET and it outperforms all other mail servers that are built on C and C++. One last comment that I would also provide to a potential customer who may want to move from a shared environment to a dedicated environment is that you will need to purchase a license for CFMX. If this is a large site and will expand to multiple servers then they will need to purchase a $4,500 license possibly x 2... Again, this isn't something that affects CT, but would affect the customer..."

One thing that depresses me about the CF community is their incredible defensiveness, even from MM. When .NET came out, and people started to use and understand it better, the Java community did what every CF person should be doing: they learned .NET.  And then they deconstructed it.  And then they asked themselves: "What can we take from .NET to make Java better" They realized that JSP was too simple, and that it didn't include enough base functionality. They realized that making custom tags in JSP was too hard. They realized that frameworks like Struts and JSF weren't perhaps the road to go down. They realized that it was too unwieldly to configure and deploy Java servers, and that it brought no real benefits the way they did it. They realized that EJBs were too hard to design, and for no good reason. They realized that in order to keep Java as a first class development platform, they had to fix these problems, and add more features as they went along.  Not just one or two "cool" features that Sun would provide on high as determined by their marketing department, but real things that would matter on a day to day basis from a developer's point of view. One day, I'd like to see the CF community do that.  There's a few people out there that do that, and Will's semi-rant is a vent not just at MM, but the people that use CF that seem to want to defend it to the death, and the verocity at chiding people who want to see CF change and improve. I'm curious.  I wonder how many people on this list said, before CFMX came out, and before Neo was a twinkle in anyone's eye: "CF should be written in Java."   I'd say no one.  This is not a place for change.

Kwang Suh wrote: > One thing that depresses me about the CF community is their incredible defensiveness, even from MM. > If you only take the opinions from people who have subscribed to a relatively high volume mailing list called CF-Talk you'd be very naive to expect anything else. Would you expect to see a lot of support for a ".NET is better than PHP" type of post in the PHP mailing lists. I somehow doubt it. Posting questions about the relative merit of .NET vs CF on this list will undoubtedly get you a lot of responses that are skewed towards CF, but you may find a few people who have some balanced opinions and experience to share. Posting a message that tells everyone on the list that they are asleep and that they are deluded if they think CF is better than .NET is bound to ruffle a lot of feathers. > When .NET came out, and people started to use and understand it better, the Java community did what every CF person should be doing: they learned .NET.  And then they deconstructed it.  And then they asked themselves: > > "What can we take from .NET to make Java better" Really? I'd not heard that before. Can you point me to some of the sources where you got that information? There have certainly been changes for the better in the Java and J2EE world, but I'm not convinced that they were as a direct response to .NET. ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more ----- I'd pretty much agree with the above statements, but I don't think they happened because of .NET. I think they happened because the customers and community were braying like a herd of donkeys that it needed to be improved. > > One day, I'd like to see the CF community do that.  There's a few people out there that do that, and Will's semi-rant is a vent not just at MM, but the people that use CF that seem to want to defend it to the death, and the verocity at chiding people who want to see CF change and improve. What exactly is it that's too simple, hard, unweildy about CFMX that so desperately needs fixing? > > I'm curious.  I wonder how many people on this list said, before CFMX came out, and before Neo was a twinkle in anyone's eye: "CF should be written in Java."  I'd say no one.  This is not a place for change. I know a few people certainly would have said that quite a long time ago. When Neo first became an twinkle in someone's eye is pretty hard to gauge, but back in late 1998 Live Software were working on CF_Anywhere which was the first sign of a CFML execution engine written in Java. In 2000 n-ary were working on TagFusion which later became New Atlanta's BlueDragon. Both of those were before the official Neo announcement at the 2001 DevCon and I know that they were discussed on this list pretty early in their development cycles. http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/threads.cfm/threadid:646#2872 Besides that, I don't really see what point you're trying to make. Even if no-one on this list suggested that CF should be written in Java, why should that mean that this list is not a place for change? By that reasoning the fact that no-one else (or at least not many) foresaw the popularity of the I-Pod would mean that no-one but Steve Jobs has the foresight for change. Spike

----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more ----- JCP. ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more ----- Who said anything about fixing?  I'd like more functionality: I'd like to have <cftransaction> work across multiple databases.  And allowed nested <cftransactions>. I'd like some other number type beside floating point. I'd like a concept of null type. I'd like to have CFCs have interfaces, constructors, overloaded methods, more obvious variable scoping. I'd like to have at least a collection CFC type. I'd like to have threads. Yes, yes, yes, I've filled out the damn wish form. ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more ----- Not on this list.  Thank you. > Besides that, I don't really see what point you're trying to make. > Even > if no-one on this list suggested that CF should be written in Java, > why > should that mean that this list is not a place for change? Oh I dunno.  Let's see what you've said: "No one needs 10 web servers, except for multinational shipping corporations." "The opportunity for a company to have a QA server is based not on need and things like good practices, but on how much money they have." "Use Java for threading." "Everything in CF works properly." I'm not sure how open minded that is. > > By that reasoning the fact that no-one else (or at least not many) > foresaw the popularity of the I-Pod would mean that no-one but Steve > Jobs has the foresight for change. Not sure how you jumped to that conclusion.

I'd like this, but I think there are a lot of people out there who do not fully understand what a null is and is not. -- Aaron Rouse http://www.happyhacker.com/ > > I'd like a concept of null type

I like to give people some credit.  If I understand what a null is, I'm sure anyone else can. ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more -----

Will Tomlinson wrote: > I'm going to bring this one in from the Blackstone Beta thread yesterday because I think we all need to talk about this. I'm not going to rehash most of what's been said in that thread. > Glad you're not planning on going over what was said yesterday. There was very little light shed by either yourself or anyone else in that thread. > ASP.NET is taking market away from CF! Do you have the hard market numbers to back up that statment, or is it what you've seen and heard? WHY? Will Blackstone fix the shift that's taking place? I say no! CF is still outrageous to purchase. I disagree with this. A ColdFusion license costs from $1199. A junior developer costs say $25 per hour. So a ColdFusion license equates to 48 hours or so of developer time over the lifetime of the license. That's just over a week's worth of work. If there's you can save a week's worth of development time over the whole time you have the license, it will pay for itself. The licensing for the .NET SDK is free as is the licensing to deploy. Development licenses for CF are free and have been for quite a while. The license cost of CFMX is a tiny fraction of most project costs in any case. As is the cost of the windows license for ASP.NET. and the cost of any developer tools that you may need. I'm not trying to attack CF here, I'm really not. I'm just trying to wake people up, because I think we've been lulled to sleep by Blackstone. What exactly are you trying to wake people up to? That ASP.NET is getting a lot of media attention, and that some companies are moving there from ColdFusion? That's hardly news. There's been switching going on ever since I started using ColdFusion 7 years or so ago. The truth is that there will always be some .NET only environments, there will always be some PHP only environments, there will always be some CF only environments, and there will always be some who use a mixture. Blackstone is not equivalent to .NET in power and performance. Can you point me to something that claims that it is? I don't think I've ever seen anyone make that statement, so I'm curious where you came up with it. Yeah, maybe it's easy for us to code our simple CFML, and yeah that <cfdocument> is pretty neat, but there are a few factors making CF'ers like me change hats, and put on the .NET one! I hope it works out well for you. I'll be sticking with Java and CFML for now. I've used ASP.NET and I can't say I liked either the IDEs or the language. Will MM ever come up with a true development language like .NET? God help us all if they do. CFMX on J2EE gives me all the power I need. If there's something that I can't easily do in CFML I write it in Java and call that from CFML. Are they going to keep putting more icing on the same cake, while Microsoft bakes fresh ones? Macromedia are adding features based on the requests from their customers. If the customers want icing, I guess icing is what they'll get. > > I'll plug Tim Uzzanti's comments below. I think the man would know something about the subject, plus he'll tend to be more honest since he's not on our side of the business.   > > One more thing. Please don't attack me! I'm just the messenger! > Tim has plenty to say about the performance of .NET vs CFMX, but nothing to say about the aspects of CFMX that make it a better value proposition when looking at the bigger picture. I use CFML because it has a very rapid development time and that cuts the cost of development and maintenance. Since more than 70% of the cost for the vast majority of software projects is in development and maintenance I think that speaks for itself. The truth is that for the overwhelming majority of applications absolute performance is not the factor that should be used to determine the platform on which the application should be built. Certainly there are some, but they are the exception rather than the rule. I've worked with a *lot* of ColdFusion applications that were run on anything from shared hosting to clustered servers and I've yet to experience a problem with performance that was caused by the underlying application server rather than poorly written code. In any case, if your site is so overwhelmed with requests that a single server can no longer handle the load, I'd be extremely surprised if the cost of another server and CFMX license was of any consequence compared to the cashflow that your organization was already handling. ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more -----

> ASP.NET is taking market away from CF! I doubt you can substantiate that. CF's market share appears to have shrunk from the old 2.0 and 3.0 days, but there's been a lot more going on than ASP.NET. In fact, ASP.NET is a minor blip on CF's radar when compared to the giant swarm of open-source development platforms like PHP. >  I'm just trying to wake people up... Why? Perhaps people know something about their businesses or clients that you don't. > CF is still > outrageous to purchase. (1) Anyone who is price-conscious won't be using ASP.NET. They'll be using PHP or Ruby on a Linux box. (2) Anyone who is forced to pay an outrageous price for CF (those in need of Enterprise features) is already paying much, much more for the development and hosting of a large, complicated, and clustered application. -- Roger Benningfield JournURL: http://journurl.com/ blog: http://admin.support.journurl.com/  

> I'm not going to rehash most of what's been said in that thread. Er, sure you are. You even repeated Tim Uzzanti's quote *in* *full*! It's not a case of right or wrong, just that you're not going to get everyone to agree with you so give it up. Please! > ASP.NET is taking market away from CF! As others have said: where is your proof? I don't think you'll find anything more than anecdotal evidence to support that claim especially since several studies have shown a healthy growth in CF over the last year or two. Read a bit further and you'll see that there's a lot of evidence that Java is still doing much better than .NET - which is part of the reason behind Microsoft's back-pedalling on a number of .NET and Longhorn related issues: they're just not seeing .NET be as successful as they'd planned. > CF is still outrageous to purchase. The licensing for the .NET SDK is free as is the licensing to deploy. As others have said: deployment costs are such a minimal part of most projects. You need to consider the Total Cost of Ownership over the lifetime of the software. > I'm not trying to attack CF here, I'm really not. Uh-huh? > I'm just trying to wake people up, because I think we've been lulled to sleep by Blackstone. I think you do a great disservice to people on this list - and the CF community in general - by accusing them of being asleep! > Will MM ever come up with a true development language like .NET? .NET is not a language. .NET is more comparable to J2EE. You know J2EE? The platform that CFMX runs on? And those other folks have most of CFML running on .NET. Try and get your facts straight and compare like to like. > I'll plug Tim Uzzanti's comments below. Again. Yawn! > Someone mentioned ediet.com which has a traffic ranking of around 280,000 and in comparison CrystalTech is around 23,000. Microsoft.com which is in the top 10 is using ASP.NET and Dell.COM which is in the top 100 is also using ASP.NET Looks like these numbers come from Alexa (which many people think has pretty suspect numbers but...). According to Alexa, Macromedia is ranked about 180 and uses... CFMX! I bet there are quite a few high traffic sites using CFMX. If you look at the top 200 sites, you'll see all manner of technologies... You can't draw any conclusions from that. People can easily write ASP.NET sites that don't scale just like they can in CFML. But you can also build highly-scalable sites in CFML - as Ben pointed out, most of the issues preventing scalability are either bad code or bad configuration (and that's true of all technologies). > There are other factors that one needs to think about when writing an application. Think about the ability to use Threads in .NET. Depending on your application, sitting and processing 10 requests back to back may take 5 minutes but if you had the ability to run the 10 tasks concurrently you may be able to respond back to the customer in 30 seconds. Damon demonstrated Blackstone's ability to run concurrent threads - see his blog. A sequential task that took 20+ seconds could be run by Blackstone in 2-3 seconds using concurrent execution. > You have to realize, .NET isn't just a web based language, it is a Development language *sigh* Tim clearly doesn't realize that .NET isn't a *language* at all... I have this horrible feeling this one will run and run... :) -- Sean A Corfield -- http://www.corfield.org/ Team Fusebox -- http://www.fusebox.org/ Breeze Me! -- http://www.corfield.org/breezeme "If you're not annoying somebody, you're not really alive." -- Margaret Atwood

Just a few comments. > I'm going to bring this one in from the Blackstone Beta thread yesterday > because I think we all need to talk about this. I'm not going to rehash > most of what's been said in that thread. > > ASP.NET is taking market away from CF! WHY? Will Blackstone fix the shift Apparently this doesn't seem matter (if it's true) as all reports from MM indicate that CF sales have been steadily growing since the merger with most sales to new customers. In general the Web Application market is growing - there's plenty of room for multiple vendors to see increases sales. > that's taking place? I say no! CF is still outrageous to purchase. The > licensing for the .NET SDK is free as is the licensing to deploy. I'm not Macromedia simply does not have the resources to compete at this level, it's true.  Microsoft (and a few others) can spend millions developing an application or technology and give it away in hopes of selling tools and OSs. In MM's case CF development requires more.  For example take a look at the pricing between CF Pro and CF Enterprise.  It's a tremendous difference, yeah?  The core of that difference is not at MM however, but rather in the cost of the licensing the third party components contained in the products. MM can't "give it away" without dropping those third party extensions. (This, by the way, is also one reason that BlueDragon CAN give it away - they are still taking a development hit, no doubt, but there are fewer "hard costs" associated) That being said the question is "why buy it?"  Well, I've my reasons, but the real answer is "who cares?" as people are buying it.  They obviously have their reasons and the product gives them something (speed, features, peace of mind or whatever) that they're willing to spend money on. > trying to attack CF here, I'm really not. I'm just trying to wake people > up, because I think we've been lulled to sleep by Blackstone. Blackstone > is not equivalent to .NET in power and performance. Yeah, maybe it's easy As Ben's mentioned the two are really not comparable as one is an application framework and on is an application working on a framework. CF is an application.  Say it with me: "CF is an application". Let's take your scenario to the extreme: .NET steamrolls the universe, Java is crushed under it's wheels like gravel.  Do you know what you happen then? ColdFusion would be moved to a .NET platform!  It's as simple as that.  When the decision to move CF it a standard platform they quickly decided on Java vrx .NET simply because that's the only way they could support their Linux customers. However if market needs dictated they could create CF for .NET summarily. New Atlanta (with far resources that MM) has already done this, by the way. > for us to code our simple CFML, and yeah that <cfdocument> is pretty neat, > but there are a few factors making CF'ers like me change hats, and put on > the .NET one! Will MM ever come up with a true development language like > .NET? Are they going to keep putting more icing on the same cake, while > Microsoft bakes fresh ones? What could you mean here?  .NET isn't a development language.  .NET is a framework that supports multiple development languages (VB and C# to name two).  Are you comparing CF's tag-based development to them? > I'll plug Tim Uzzanti's comments below. I think the man would know > something about the subject, plus he'll tend to be more honest since he's > not on our side of the business. Two things here: 1) Even if CF could never, would never and can never have work with any Fortune 100 companies, that still leaves several million websites that it CAN work with. 2) You have to place his comments in context.  It may be fair to say that CF applications running on the built-in server (JRUN) can't compete but CF applications do not have to run on that server. 3) I respect his opinion, but prefer to see actual proof.  Also it strikes me that this comment seems taken out of context.  As he notes, there is definite confusion on the technologies infrastructure and this comment doesn't illuminate that at all. > Asking someone who maintains and manages 10,000 hosted applications on > Cold Fusion and someone who manages thousands of .NET applications would > probably give you a pretty good opinion of what they see? Is it in my BEST > interest to tell a customer not to use CF, or is it in my best interest to > suggest what might be the best technologies from my experiences on their > requirements? The latter of course.  Do as you think right by your customer.  However this is a cut-and-dry answer.  I've been working in a fortune 50 for nine years that benefits greatly from CF (even when they don't want to admit it) and have worked with dozens of smaller (and a coupla larger) companies that have also benefited greatly. > Someone mentioned ediet.com which has a traffic ranking of around 280,000 > and in comparison CrystalTech is around 23,000. Microsoft.com which is in > the top 10 is using ASP.NET and Dell.COM which is in the top 100 is also > using ASP.NET Any of these sites could be done using CF on a suitable J2EE server.  ANY SITE could legitimately be done by pretty much any enterprise-level tool actually - the differences are in architecture and availability of resources, not in code. Amazon.com, for example doesn't use .NET, neither does Yahoo or Google.  IBM and Sun are definitely J2EE. These kinds of "comparisonless comparison" just don't say anything. > Regarding the back end of Cold Fusion: CFMX is much better than CF5 but > still has many limitations and quirks that we have see and deal with every Are you honestly saying that .NET is "quirkless".  ;^) > day. I am not saying that CF doesn't have the ability to grow with larger > sites because it has features like the ability to cluster machines and the > classes are compiled etc. What I am saying is, if you would like to build Actually CF doesn't have those features.  J2EE has those features. > One last comment that I would also provide to a potential customer who may > want to move from a shared environment to a dedicated environment is that > you will need to purchase a license for CFMX. If this is a large site and > will expand to multiple servers then they will need to purchase a $4,500 > license possibly x 2... Again, this isn't something that affects CT, but > would affect the customer..." I support CrystalTech completely.  I support them because THEY support a ColdFusion site of on mine that (on their rather low powered $26/month account) handles over 600,000 page views in two days. This is more that most sites and is the most I've had to deal with outside an enterprise scenario, but CrystalTech (and CFMX) handles it well. However this is only anecdotal evidence to meet your anecdotal evidence, not proof of anything. Jim Davis

"TIm Uzzanti : Someone mentioned ediet.com which has a traffic ranking of around 280,000 and in comparison CrystalTech is around 23,000. Microsoft.com which is in the top 10 is using ASP.NET and Dell.COM which is in the top 100 is also using ASP.NET.." Forta has already blogged this, but i think it's a useful repost. Speaking of top internet websites, the hottest social networking site out there, Myspace.com is growing like crazy, 4,5 million memebers declared in the last  filing (it's an intermix media property, mix). From a Bambi Francisco article on CBS Marketwatch on december 9 (MySpace value unlocked) : "After all, MySpace has twice as many unique visitors than Friendster had when the social network site was valued... Mark Pincus, who started Tribe Network, a Web site that's positioning itself as a classifieds and local information guide, said MySpace could be worth about $50 million. That's assuming the 3 million unique visitors go to the site 100 times, on average. That would be 300 million page views. " Well, 300 million page views, not so bad, someone can inform Tim Uzzanti that there're  actually busy websites built in CF :-) ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more -----

>so bad, someone can inform Tim Uzzanti that there're  actually busy >websites built in CF :-) You'd think he could just look at his logs... CrystalTech hosts several popular CF sites (very well, I might add). I still wonder at the context of the quote (the queote itself has been published her what, 10 times so far - but no citation or context has been given).  In my experience CrystalTech is pretty pro CF. Jim Davis

Both platforms have their own good and bad issues. I have been using CF since the first versions and since the .NET platform was marketed (and the management board showed twinkeling eyes, hey another Microsoft cashcow) also started using C#. I like both, unfortunately management has problems selling CF with bigger marges, and has none with .NET. When switching to ASP.NET, keep in mind salaries will rise, costs will rise as well as the prices for an ASP.NET product. Even the simpliest smartass can make CF applications, but for C# development you need people with higher educations, the level of programming is just way higher in most cases.   An often used argument for ASP.NET is also the way it forces better code. Due to compilation, syntax errors are history. Ofcourse other errors will stay, but you increase the quality of your code. For PHP this is also able but only in combination with Zend. CF has big plusses on development speed (C# development time is indeed much more, especially bug solving needs alot of time because we experienced strange bugs platform dependent), but I just hope future releases will also look at profiling options, precompiling options (and thus filtering out the syntax errors before even testing), out of the box stability, and better use of multithreading (which is supported by the underlying architecture). I saw someone asking if someone could prove .NET is faster, .. haven't you seen any benchmarks? My diff algorithm (using levensthein) is about 1000x faster in .NET and the CF code has been finetuned into it's most optimal form. CF ofcourse has it's plusses or else I would not use it, but CF cannot match .NET performance, neither can PHP, ASP, or even pure Java. Only C++ and C are quicker, people are even creating 3D games in C#.

Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z z z z z z z *meemeemeemeemee* Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z z z z z z *meemeemeemeemee* ***BUZZZZZZZZZ*** Wha?!? Hnh? OK I'm awake ... Whats going on? ... Oh. Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z Z z z z z z *meemeemeemeemee*

> I saw someone asking if someone could prove .NET is faster, .. haven't > you seen any benchmarks? My diff algorithm (using levensthein) is > about 1000x faster in .NET and the CF code has been finetuned into > it's most optimal form. CF ofcourse has it's plusses or else I would > not use it, but CF cannot match .NET performance, neither can PHP, ASP, > or even pure Java. Only C++ and C are quicker, people are even > creating 3D games in C#. I just want to point out that you simply cannot ever say "technology X is faster than technology Y" without a ton of disclaimers attached.  There are numerous cases in which Java is faster than C, so if you still have the "Java is horrendously slow" notion from 1998, it's time to update your thinking: http://www.idiom.com/~zilla/Computer/javaCbenchmark.html Speed is so relative and of such little importance in the overall scheme of making technology decisions that it certainly wouldn't be a deciding factor unless you have very specific needs.  If the one particular thing you're doing is the core of your application and a particular technology is 10X as fast at this one thing, then sure, use that technology.  Otherwise performance is pretty much a wash between the major web development technologies. Also, in terms of the technology and how it works, there isn't a single technical aspect that would give .NET a speed advantage over J2EE other than the fact that .NET doesn't have to worry about platform independence.  From an architectural standpoint the two platforms are remarkably similar  I would suspect that even in cases where there are speed advantages (if there are any, and if they're even worth worrying about) they would be so negligible as to be immaterial to the discussion unless you're talking about building desktop applications, which isn't the focus of this forum. I guess my point is that saying one technology is faster than another is a pretty ridiculous statement without providing a clear context, and there are so many variables involved (hardware, the code itself, etc., etc., etc.) that it's pretty impossible to ever have a straight-across comparison.  You can write a web app in either CF or .NET that will perform extremely well if you know what you're doing. One does not provide a clear speed advantage over the other in any absolute terms.

I dont think anyone with enough knowledge says Java is slow :) In fact, .NET currently is slower than Java which is pretty funny compared to the wrapper (around win32) .NET actually is, compared to Java which has to do all on his own. (btw.. benches: http://www.shudo.net/jit/perf/). Nobody using CF currently dislikes the language, nor is forced to use CF. I do think the average quality of CF applications is much lower compared to the quality of .NET apps. It is directly related to the learning curve (and principles of OO languages) and companies tend to think they hire real professionals when aiming at .NET as opposed to a CF or PHP. I just think alot of people are scared about the immense .net approach companies are taking nowadays, and therefore people want to push Macromedia to invest in CF as a core product and to use it's marketing on CF and publicly promote their product. Combine that with bad economy and fear of losing your job due to lack of .net knowledge and you have "bingo". I think people only switch from CF if they are forced to by company stategy changes, or general opportunities with CF in their country. CF in my country isn't very popular compared to the US, and alot of people don't even know it exists.

> I dont think anyone with enough knowledge says Java is slow :) In fact, .NET currently is slower than Java which is pretty funny compared to the wrapper (around win32) .NET actually is, compared to Java which has to do all on his own. (btw.. benches: http://www.shudo.net/jit/perf/). Thanx for pulling up benchmarks to back that up. I'd also heard Java was faster than .NET but hadn't seen any evidence. Of course, I'd also heard .NET was faster than Java :) > I just think alot of people are scared about the immense .net approach companies are taking nowadays, and therefore people want to push Macromedia to invest in CF as a core product and to use it's marketing on CF and publicly promote their product. Combine that with bad economy and fear of losing your job due to lack of .net knowledge and you have "bingo". I think this is a very interesting point (and, hey, for once I'm agreeing with Micha!). Java has had huge growth with a lot of support from Sun and IBM and others and, according to several studies, J2EE is still doing much better than .NET (and .NET is *not* taking business away from J2EE as Microsoft had hoped) and yet... and yet people didn't seem to be scared by the growth of Java. Macromedia doesn't have the marketing budget that Microsoft has so you'll never see Superbowl ads for ColdFusion. You can't compare the two companies in that respect. But "fear of losing your job due to lack of .net knowledge" is exactly what Microsoft wants. They want you to believe that if you don't learn .NET, you're dead. There's something very particular about Microsoft that seems to have people worried that technology "X" will take over the world and we'll all be forced to switch to it... yet the facts don't really back that up. -- Sean A Corfield -- http://www.corfield.org/ Team Fusebox -- http://www.fusebox.org/ Breeze Me! -- http://www.corfield.org/breezeme "If you're not annoying somebody, you're not really alive." -- Margaret Atwood

> I'm going to bring this one in from the Blackstone Beta thread yesterday > because I think we all need to talk about this. Why? I thought this was a technical discussion list? If this were a list about, say, Porsches, would it be appropriate to talk about how much better Ferraris are? (Oh, and by the way, as Sean as implied, they're not.) > ASP.NET is taking market away from CF! Do you have any statistics to back this up? I think it's certainly possible, but even if it's true it says little about the comparative value of either CFMX or .NET. > CF is still outrageous to purchase. The licensing for the .NET SDK > is free as is the licensing to deploy. If you think the pricing for CF is outrageous, you should look at the pricing for, well, any enterprise product you can think of. The pricing for CF Pro is quite reasonable for small businesses, and the pricing for CF Enterprise is quite reasonable for large ones. The .NET platform is only free if you purchase Windows, which you seem to be conveniently ignoring. ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more ----- Honestly, I don't know what the hell that paragraph means. If CFML isn't a true development language, I wonder how we've developed all these applications? If you have a problem with "simple CFML", there are plenty of more complex languages for you to use, like C# or Java. Feel free to use those - the rest of us will be happy to continue using CF to develop applications more quickly and easily. As for Microsoft being the one who "bakes fresh" cakes, well, that's sort of the problem. Every couple of years, MS comes along and changes everything for developers. ASP.NET is very nice, and C# is very nice, but there are a lot of pissed-off VB 6 and "classic" ASP guys, who find themselves having to relearn almost everything to continue using MS tools. Those VB 6 guys, after just learning to use .NET and Windows Forms, will have to switch gears again to learn XAML when Longhorn comes out. Here's an interesting take on this problem: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html > Tim Uzzanti: > "If you believe CF can handle the same traffic loads that .NET can > handle, then you are completely confused on the technologies and their > infrastructure. I have no idea if 75% of fortune 100% companies use CF, > I would love to see some documentation for that, but the Fortune 100 > companies ARE NOT the Top 100 sites on the Internet either! I know plenty of large-scale sites using CF. I'd seriously doubt that you can scale ASP.NET up to equal CFMX running on, say, a Solaris 64-processor box. Good luck with that! ASP.NET is inherently limited by Windows. I don't know who Tim Uzzanti is, but I don't see why I should take what he says at face value. My experience says otherwise. Oh, wait. Now, having Googled "Tim Uzzanti", I see he runs a web hosting company. I wonder if he has any incentive in seeing people use .NET rather than CF. He wouldn't have to pay for CF licenses if none of his clients used CF, right? How many large-scale applications has Mr. Uzzanti worked on, exactly? All his servers are Windows servers, aren't they? I wonder if this has anything at all to do with his enthusiasm for .NET - something he's already paid for? > Asking someone who maintains and manages 10,000 hosted applications on > Cold Fusion and someone who manages thousands of .NET applications would > probably give you a pretty good opinion of what they see? Is it in my > BEST interest to tell a customer not to use CF, or is it in my best > interest to suggest what might be the best technologies from my > experiences on their requirements? Hosted applications? What's the specific relevance of talking only about hosted applications? Most big applications run on dedicated servers. > Someone mentioned ediet.com which has a traffic ranking of around > 280,000 and in comparison CrystalTech is around 23,000. Microsoft.com > which is in the top 10 is using ASP.NET and Dell.COM which is in the top > 100 is also using ASP.NET Uh, and this is relevant how again? How many servers do MS and Dell use to keep this working? The fact is, there are huge sites using practically any technology you can think of, and scalability needn't be a problem with CFMX or ASP.NET or J2EE or whatever. > Cold Fusion MX out of the box has a setting to support no more than 10 > simultaneous requests at one time. Macromedia suggestions that you never > exceed 40 and this isn't optimal for a large scale sites. This is a load of hooey. CF uses a queued threading model, which is more efficient than creating threads on demand. Even with large-scale CF applications that are heavily used, you typically get best performance with a pretty small number of threads per processor. If the overall processing time for a thread, including waiting in the queue and actually being processed, is less with a small number of threads per processor, why exactly is this not optimal? > There are other factors that one needs to think about when writing an > application. Think about the ability to use Threads in .NET. Depending > on your application, sitting and processing 10 requests back to back may > take 5 minutes but if you had the ability to run the 10 tasks > concurrently you may be able to respond back to the customer in 30 > seconds. First, asynchronous processing isn't that common in web applications. Second, you can use asynchronous processing in CFMX applications now, by hooking to JMS - it's not easy or trivial, but it can be done. Third, I've heard that Blackstone will provide an easier way to do asynchronous processing. If that's true, why would you complain about Blackstone not providing what you need? > You have to realize, .NET isn't just a web based language, it > is a Development language for desktop and server applications as well. And this makes it better for web development? How exactly does that work? > CrystalTech uses SmarterMail which is built on the .NET and it > outperforms all other mail servers that are built on C and C++. Really? Benchmarks, please? I seriously doubt this. > One last comment that I would also provide to a potential customer who > may want to move from a shared environment to a dedicated environment is > that you will need to purchase a license for CFMX. If this is a large > site and will expand to multiple servers then they will need to purchase > a $4,500 license possibly x 2... Again, this isn't something that > affects CT, but would affect the customer..." One last comment that I would also provide to a potential customer who may want to move from a shared environment to a dedicated environment is that you will need to purchase a license for your operating system, if it's Windows, along with all the other stuff that you typically need on a production box (backup software, Tripwire, management client, etc.) Of course, all that stuff is a tiny fraction of the actual cost of running a production application, and you'll typically spend much more on labor paying programmers to maintain an application, than you will on the actual cost of the platform. Oh, and by the way those costs will probably be much lower with CF, since it's so easy, so you'll pay for your CF license pretty quickly. Dave Watts, CTO, Fig Leaf Software http://www.figleaf.com/ phone: 202-797-5496 fax: 202-797-5444

----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more ----- I believe it's a built-in async.cfc which can be extended to perform asynchronous tasks... I haven't had a chance to look into it yet -- I've been too busy working on the framework recently, adding xml templating and built-in i18n features, but I've heard it's very impressive. s. isaac dealey     954.927.5117 new epoch : isn't it time for a change? add features without fixtures with the onTap open source framework http://www.sys-con.com/story/?storyid=44477&DE=1 http://www.sys-con.com/story/?storyid=45569&DE=1 http://www.fusiontap.com

I wonder if using large numbers of concurrent threads is helping performance regarding web sites/apps in any case. If a server is processing 100 pages that all take the same time to deliver a limited queue would improve performance because the pages that have finished would be delivered in batches of 10 - i.e. they would already be available to the user. With 100 concurrent threads all users would have to wait until all threads have finished working. So unlimited concurrent threads would not always guarantee better performance. Well, this is just what's been spinning in my head - it's late around here so correct me if I'm completely off. Cheers, Philipp -- cielen.com Fressgass / Alte Oper Grosse Bockenheimer Str. 54 60313 Frankfurt am Main Germany tel +49-69-29724620 fax +49-69-29724637 ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more -----

Regarding the relative costs of the "expensive" ColdFusion and the "free" other technologies, I have  a statement from a colleague in another organisation, which I'll be posting separately.  I told him about a site I'd just about finished in ColdFusion and he told me he was amazed.  That I'd done my site in about 70 hours with another 40hours or so to finish it , and he had done a similar site in "Free" PHP - it had taken two of them (part time) two years to build. Let's assume for the sake of argument that all people working on these sites are costing $50/hour either as paid contractors or as employees including on-costs.    I built my site, using "expensive" ColdFusion for $3500 plus a cold fusion server at perhaps $1200 - total $4700. They built their site using "free" PHP for (say) two people at 600 hours each - that's $60,000!! But they got the server software for free. Saved a big bunch there by going with the 'free' one didn't they. .Cheers Mike Kear Windsor, NSW, Australia AFP Webworks http://afpwebworks.com .com,.net,.org domains from AUD$20/Year

I see ColdFusion is powerfull since we are using and seeing the power. Maybe it needs an IDE that improves code/architecture quality and productivity. However it is really expensive for small and medium projects. Our company need to use other technologies for small/medium projects, so we have experience of other technologies. And we can continue to use the others for large projects... I mean there are strategical mistakes with CF prices currently which will probably cause to die of CF in the future. Macromedia should review the market and prices again and again... Murat. ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more -----

For most small to medium projects I'm not sure why you would ever want to buy CF anyway - hosting seems the way to.  Since the development servers are free you can create and publish a CF application for very little money just as you would anything else. In my experience the cost of CF server (at $1200) is insignificant in the scheme of any project where they'll be buying and managing their own servers. Jim Davis ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more -----

There are no professional CF hosting in Turkey :( So we always need to buy CF to host our projects which should be hosted at different geographical locations. We're using similar approach for most projects, because we generally solve all of the problems of the projects (providing hosting, maintenance, security, content contribution solutions for years). Sometimes our customers wants to host the site their own servers which requires a separate ColdFusion license. These conditions force us to shift other technologies, so maybe I cannot see the future of CF properly due to these conditions. Its popularity is different in Turkey. Finally, we have some plans for next year to setup a small CF hosting company in Turkey :) (Any suggestions to setup a CF hosting company are welcome) This will help us to continue with CF. Murat. ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more -----

>There are no professional CF hosting in Turkey :( So we always need to buy >CF to host our projects which should be hosted at different geographical I'm not sure I understand this.  If there's no CF hosting in Turkey, why not create some?  At the very least it would seem that you could host in another country for most apps. >locations. We're using similar approach for most projects, because we >generally solve all of the problems of the projects (providing hosting, >maintenance, security, content contribution solutions for years). Sometimes >our customers wants to host the site their own servers which requires a >separate ColdFusion license. These conditions force us to shift other >technologies, so maybe I cannot see the future of CF properly due to these >conditions. Its popularity is different in Turkey. Again, if you're buying servers already it seems like CF is small cost to incur in comparison - but that depends on the servers you're buying I suppose. Server management costs for a year will dwarf the CF licensing cost - even if you go cheap figure (at least) $50 per hour of sitting in front of that server - that time adds up tremendously. But if you can't afford it (and if the free edition of Blue Dragon isn't applicable) then you'll obviously have to look for different technology.  But in my experience that generally always costs more in the long run for any real application. >Finally, we have some plans for next year to setup a small CF hosting >company in Turkey :) (Any suggestions to setup a CF hosting company are >welcome) This will help us to continue with CF. Sounds good to me.  ;^)  Good luck! Jim Davis

Let's say I have a website I want to cluster on 10 servers.  With CF, that's 10 production licenses at whatever cost you can find CF at.  With .NET, it's zero cost, so there can be some additional cost savings. Also, no matter what way you cut it, CF Enterprise is quite expensive. Also, only development licenses are free.  QA, staging, and test licenses are not with CF, unfortunately. ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more -----

Kwang Suh wrote: > Let's say I have a website I want to cluster on 10 servers.  With CF, that's 10 production licenses at whatever cost you can find CF at.  With .NET, it's zero cost, so there can be some additional cost savings. I'd like to see the total cost break-down for a site that was so large it required 10 clustered servers. I doubt the bottom line would move perceptibly if you switched from CF to a free option. > > Also, no matter what way you cut it, CF Enterprise is quite expensive. > If you're a child at school, a new mountain bike costing $200 is expensive. If you're a student at college, a new car costing $5000 is expensive. If you're a medium sized shipping company, a new truck costing $100,000 is expensive. If you're a multinational shipping company, a new jet costing $10,000,000 is expensive. The numbers may not be spot on, but you get the general idea. Expensive is not an absolute term. It depends on the nature of what you're doing. A multinational shipping company is the only one I'd expect to require 10 clustered CF servers to run their app, and that app would probably be saving them an amount of money that is enormous when compared to the $60,000 one time cost of the CF licenses. > Also, only development licenses are free.  QA, staging, and test licenses are not with CF, unfortunately. Again, whether this is actually expensive to your company depends on the size of your company and what you want to use the app for. ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more -----

I do contract work for a rather large oilfield company and have been doing so for several years.  I really never get the impression that the costs of the CF software itself is an issue at all for anyone here.  CF is the companies defined "standard" for web applications, yet ASPX projects repeatedly show up.  The reason they show up is usually because they could not find people to do the CF work or at least that is the reason stated.  I do know one of them showed up because the managers felt CF was the bottleneck and after spending countless hours having it remade in .NET, it came out really no faster or slower, their bottle neck was just elsewhere. -- Aaron Rouse http://www.happyhacker.com/ ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more -----

----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more ----- Hmm, Macromedia's for one.  Not sure if has ten, but there's a quite a few there. Anandtech was running quite a few as well.  There's William Sonoma.  How about Toys'R'Us before they switched over?  Pottery Barn. > > I doubt the bottom line would move perceptibly if you switched from CF > > to a free option. Proof? ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more ----- Yes, and for web development, CF Enterprise is expensive.  And apparently every country in the world buys and sells in US$. > > A multinational shipping company is the only one I'd expect to require > > 10 clustered CF servers to run their app, and that app would probably > be > saving them an amount of money that is enormous when compared to the > $60,000 one time cost of the CF licenses. "Probably"?  Proof please.  And, apparently Macromedia is a multinational shipping company. ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more ----- Yeah, you're right.  I don't need a QA server.  Thanks for setting me straight on that.

Kwang Suh wrote: ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more ----- I said I'd like to see the total cost break-down for sites like that, not a list of possible candidates. ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more ----- I don't have any. That's why I prefaced my comment with "I doubt". It's my opinion, nothing more. ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more ----- Why do you need CF Enterprise? The price of a Windows 2003 server standard license is the same as a CFMX Pro license. The price of a Windows 2003 Enterprise server license is pretty close to the price of a CFMX Enterprise license and that still limits you to 25 CALs. And apparently every country in the world buys and sells in US$. I'm not sure what you're getting at there. ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more ----- Well, we could bat this one back and forth over the net all day. I don't have any proof that it is true and you don't appear to have any proof that it isn't. I certainly have enough personal experience of working with ColdFusion to know that 10 clustered servers is an exceptionally large site with a *lot* of traffic. One would hope that any company that has that much traffic has a good reason to be paying the costs associated with running and maintaining a site of that size. The multinational shipping company is the only one from the list I gave that I would expect to require that number of clustered servers. I would be surprised if $60,000 in server licenses would be a blip on the radar for a company Macromedia's size too. ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more ----- I didn't say you didn't need a QA server. I said whether it's expensive depends on the size of your company. Is it safe then to assume that you don't use a QA server for .NET development, or are you somehow doing that without paying for a Windows license?

>Is it safe then to assume that you don't use a QA server for .NET >development, or are you somehow doing that without paying for a Windows >license? No, it is not.  My MSDN subscription allows me to run multiple Windows server for non-production purposes.

>Kwang Suh wrote: > >I said I'd like to see the total cost break-down for sites like that, >not a list of possible candidates. You doubted that there were companies that used numbers of web servers.  I have provided you some.  Feel free to ask them.  Sean has already answered for you. >I don't have any. That's why I prefaced my comment with "I doubt". It's >my opinion, nothing more. Oh, ok. >Why do you need CF Enterprise? What my situation is really has no bearing on the market.  Suffice it to say there are customers, even on this list, that use and need it. >The price of a Windows 2003 server standard license is the same as a >CFMX Pro license. The price of a Windows 2003 Enterprise server license >is pretty close to the price of a CFMX Enterprise license and that still >limits you to 25 CALs. I'd say most people run CF on Windows, so they're paying for the Windows licenses on top of CF license. > >And apparently every country in the world buys and sells in US$. > >I'm not sure what you're getting at there. For some of us, US$10K US is a lot of money. > > >Well, we could bat this one back and forth over the net all day. I don't >have any proof that it is true and you don't appear to have any proof >that it isn't. No, I gave you proof for whatever statements I have made.  Feel free to challenge them.

> Hmm, Macromedia's for one.  Not sure if has ten, but there's a quite a few there.  Anandtech was running quite a few as well.  There's William Sonoma.  How about Toys'R'Us before they switched over?  Pottery Barn. I think we have about a dozen webservers (4 CPU I think) and 5 8-CPU app servers and an 8 CPU db server. Apache / CFMX Enterprise / Oracle on Solaris end-to-end with Cisco hardware load balancers, multi-level firewalls etc etc etc. > "Probably"?  Proof please.  And, apparently Macromedia is a multinational shipping company. We're close to a half-a-billion dollar a year company doing business globally. Our website is ranked inside the top 200 most trafficked sites in the world. We have close to fifty distinct ColdFusion applications on macromedia.com and about 40,000+ static HTML pages as well. Our web team - including project managers, designers, producters, programmers, QA etc - is about seventy full-time staff. A significant portion of that revenue comes from our website, through our global online stores, powered by ColdFusion. So, yeah, I guess we are analagous to a "multinational shipping company"... -- Sean A Corfield -- http://www.corfield.org/ Team Fusebox -- http://www.fusebox.org/ Breeze Me! -- http://www.corfield.org/breezeme "If you're not annoying somebody, you're not really alive." -- Margaret Atwood

> Let's say I have a website I want to cluster on 10 servers.  With CF, > that's 10 production licenses at whatever cost you can find CF at.   > With .NET, it's zero cost, so there can be some additional cost > savings. If you're myopic enough to look at that as a valid comparison then you really SHOULD move to .NET. Macromedia is NOT Microsoft.  ColdFusion cannot be free at that level.  Microsoft sells (rather expensive) servers and supporting tools (SQL Server, Exchange, etc) by taking a hit on .NET.  How would MM recoup the massive costs of development for giving away CF? If you think that statement "proves" some point, so be it.  But remember also that this argument is hardly new: the same was said (repeatedly) when ASP was free and CF cost money (and compared to today both sucked). CF not only continued to seel, but thrived.  It continues to thrive. > Also, no matter what way you cut it, CF Enterprise is quite expensive. CF Enterprise is a god-damn, freakin' bargain. For $5,000 (less actually, with partner discounts) I can cap a $70,000 WebSpere installation and saving 10 times that in development costs. For those ten servers (let's assume IBM blades running AIX and WebSphere) the total cost of installation and software runs quickly into the million dollar range.  ColdFusion is an afterthought. This is assuming that any entprise would actually build an application like that... but most won't.  If an application needed 10 clustered application servers you're also probably looking at least 5-10 clustered presentation servers.  Perhaps a few SSL accelerators.  Maybe a Local-Director or Site Selector out in front. The infrastructure costs alone can top 10 million.  Want a Database?  Oracle and its associated infrastructure will probably add at least another 2 million.   Content Managment?  Expect to throw at least a million at Vignette (and it's associated consultants) or a competator. Now throw in what we must assume to be a significant development, testing and management effort.  Double your infrastructure costs at least. So, does CF add to this cost?  Yes!  Does it pay for itself in time savings?   Most happy users will give a resounding yes! The simple fact remains that it's not applicable to every project and to every developer.  There are also projects where the right developer with the wrong tool will cost you more than anything else. But another simple fact remains: CF is still going strong.  The people using it are not all idiots unable to see the great glowing orb of truth over the hill. Jim Davis

I think you're a bit off... I could be wrong, but it's been my impression that when a thread finishes processing, it delivers any undelivered content from the buffer immediately and then grabs up the next incoming http request. So nobody's actually waiting for someone else's thread to finsih, just their own. So in the case of being able to spawn as many threads as you want within a request, your request would just be waiting for whatever threads it spawned and then needed results from to continue. ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more ----- s. isaac dealey     954.927.5117 new epoch : isn't it time for a change? add features without fixtures with the onTap open source framework http://www.sys-con.com/story/?storyid=44477&DE=1 http://www.sys-con.com/story/?storyid=45569&DE=1 http://www.fusiontap.com

> I think you're a bit off... I think that the original poster might be confusing two separate things here: asynchronous calls and thread pooling. CF has been doing thread pooling since it became truly multi-threaded in CF 3 or 4 (I forget which... but I think it was 3). All this means is that a certain number of threads is set aside for handling requests (the default is 10).  When a request comes in it's assigned to a thread from the pool which runs it serially and returns.  If all threads are active the request is queued and will be assigned the first available thread. As an aside the number of threads is only important in relation to your application.  It should be clear that all active threads actually share the resources of the box.  So, for example, if your application is highly CPU-bound (a calculator of some time or a data processer) then it's generally recommended that fewer threads be created.  This means that more requests may have to wait, but that more processor time can be spread amongst the relatively few threads - this ensures that once a request gets a thread it finishes as fast as possible. (Remember that in actual fact the CPU is essentially running in serial - working on a small piece from each thread one after the other, not at the same time.  Since thread management can consume significant resources you want to set your thread count low enough where you're not spending more time managing threads than completing your processing.) By the same token if you're threads may spend a lot of idle time - for example waiting for a web server or a database to respond you can up the number of active threads.  Since they're only waiting for responses they're not consuming significant resources on their own - so why not allow a lot of them to "put in their orders" and wait instead of just a few? Anyway, that's thread pooling.  We've had it forever and so has everything else. But the key point here is that within a thread everything runs in SERIAL - it plods along one after the other.  A CF template can't call a database and then output a timer while it's waiting for a response.  It must make the call, then wait for the DB to respond and then continue. Asynchronous calls (what Isaac was talking about originally) address this problem.  This means simply that a single request can start something, then do something else while the first thing is working. Such processing isn't as necessary in web applications as in client-side applications (for example, think how annoying it would be if you counld't read email at the same time you were fetching new mail?) but can be very useful in certain situations. For example I've got a page that allows the user to fetch a PDF from the server.  The page checks security permissions, writes and entry to a metrics log file, then delivers the PDF. In this case, as it is today, you musty get a response from the database to continue to deliver the PDF.  But the metrics logging isn't critical to the process (in this case at least) so why should it delay the customer request? With an asynchronous call I could "spawn" a new thread to handle the database entry and then immediately deliver the file.  The PDF thread would continue even if the new logging thread failed or was slow for some reason. From a single request I created two distinct, parallel processes that didn't have to be dependent upon one another. I'm not sure how this will be implemented in BlackStone - Isaac's post was the first I'd heard of it.  But it is doable in Java (of course) and it wouldn't be all that hard to create a CFC to kick something like this off in CFMX (several people on this list have already done it I'm sure). If they're going to standardize it in BlackStone, more power to them, but HOW they're going to do it I'm not sure.  Will they only support "orphaned" threads (threads which are created and launched but can't communicate back to the parent thread) or will they support a more complete model. As I said the actual practical uses for this kind of thing in a web application aren't all that common (think of the really good CF or ASP applications you've seen - none of them support this - I may be wrong, but I don't think PHP supports it either).  So I would bet it will pretty simplistic support, not a full thread management model, but that's just a guess. Jim Davis

----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more ----- Go read Damon Cooper's blog - he goes into quite a bit of detail about how this will work and, I believe, gives a code example. -- Sean A Corfield -- http://www.corfield.org/ Team Fusebox -- http://www.fusebox.org/ Breeze Me! -- http://www.corfield.org/breezeme "If you're not annoying somebody, you're not really alive." -- Margaret Atwood

I think I am going to switch to COBOL or PASCAL.. not sure this CF shaahoey will ever take off. ASP.NET? isnt that a website about snakes that are hidden in pretty baskets? Ho hum. Flame wars are so invigorating dont you think? CFMX smells of eldeberries. -- Mark Drew coldfusion and cfeclipse blogged: http://cybersonic.blogspot.com/

In most languages that support threads, not only can threads be started, they can be paused and stopped. Is that possible using the code that Damon has showed?

If you need to do something like that you can easily write it in Java and call the java code from a CFML template. Spike Kwang Suh wrote: > In most languages that support threads, not only can threads be started, they can be paused and stopped. > > Is that possible using the code that Damon has showed?

> If you need to do something like that you can easily write it in Java > > and call the java code from a CFML template. Ah yes, the old "use Java when CF can't do it crutch." I though the whole point of CF was to make it easy for developers to develop.   And everything else is hard/takes longer/is more expensive.  So why do I want to use something hard like Java to do something in CF?

>> Ah yes, the old "use Java when CF can't do it crutch." Huh? So suggesting mixing VB.NET and C# to squeeze more power from a .NET app that is what, a crutch? And what about writing straight Java when JSP can't do enough? Sorry, that argument is just plain silly. No single language or tool does it all, nor should it. That's why you get to mix tools and languages and technologies. >> I though the whole point of CF was to make it easy for >> developers to develop. Correct. But depending on what you are building you may need to step beyond CF. That is not a limitation, it is good design. Why do you think we introduced the ability to extend CF (originally using C/C++) back in CF2 in 1996? >From C, then COM, then Java, then CORBA, then more Java, then SOAP ... do you see a pattern? I have been saying this for years, and I'll keep saying it, the best CF apps are the ones not written purely in CF, and the most important part of CF development is knowing when not to use CF (heck, I wrote a column on this over 5 years ago!). Hummm, why do I suspect that those who complain most about CF not scaling are the ones violating this basic concept? --- Ben > If you need to do something like that you can easily write it in Java > > and call the java code from a CFML template. Ah yes, the old "use Java when CF can't do it crutch." I though the whole point of CF was to make it easy for developers to develop.  And everything else is hard/takes longer/is more expensive.  So why do I want to use something hard like Java to do something in CF?

> Huh? So suggesting mixing VB.NET and C# to squeeze more power from a .NET > app that is what, a crutch? And what about writing straight Java when JSP > can't do enough? I hate to take the other side of this argument, but I think your example is flawed. There's no practical reason to use C# over VB.Net because they are both 1st class .Net languages. In other words, neither language is more powerful than the other. From what I've seen, you could convert a VB.Net app to C# with a search and replace. This is in contrast to the jump from CFML to Java, which is relatively huge. You're going from a dynamic/weakly typed, quasi-markup scripting language to a static/strongly typed, C-style compiled language. And that's not counting the shift from procedural programming to object oriented programming. You simply can't expect most ColdFusion developers to make the jump from ColdFusion to Java. That said, I think that, for most people, the barrier to entry for VB.Net/C# is greater than that for ColdFusion. However, once you've made that jump, the .Net framework provides a tremendous amount of functionality. Nevertheless, as opposed to constructs like <cffile action="upload">, the .Net framework is not necessarily Web friendly. You have to write a lot of implementation code in ASP.Net that you don't have to write in ColdFusion. Ben Rogers http://www.c4.net v.508.240.0051 f.508.240.0057

>>> Ah yes, the old "use Java when CF can't do it crutch." > >Huh? So suggesting mixing VB.NET and C# to squeeze more power from a .NET >app that is what, a crutch? And what about writing straight Java when JSP >can't do enough? By design, a .NET app is meant to use any IL conformate language.  As well, once a .NET class is compiled, it doesn't really matter what language it's been written in - calling that class is the same. JSPs are merely an abstracted Servlet, so I don't see your point with Java. I do think you have chosen to forget just how limited Java and COM integration is with CF.  It's not a panacea.  The createObject function is incredibly limited, and cannot be used for some forms of Java object instantiation. I suppose as well then that there's no good reason for CFHTTP to exist.  Or CFFTP.  I should be using Java for those, right? I don't think it's unreasonable to ask for a thread tag in CF.  You might even make some people happy with that.  Isn't that what you're trying to do?  Fulfill client requirements? Why is a person's request to have threading being used as an example of "best tool for the best job", when you're adding the <cfdocument> tag that spits out PDFs?  There's lots of Java libraries out there that do that.  They're not even that difficult to use. ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more ----- I am perfectly aware of the reason: Because your customers asked for it. > >>From C, then COM, then Java, then CORBA, then more Java, then SOAP ... do >you see a pattern? I have been saying this for years, and I'll keep saying >it, the best CF apps are the ones not written purely in CF, and the most >important part of CF development is knowing when not to use CF (heck, I >wrote a column on this over 5 years ago!). Well then, I must make awesome CF apps, because I never write pure CF apps.   Sometimes I use a database with it!  And COM, and Java, and Web Services... > >Hummm, why do I suspect that those who complain most about CF not scaling >are the ones violating this basic concept? Well, I hope you're not talking about me, because I have defended CF's scalability numerous times, and not just on here.  My last bitch session about CF perfomance ended when CF5 came out.  I'm also a paying customer of the company that pays your bills, and perhaps, if you're going to insinuate something to me, you either say it outright, or provide proof of your statements.  I've gotten four companies I work at to either upgrade to the newest CF version at the time or to get CF in the place, so please spare me the rhetoric.  The last place I worked at, I got them to purchase 2 CF Enterprise licenses and 15 Devnet subs. I have a few web apps deployed right now in CF, and they work hunky dory, thank you very much.

> Ah yes, the old "use Java when CF can't do it crutch." > I though the whole point of CF was to make it easy for developers to develop.  And everything else is hard/takes longer/is more expensive.  So why do I want to use something hard like Java to do something in CF? Actually, I would call it leveraging the full capabilities of the application server. If I can accomplish 99% of my tasks using CFML and 1% using Java while saving myself a substantial amount of development time, that's justification for me. This last post you made was very short-sighted. Rey Bango...

Well, Excuse me! Kwang Suh wrote: ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more ----- Please don't belittle my comments with such an offhand packaged response. I am try to respond in a reasonable and considered manner. The least you could do is return the courtesy. What is it that makes you think that it is a crutch? On the one hand you're berating CFML for it's lack of vision, and on the other you seem to be claiming that it's somehow cheating to use some of the very powerful things that CFMX makes available to you. > > I though the whole point of CF was to make it easy for developers to develop. And everything else is hard/takes longer/is more expensive. CF abstracts the complexity away from the developer. Some applications are more complex than others and although CF does an excellent job for the majority of cases, there are times when it is desirable to work at a lower level than CFML will allow. In those cases it is entirely reasonable to write that functionality in Java and call the java classes from a CFML template. There are quite a few benefits to this not least of which is that CFML stays simple enough to be an entry level language that is easy to debug and maintain, while still being powerful enough to be used in some of the largest and most complex applications around. I would guess that the vast majority of CFML developers will never need to write any java code. CFMX already provides them with all the tools they need to get the job done and in the cases where it doesn't, there are quite a few tools out there written in Java to fill the gaps and no shortage of developers who can write the necessary java code if you can't write it yourself. > So why do I want to use something hard like Java to do something in CF? Because you're pushing the limits of what the application server is designed to do. The application server is designed to meet the needs of the majority of the customers. There will inevitbly be cases where that means that it isn't desirable or possible to implement some functionality in CFML itself. The pay off is that CFML stays approachable and simple to work with. I for one would be horrified if Macromedia decided to expose full thread management in CFML. Thread programming is relatively complex and you can easily tie the server in knots if you aren't careful. The point is that all the power you need is available to CF as long as you are prepared to accept that some things will need to be done in Java. Macromedia try pretty hard to make sure that those things are edge cases and don't impact the majority of their customers. If they didn't ColdFusion would have disappeared a long time ago.

> Please don't belittle my comments with such an offhand packaged > response. Seriously, I'm not belittling you.  I've heard that phrase used so many times for so many situations, it's perhaps an indication to MM that they need to build in some more functionality, especially to keep up with the competition. For instance, there was a post here about how slow string concatenation was in CF.  Someone suggested using Java's StringBuilder class.  Heck, I wouldn't mind if there was a way to create, say, a "superstring" in CF that would take care of that for you.  What's wrong with that? > I am try to respond in a reasonable and considered manner. The least > you > could do is return the courtesy. > > What is it that makes you think that it is a crutch? As I have already stated in my response to Ben, createObject is not a panacea. > On the one hand you're berating CFML for it's lack of vision, and on > the > other you seem to be claiming that it's somehow cheating to use some > of > the very powerful things that CFMX makes available to you. Not everything in Java or COM is usable in CFMX. > I for one would be horrified if Macromedia decided to expose full > thread > management in CFML. Thread programming is relatively complex and you > can > easily tie the server in knots if you aren't careful. Well, so is SQL, but there it is.  There are many ways to kill yourself with CF as it is, and I don't think adding thread capabilities is going to have people up in arms.  I don't want a product that requires mittens on my hands just in case I happen to type some code that'll blow up the server, as it were. > > The point is that all the power you need is available to CF as long as > > you are prepared to accept that some things will need to be done in > Java. Macromedia try pretty hard to make sure that those things are > edge > cases and don't impact the majority of their customers. I don't really consider some of these things edge cases. Poor Will.  All he wanted was a better ColdFusion. > If they didn't ColdFusion would have disappeared a long time ago. Why?

Kwang, I think I know why you've had so many jobs.. You send all the damn day goofing off and bitching. I'll be the first just to come out and say STFU. You're preaching to the converted, you're wasting your time. Now please, for the love of God, drop it and move on. ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more -----

And at this point I'll have to ask that the conversation be moved to CF-OT or CF-Community. Thank you. > Kwang, I think I know why you've had so many jobs.. > You send all the damn day goofing off and bitching. > I'll be the first just to come out and say STFU. > You're preaching to the converted, you're wasting your time. > Now please, for the love of God, drop it and move on.

> Ah yes, the old "use Java when CF can't do it crutch." > > I though the whole point of CF was to make it easy for developers to > develop.  And everything else is hard/takes longer/is more expensive.   > So why do I want to use something hard like Java to do something in > CF? The "whole point of CF" hasn't changed since the Allaire's started the company: 1) To abstract the complexity of common web application tasks making it easy to quickly develop reliable applications. 2) To provide standard's-based support to allow those not-so-common tasks to be completed as well. This has been the basis since version 1.x.  Look at the versions: everything ever added to the language was added to address common complex tasks.  Those tasks that are not so common were made possible through the extensive standards support (COM, CORBA, JAVA, CFXs, JSP, etc). ColdFusion never, ever, not-even-once-when-it-was-drunk, purported to "do everything".  It will do well over 90% of what well over 90% of web application developer's need out of the box.  It won't create desktop applications (like Java or .NET), it won't create OSs or drivers or anything else - just web applications. When complex thread handling becomes a common need for web applications (and it simply isn't) then ColdFusion will make it easier through absctraction.  Until then Coldfusion will make it possible via it's incredible extensibility - and the CF community will make it easy. Jim Davis

I guess they did something terribly wrong there, PHP is a very simple language, you could even compare the learning curve to CF. I build my apps as fast with CF as PHP or ASP (C# other story), so I must guess there have been other issues except the application server used. Micha Schopman Software Engineer Modern Media, Databankweg 12 M, 3821 AL  Amersfoort Tel 033-4535377, Fax 033-4535388 KvK Amersfoort 39081679, Rabo 39.48.05.380

damn i missed all this! coldfusion will never last, ASP ROCKS and it will be the future!! LMFAO! Reply-To: cf-talk@houseoffusion.com Date:  Mon, 13 Dec 2004 09:52:55 +0100 ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more -----

Cmon, step of that pre defined CF idea. It makes a discussion very difficult, when people are rusty in their current web application platform, and do not try to be open minded about other possible ways. The flamewar part is long gone (if there was a flamewar, it was merely a sharp discussion). Say to a PHP engineer CF takes away PHP market or just totally without argument "PHP sucks" and you'll get the same effect, people with high blood pressures, smashing their keyboards, getting all sweaty, just eager proving their right and trying to win the battle with attacking people with accusations instead of arguments ;) It happens on all tech boards. It isn't necessary :) Micha Schopman Project Manager Modern Media, Databankweg 12 M, 3821 AL  Amersfoort Tel 033-4535377, Fax 033-4535388 KvK Amersfoort 39081679, Rabo 39.48.05.380

----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more ----- I'm guessing that they will support being able to get a response from your spawned threads. ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more ----- PERL has supported spawning threads for a while. Not sure if it's been since the beginning or why it was included, but I know it's been available to them. Though I remember hearing that it's also sort of like handing a howitzer to a 10 yr old -- hard to know if the spawned PERL threads will consume the server if you're not the one programming them. s. isaac dealey     954.927.5117 new epoch : isn't it time for a change? add features without fixtures with the onTap open source framework http://www.sys-con.com/story/?storyid=44477&DE=1 http://www.sys-con.com/story/?storyid=45569&DE=1 http://www.fusiontap.com

----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more ----- Yep, I've heard that mentioned in the last few weeks, I just haven't gotten around to actually going and reading it. s. isaac dealey     954.927.5117 new epoch : isn't it time for a change? add features without fixtures with the onTap open source framework http://www.sys-con.com/story/?storyid=44477&DE=1 http://www.sys-con.com/story/?storyid=45569&DE=1 http://www.fusiontap.com

Well his point "ASP.NET is taking market away from CF" is true in this company :) So he has at least one fact :P Ok ok  I'll shut up :P Micha Schopman Project Manager Modern Media, Databankweg 12 M, 3821 AL  Amersfoort Tel 033-4535377, Fax 033-4535388 KvK Amersfoort 39081679, Rabo 39.48.05.380

>> One more thing. Please don't attack me! I'm just the messenger! Ignorance is bliss, my friend.  While you're at it, why not throw a message around claiming that the Democrats are better than Republicans, or espouse the ideological supremacy of the Lutheran church over the Catholics. Flame-mongering is pure evil... please stop it.

> Let's say I have a website I want to cluster on 10 servers.   > With CF, that's 10 production licenses at whatever cost you > can find CF at. With .NET, it's zero cost, so there can be > some additional cost savings. Again, your assumption is that everyone's using Windows. If that's not the case, then you need to factor in the cost of Windows licenses as well as potential server management costs. In addition, you might be able to scale up better with a non-Windows solution (which generally limits you to scaling out rather than up). Finally, the cost of software is typically a small fraction of overall application deployment and maintenance costs anyway. If you save a little bit per programming man-hour, you'll easily pay for whatever you license over a short time. Dave Watts, CTO, Fig Leaf Software http://www.figleaf.com/ phone: 202-797-5496 fax: 202-797-5444

> Again, your assumption is that everyone's using Windows. If that's not the > case, then you need to factor in the cost of Windows licenses as well as > potential server management costs. In addition, you might be able to scale > up better with a non-Windows solution (which generally limits you to scaling > out rather than up). Compare, for example, the cost of an 8-CPU Oracle license for web access with the cost of CF Enterprise on a cluster of six 8-CPU servers. The Oracle license is way more expensive. Consider the costs of creating a fully redundant Oracle master/slave cluster to serve a website. If you're in that sort of business arena, CF isn't expensive at all. WebSphere, WebLogic, Oracle AS et al are all more expensive than CF Enterprise. The integration software packages to integrate those to ERP and CRM systems are $100k per server. > Finally, the cost of software is typically a small fraction of overall > application deployment and maintenance costs anyway. If you save a little > bit per programming man-hour, you'll easily pay for whatever you license > over a short time. Exactly. The sorts of companies who don't blink at the cost of systems like I just described are running projects that have $5-10m budgets and most of it is manpower. -- Sean A Corfield -- http://www.corfield.org/ Team Fusebox -- http://www.fusebox.org/ Breeze Me! -- http://www.corfield.org/breezeme "If you're not annoying somebody, you're not really alive." -- Margaret Atwood

----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more ----- Lest not forget the costs of patch management. MS now releases patches on a monthly schedule. In a large enterprise its a full time job to keep up with pathches that often, so add in the salaries of a few MCSEs, then Software Testers, then a patch management lab. Then again, you could just ignore the patches and allow your servers to continually crash. -Adam

Maybe I'm the only one that feels this way, but I vote to take this topic somewhere else.  Macromedia Forums is usually the best place to have the "I hate ColdFusion" debates. I, personally, stopped using the forums mainly because of these religious wars.  We all know CF rocks, but it's not the be-all-end-all of web app development. Also, I consider this list a great resource for learning and sharing CF, and web, techniques.  There has been nothing beneficial from this thread. It has only served to waste my valuable time when I could be bashing .NET on another mailing list. Thanks M!ke

I agree with you Michael. Rey... ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more -----

I agree whole heartedly!!! --- QUOTE --- Maybe I'm the only one that feels this way, but I vote to take this topic somewhere else.  Macromedia Forums is usually the best place to have the "I hate ColdFusion" debates. --- END QUOTE --- These types of discussions are the reason I quit mailing list.  Please, lets move this to someplace else. Jason L. West, Sr. JWest@wezbiz.com Maybe I'm the only one that feels this way, but I vote to take this topic somewhere else.  Macromedia Forums is usually the best place to have the "I hate ColdFusion" debates. I, personally, stopped using the forums mainly because of these religious wars.  We all know CF rocks, but it's not the be-all-end-all of web app development. Also, I consider this list a great resource for learning and sharing CF, and web, techniques.  There has been nothing beneficial from this thread. It has only served to waste my valuable time when I could be bashing .NET on another mailing list. Thanks M!ke

----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more ----- I think that the problem with some of these is that you risk increasing CF's complexity to the point where you might as well just use Java or ASP.NET. CFML is typeless because HTML forms are typeless. CFML doesn't understand null because it doesn't exist within HTML. I think that for the rest of these things, if you're advanced enough to want to do them you can step outside of CFML and write Java code to do these things. To the degree that these things could be added without sacrificing the simplicity of CFML, I'd certainly agree with you. I'm just not sure if that's possible, in which case I think these features would be detrimental rather than helpful. Dave Watts, CTO, Fig Leaf Software http://www.figleaf.com/ phone: 202-797-5496 fax: 202-797-5444

I agree with Dave, adding the null concept would not allow us to make applications we cannot make now. However adding flash remoting did and webservices did. I'd say MM does an extremely good job of picking what features to  add, and which to outright ignore. -Adam ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more -----

> Feel free to challenge them. And feel free to move this conversation elsewhere...

> I'd say most people run CF on Windows, so they're paying > for the Windows licenses on top of CF license. Perhaps, but if they are, do you really think they're so cost-conscious about the price of CF server licensing if they're willing to pay for Windows licensing without batting an eye? I like Windows as much as the next guy, but when I provision a server with Windows, I'm paying for something that has a free competitor, just like when I buy CF. Unless you're doing something specific with Windows integration - using Active Directory for IIS authentication for example - how do you justify the cost of purchasing Windows? The same arguments here would apply to justifying the cost of purchasing CF, in my opinion. If it makes your job easier, it's typically worth the cost. If not, it isn't. Dave Watts, CTO, Fig Leaf Software http://www.figleaf.com/ phone: 202-797-5496 fax: 202-797-5444

> No, it is not. My MSDN subscription allows me to run > multiple Windows server for non-production purposes. Really? How many concurrent Windows Server 2003 installations can you get from your single MSDN subscription? How many concurrent activations can you get with a single MSDN serial number? My understanding was that MSDN provides per-seat licensing. Dave Watts, CTO, Fig Leaf Software http://www.figleaf.com/ phone: 202-797-5496 fax: 202-797-5444

> Macromedia is NOT Microsoft.  ColdFusion cannot be free at > that level.  Microsoft sells (rather expensive) servers and > supporting tools (SQL Server, Exchange, etc) by taking a hit > on .NET.  How would MM recoup the massive costs of > development for giving away CF? They use the "free" .NET server tools to sell their development software.  Lots of companies do this. > But remember also that this argument is hardly new: the same > was said (repeatedly) when ASP was free and CF cost money > (and compared to today both sucked). .. though ASP sucked more :) -- Damien McKenna - Web Developer - dmckenna@thelimucompany.com The Limu Company - http://www.thelimucompany.com/ - 407-804-1014 "Why are you wearing that stupid man suit?" - Frank

> They use the "free" .NET server tools to sell their > development software.  Lots of companies do this. No, I don't think this is how it works for MS. I strongly suspect that both their "free" server tools and their development tools are made available at prices below their actual production costs in order to sell additional Windows licenses. It's all about the OS for MS. Dave Watts, CTO, Fig Leaf Software http://www.figleaf.com/ phone: 202-797-5496 fax: 202-797-5444

> When .NET came out, and people started to use and understand > it better, the Java community did what every CF person should > be doing: they learned .NET.  And then they deconstructed it. >  And then they asked themselves: > > "What can we take from .NET to make Java better" I don't know about "the community" per se, but as far as I can tell there's been a movement toward simplicity within Java development that has been independent of .NET development. There are reasons that Hibernate and Spring are as popular as they are - they're simple. Dave Watts, CTO, Fig Leaf Software http://www.figleaf.com/ phone: 202-797-5496 fax: 202-797-5444

> Poor Will. All he wanted was a better ColdFusion. There are two problems with this statement. First, what he thinks is better may differ from what others think is better. Second, his original post here didn't really focus on what he wanted CF to do that it doesn't already do. Instead, he posted a shrill warning that .NET is going to eat CF's lunch, or something along those lines. He quoted some guy who said that .NET performs better than CF - which hasn't been verified or disproven in my opinion - but he didn't really list specific shortcomings of CF or suggest improvements to it. He talked about Microsoft "baking new cakes", which isn't especially helpful. If he really wants a better ColdFusion, he'd be better served by specifically listing features that he wants to see, as you did. That doesn't necessarily mean that those features will or should be included, but they'll be discussed, and if enough people ask for them MM will put them in, presumably. Dave Watts, CTO, Fig Leaf Software http://www.figleaf.com/ phone: 202-797-5496 fax: 202-797-5444

the following just plopped into my inbox (after my short rant) i think all the bandwagon jumpers are funny have fun, cfm has always been here & probably will always be here, when .net survives as long as cfm then come back and smack yer lips until then, dont let the door hit ya where the good lord split ya :) =========================================================    -------- DEVSOURCE -------- ========================================================= December 13, 2004 ========================================================= The Java Farmer and the .NET Cowboy Can Be Friends I sometimes wonder if the division between .NET and Java programmers is manufactured by the computer press. Like other journalists, we're always looking for friction -- it does, after all, sell newspapers. Statistics do show that there's a huge overlap, that a high percentage of Java developers use .NET technologies (and vice versa). If you know .NET, it's likely that you also use Java at least some of the time. Yet, while I don't think this is a situation with a lot of hissing and spitting on both sides (at least, outside the vendor headquarters), I do see developers identify themselves primarily with one technology or the other. After all, it's hard to be an expert on everything... Java AND .NET AND all the other technologies you need to do your job well. Mainsoft Corporation recently updated a tool that promises to ease that particular pain. With Visual MainWin, they say, you can do Java development inside the VS.NET environment you already know. Does the product fulfill the promise? John Mueller gives the tool a good swift kick, and shares his results. http://ct.eletters.ziffdavis-announces.com/rd/cts?d=180-101-11-116-2517-1564-0-0-0-1

actually what set me off on "poor wills" original post was him saying that he could build a .net app faster then anyone could in cfm but then he says that its with this great $2500 program (when there are several free cfm ones). And he wasnt comparing apples to apples and if anyone thinks what he said was a valid statement, then ummm, okkkkkkkkkk ppl get mad at me here, usually cause i stick up for cfm & thats fine & u all know what i think of ms (how was that jim ;) ), i just think ur crazy not to see what ms does and i'd be very scared to be thinking whats gunna happen the next time billy gets a brain storm and disses .net. but i know this, i will still be here coding cfm & laughing at ur azz while u go off on how great "sparkle" is or what ever their new "macromedia killer" is this time around. ok and something else, yes how a busy app runs is dependant on how its coded. someone brought up myspace.com, yes a huge traffic site which has continual problems because i dont think they know what they are doing! but then Macromedia.com run just fine, like there isnt anyone else on it. Reply-To: cf-talk@houseoffusion.com Date:  Mon, 13 Dec 2004 17:48:16 -0500 ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more -----

To everyone that posted to this thread, Forta, Corfield, all the CF'ers like me. I'm TIRED of seeing a ton of job listings for ASP.NET and a few for CF!! I'm TIRED of it! What's going on here?? Could someone please explain this phenomenon to me without discussing irrelevant information! If you do nothing else, do this. Go to dice.com, you know the site. Run a search for "coldfusion"! Here are the results: Jobs 1 - 30 of 201 matching your search request. Run a search for "ASP.NET". Here are those results: Jobs 1 - 30 of 1353 matching your search request. Is anyone else getting it other than me??? Stop attacking me and take off your blinders. Watts? Forta? Corfield? Do any of you have an explanation for those search results?? And I don't want to hear "type in Cold Fusion and you'll get more results". You get 206 with that one. Whoop dee doo!! I'm done! Will

Obviously there are more ASP based applications than CF. However that is not to say that CF hasn't been gaining on ASP. I really don't know about Dice, I haven't looked at that site since the late 90s, but It seems to me that there are alot more CF jobs than there were last year, and the year prior. Infact I've been hiring CFers all year, and I'm prodding the upper management to get a couple more. Actually, I know we dont post any of our jobs on Dice or Monster, because the whole recuiter thing is retarded IMHO. Regardless of the number, your skills and experience will land you a job, whether there and 100,000 opening or just 10. I think you should get your MCSD and jump into a highly competive low paying market. -Adam btw. It should be mentioned that my govt org decided to scrap MS and standardize on J2EE and Oracle. We're still running windows though :( ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more -----

Interesting conversation.  Just thought I would throw in this reality check. http://tinyurl.com/323mw  or the full URL: http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2004/03/23/aspnet_overtakes_jsp_and_java_servlets.html > Obviously there are more ASP based applications than CF. However that > is not to say that CF hasn't been gaining on ASP. -- // Jaye Morris | Multimedia - Web Applications Developer // www.jayezero.com // jaye@jayezero.com // jayezero@gmail.com

Hi Jaye, I've seen this graph six months ago. While the headline could be frustrating, look at the red line above them... Ulf Jaye Morris schrieb: ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more -----

Actually, that was my precise point. But thanks. > Hi Jaye, > > I've seen this graph six months ago. While the headline could be > frustrating, look at the red line above them... > > Ulf -- // Jaye Morris | Multimedia - Web Applications Developer // www.jayezero.com // jaye@jayezero.com // jayezero@gmail.com

Great link :) - The great thing about that is CFML can run on the top 3 (reading .net for asp.net) ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more ----- -- ~The cfml plug-in for eclipse~ http://cfeclipse.tigris.org ~open source xslt IDE~ http://treebeard.sourceforge.net ~open source XML database~ http://ashpool.sourceforge.net

wow look at that cobol: Jobs 1 - 30 of 887 matching your search request. c++: Jobs 1 - 30 of 5566 matching your search request. jsp: Jobs 1 - 30 of 1909 matching your search request. java and j2ee: Jobs 1 - 30 of 9341 matching your search request. Um... so perhaps if you are going for numbers you should rethink your alliance. BTW I don't know if you've heard but CFM uses java so you can sharpen / develop your skills while using a RAD language that runs on most major platforms. Thanks for the wake up call though, because I was worried about my career. ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more ----- -- ~The cfml plug-in for eclipse~ http://cfeclipse.tigris.org ~open source xslt IDE~ http://treebeard.sourceforge.net ~open source XML database~ http://ashpool.sourceforge.net

Will, I hear your pain on this specific topic. While I don't necessarily agree with your original rant, your concern over employment opportunities is a valid one. You have to put food on the table and you want to do that with what I am assuming is your favorite tool, ColdFusion. I've made similar comments on here (albeit not disparaging ColdFusion itself) and yes, I too received a nice backlash. It's just part of posting on a list where people truly love the technology. I for one love programming in ColdFusion (going on 6 years now) but I'm also realistic about the tech arena and the fickleness of many companies. After 16 years of doing this, I've gotten used to companies changing direction and products at the drop of a hat. ColdFusion is no exception to this. With that said, it's been stated on numerous occasions by Ben Forta that you have to diversify. If you are solely dependent on CF for your livelihood, you need to retrain yourself. Whether it's Java, .Net, or some open source language you need to take steps to ensure that you have more going for you than CFML. I will continue to use CFML as long as I can because I just love it's simplicity. I'm also smart enough to realize that *IN MY SPECIFIC EMPLOYMENT AREA*, ColdFusion jobs aren't that abundant. So if I plan on continuing to have a successful career, I need to continue to learn. .Net is my chosen route for that, specifically because there are more .Net jobs in my area. So again, I feel your pain man. Don't give up on CFML. Just diversify a little so you don't get blindsided. Rey Bango... ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more -----

That's a very good question, and one I personally spend lots of time looking at. And I can't give you a definitive answer, but I'll make a few observations (and the following are my own thoughts, not necessarily Macromedia's): * CF has never dominated in job postings, even 7-8 years ago when there were not a lot of alternatives. I have copies of similar messages dated in the 90's, I couldn't explain it well then and I can't now either. * CF is not new and sexy, job listings follow technology trends and the hype curve. Remember when not having an MCSE, for example, was critical to IT jobs? Nowadays MCSE is insignificant. ASP.NET is new and hot and so it'll dominate, like Java did a few years ago. This is true of the publishing world too, by the way. Java books are not selling anymore, .NET books are. 3 years ago Java books were the best-sellers. New is sexy, for better or for worse. * One trend I have noticed, and this does affects contract CF work big time, is a movement away from contract work. More and more CF work is being pulled back in house. This is good news (perhaps, see the next point) to those of you with CF jobs, but for those of you who do CF contract work it has gotten tougher, and it'll get worse I think. I am even seeing this in the Federal Government, which in the past relied on contractors heavily. In the past two weeks I have received three messages from Gov agencies looking to employ CF developers to take over former contract work. * Coupled with the reduced demand for contractors, there is also a lot less hiring going on in general. Lots of employed CF developers are telling me that their teams have been cut and they have more work to do. It is job security perhaps, but tough on those seeking jobs. * Plus, while we are selling lots of CF, we are selling lots of that CF to existing shops (additional servers, additional departments, etc.). And while that is indicative of greater CF use it does necessarily translate into more CF jobs. * Furthermore, I know one placement company (one of the biggest) who in principal no longer looks for CF developers. Why? Because as they explained it, they had far too many prospects who were total beginners resulting in failed placements making them look bad. They switched to asking for "2-3 years of Java powered Internet application development" with the understanding that any decent Java developer could learn CF in no time and end up using CF and Java (or at least applying Java disciplines to CF work). As I said, no definitive answer, just lots of anecdotes. Make of them as you see fit. And diversify (thanks Rey). And one last point, several times in this thread broad statements were made claiming that ASP.NET is stealing sales away from ColdFusion. I have no idea how to prove or disprove that one way or another. We have no idea how many ColdFusion developers there are (we guestimate it), and Microsoft can not truly know how many ASP or ASP.NET developers there are either. But what I do know is that that claim flies in the face of ColdFusion sales. I have gotten in trouble before over sharing financial information, Macromedia has a very strict policy when it comes to sharing anything financial (to comply with SEC restrictions I believe). And so unfortunately I cannot give specifics as much as I'd love to, but I will tell you that if you believe that CF sales are plummeting (due to ASP.NET or anything else) you'd be very wrong. I have asked for permission to share some specifics, and if I get that permission I will share. Bottom line, ASP.NET is indeed doing well, but the numbers do not equate to the hypotheses that it is at ColdFusion's expense. --- Ben To everyone that posted to this thread, Forta, Corfield, all the CF'ers like me. I'm TIRED of seeing a ton of job listings for ASP.NET and a few for CF!! I'm TIRED of it! What's going on here?? Could someone please explain this phenomenon to me without discussing irrelevant information! If you do nothing else, do this. Go to dice.com, you know the site. Run a search for "coldfusion"! Here are the results: Jobs 1 - 30 of 201 matching your search request. Run a search for "ASP.NET". Here are those results: Jobs 1 - 30 of 1353 matching your search request. Is anyone else getting it other than me??? Stop attacking me and take off your blinders. Watts? Forta? Corfield? Do any of you have an explanation for those search results?? And I don't want to hear "type in Cold Fusion and you'll get more results". You get 206 with that one. Whoop dee doo!! I'm done! Will

----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more ----- Omigod! I searched for Prolog and there were only 17 jobs listed. Then I searched for LISP and there's only 12 jobs. Then I search for Pascal and there's only 14 jobs. That's a grand total of 43 jobs listed for the languages I started life with. I'd better diversify. I've switched languages a dozen times in my career. Each new language I add opens up new job opportunities for me but it doesn't preclude going back to a language I previously worked with. And as Rob pointed out, there's a lot more Java jobs out there than ASP.NET jobs. Which means CFMX is aligned with the biggest opportunities... > Is anyone else getting it other than me??? Stop attacking me and take off your blinders. Er, Will, you started the attacks by accusing us all of being asleep... -- Sean A Corfield -- http://www.corfield.org/ Team Fusebox -- http://www.fusebox.org/ Breeze Me! -- http://www.corfield.org/breezeme "If you're not annoying somebody, you're not really alive." -- Margaret Atwood

> Is anyone else getting it other than me??? Isn't this a line from Zoolanders?

because the ppl who have the cfm jobs arent so damn wishy washy and dont give it up at the 1st sign of a new toy what u said is like saying that when u look in the newspaper for a job say selling cars that there are a crap load more available for the ford dealerships and very few if any for a lexus dealership, so i guess that makes the ford better? WTFE goodbye will, have fun with all your security patches & gl2u :) why work for someone anyway? work for your self and make more money Reply-To: cf-talk@houseoffusion.com Date:  Mon, 13 Dec 2004 18:29:02 -0400 ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more -----

----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more ----- OK, I'm confused. At the beginning of this thread, your complaint was that .NET had better features and performance than CF. Now, it's that you can't find CF jobs as easily as .NET ones. What exactly is the relationship between the two? Before .NET was available, there were more "classic" ASP jobs than CF jobs too. I'm sure there were more J2EE development jobs than CF jobs as well. What do you want? CF is a niche product! It always has been! And it probably always will be. I would expect that there will always be more J2EE and .NET web development jobs than CF ones. That has damn all to do with the comparative quality of these products, and everything to do with the fact that everyone's heard of .NET and Java, and that no one gets fired for buying from MS or SUN. How exactly can Macromedia remedy this? If they gave their product away, would that be good enough for you? That is, setting aside the fact that they'd have to fire the CF development team after that. Macromedia doesn't make OSs or hardware, so they simply don't have something they can give away to increase sales of something else. Dave Watts, CTO, Fig Leaf Software http://www.figleaf.com/ phone: 202-797-5496 fax: 202-797-5444

I wonder how many of those jobs have listings like this? Experienced web developer / software application programmer utilizing various technologies and skills, including: ColdFusion , HTML, Active Server Pages, IIS, ASP.NET, JavaScript, XML, MS SQL Server, XSLT, VBScript, SQL Programming, C#, Visual Basic, VB.NET. Listing every technology around including both ColdFusion and .Net -------------- Ian Skinner Web Programmer BloodSource www.BloodSource.org Sacramento, CA "C code. C code run. Run code run. Please!" - Cynthia Dunning Confidentiality Notice:  This message including any attachments is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender and delete any copies of this message.

Michael,     Kill this thread!! Confidentiality Notice:  This message including any attachments is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender and delete any copies of this message.

> Michael, > >     Kill this thread!! For what it's worth I thoroughly enjoy threads like this. It's Mike's decision if it's appropriate for this forum, but personally I think it is.  I can see the other side, but I think it is. I stopped responding to the content of the thread when Mike asked... now I'm just responding to those taking such a personal stake in the fact that it exists. As for those that don't like them - why bother with them?  Killfiles are so, so damn easy to use. Jim Davis

There are parts of this thread which are not really useful and it's gotten past the useful point. I've asked before for it to be moved over to the CF-OT or Macromedia-Talk lists. I'd rather not do it myself if I don't have to as it's better for the community to police itself. On the other hand, I've been wanting to redo the list code for auto-thread moving and such. I just need a good reason. :) ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more -----

Michael provides a great service to us all.   I view it as disrespectful for people to continue with a thread that he has requested moved.  If people cannot   police themsleves then kill the thread.  I think he is right, it doesn't belong here.  However, thanks to technical problems with our outsourced spam filter / email servers, then message I sent yesterday didn't get delivered until this morning (thank you spam tank and single fin). > Michael, > >     Kill this thread!! For what it's worth I thoroughly enjoy threads like this. It's Mike's decision if it's appropriate for this forum, but personally I think it is.  I can see the other side, but I think it is. I stopped responding to the content of the thread when Mike asked... now I'm just responding to those taking such a personal stake in the fact that it exists. As for those that don't like them - why bother with them?  Killfiles are so, so damn easy to use. Jim Davis

Cant we all learn to love each other for our differences? MD

> Cant we all learn to love each other for our differences? What fun is that! :-)

group hug ... coffee for everyone .. now GET BACK TO YOUR CODE  ;) ________________________________ Sent: Tue 12/14/2004 6:50 PM To: CF-Talk Subject: Re: CF vs ASP.NET! GET YOUR FRESH POPCORRRRN!! Cant we all learn to love each other for our differences? MD

Silence the dissenters. Hitler practiced that concept well! ***There are only a handful of irrelevant posts in this thread out of 98 (as of now). Silencing unhappy CF'ers who are having to diversify due to the lack of CF jobs, and are willing to subject themselves to ridicule by their peers, is NOT a good thing. Some of you guys seemed to have intentionally posted irrelevant responses just to make the whole thread look that way. I appreciate Ben Forta's candidness and honest opinions on this topic. I'm sorry if I offended people by saying we've been lulled to sleep. Maybe I should've said we're being complacent instead. And Macromedia *might* be too complacent about this whole situation. SOME of Team MM seems to be at least. I think we all need to see the big picture, and shoot higher than we are. Maybe it's .NET sexiness right now, maybe it's not. But even if it is, will it hurt to try and push CF? And figure out EXACTLY why so many are moving to .NET right now? Will

Will...just remember...this is a "technical" forum....so non-tech threads have a limited lifespan here As Mike D said....it can go to CF-Macromedia or CF-OT or heck...even the insane CF-Community Cheers Bryan Stevenson B.Comm. VP & Director of E-Commerce Development Electric Edge Systems Group Inc. phone: 250.480.0642 fax: 250.480.1264 cell: 250.920.8830 e-mail: bryan@electricedgesystems.com web: www.electricedgesystems.com

OK, this is where I take offense. I've asked for this thread to be moved to another forum. I've provided many other forums that it can be moved to. At no time was dissenters silenced. As per the net rule, the first to invoke Hitler loses. That my friend is you. ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more -----

> Silence the dissenters. Hitler practiced that concept well! Yes, well I can certainly see your point with that analogy. Presumably, after the putsch, those who disagree with Team Macromedia will be rounded up for extermination, whether they use .NET or simply want CF to be better. I'm sure this was covered at MAX. > Silencing unhappy CF'ers who are having to diversify due to > the lack of CF jobs, and are willing to subject themselves to > ridicule by their peers, is NOT a good thing. Obviously, you haven't been silenced. However, you open yourself to ridicule by the quality of your arguments. It's one thing to say that you're unhappy because there are more .NET jobs than CF jobs. It's another thing to say that this is because of specific features or lack thereof. Statements like that need proof to be useful. ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more ----- Personally, I wasn't offended until you Godwinized the thread with your absurd Nazi reference. But if you want to change people's minds about a subject, you need to present rational arguments beyond "seeing the big picture" and "shooting higher". So far, your arguments can be condensed to "I'm having trouble finding work" and "Tim so-and-so said .NET is serious programming and CF isn't." Honestly, what kind of response did you expect? Dave Watts, CTO, Fig Leaf Software http://www.figleaf.com/ phone: 202-797-5496 fax: 202-797-5444

I know this thread is supposed to be dead, but I wanted to follow up what Ben had mentioned about CF in Gov. Our branch was formed within the State Dept to consolidate all IT under one roof. We inheritied nasty asp applications that rely heavily in AD and msSQL. (ever try to change a domain on AD?) I don't really think I understood the defenition of 'stovepipe app' until  I started here. They made a major shift away from outsourcing projects to contracting companies towards contracting positions internally. We standardized on J2EE and Oracle. The java guys out numbered us for about 6 months... until we knocked out a dozen enterprise CF apps, while thier entire team is still working on just two. Needless to say, all new applications are developed in CF and all of our older apps are ported to CF (asp, delphi, etc.) Any application deemed mission critical, or need to be integrated with other technologies are done in CF. I been constantly interviewing for CF positions for the past 8-9 months. Of course, we dont post our jobs on dice or monster. Contracting companines usually do thier own recruiting, plus the employee always gets shafted in salary and benefits. As a result the majority of the people we found through those sites didn't last past 2 months & had bad attitudes (tech-arrogance). -Adam

Oh yeah, and for the people in house who converted from classic and .NET to CF. Lol, they wouldnt go back, even for a bump in salary. -Adam ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more -----

will, if u spent as much time going to your local cfug as u do whining u'd have a damn cfm job have u ever gone to a cfug? do u know what a cfug is? funny, last night at ours, the shops that were going .net & cfm have now scaled back to just cfm, hummmmmmmmmmmm and plenty of jobs were passed around, lowest paid $45 an + hour full benefit package if u were there u coulda had your pick, well maybe like i said before, dont let the door hit ya were the good lord split ya Reply-To: cf-talk@houseoffusion.com Date:  Tue, 14 Dec 2004 16:13:53 -0400 ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more -----