Guidelines, Frameworks, Endorsements (was: ColdFusion and the Web Application Market

On May 17, 2004, at 12:30 PM, Jeff Garza wrote: > True that ColdFusion includes more functionality that straight ASP or > ASP.NET, but... Watch out for ASP.NET 2.0 that is currently under > development Watch out for Blackstone that is currently under development :) Seriously, I'm just making the point that Macromedia / ColdFusion isn't standing still either. And Ben Forta is quick to point out that Blackstone may well prove to be the most significant release of ColdFusion so far... > Could you imagine being able to write an entier Intranet Application > from a wizard?  With Authentication and extra Web Service > Widgets?  Tough to beat if you ask me... But you can pretty much already do this with a good CMS anyway. Content-based Intranets are easy to build - applications are the hard part and a decent Intranet has a lot of custom application functionality that no wizard will ever be able to build for you. Don't get too swept up in Microsoft's wild claims. > I agree with you. I think that ASP.NET will become the dominant > platform for web development within the next 5 years in corporate > America. Maybe, maybe not. I think ASP.NET will supplant old ASP - that should be a no-brainer. I think use of Java technologies will continue to grow as the market grows (even if ASP.NET grows faster, there will continue to be a huge amount of Java on the web). > One other point that Microsoft has going for them is their Patterns > and Practices site. The Java community has a huge lead on MS in this area but it's certainly nice to see MS adopting better practice. Interestingly, it appears their C# coding guidelines recommend NOT using Hungarian notation because it causes maintenance problems, according to the Philips C# coding guidelines (which are based on the MS guidelines - I haven't had time to follow up on the MS source document yet). That's something I've been arguing for years and when folks countered my arguments, they usually pointed at past MS practice. I have to admit that C# looks good (although it does some things I really don't like - more on that on my blog in due course) and what I've seen of their coding guidelines quoted in the Philips document is much more in line with what I would consider best practice than what they used to preach... > Macromedia needs to have something like this as well.  I recall the > great debate over whether or not Macromedia was endorsing the use of > Mach-II because they used it on their site...  I found it silly that > they couldn't, as a company, come out and say that yes this works and > this is why... It's definitely a tricky area! I published my team's CFMX coding guidelines on my own website. Then we started adopting Mach II and produced the Mach II Development Guide which also went up on my site. But folks in the community wanted a way to give feedback easily on the documents and someone suggested I use LiveDocs... sounded reasonable so I checked with the documentation team in-house and they had no objections so I moved the two guideline docs to LiveDocs. While most folks were pleased to see the guidelines and be able to give feedback, some people complained that Macromedia should *not* be laying down best practices - something I found rather strange. Then some folks 'noticed' that we were using Mach II on macromedia.com (why would we have written the guidelines otherwise?) and suddenly there was a huge fuss about Macromedia 'endorsing' one framework over all others... Frankly, I was puzzled - on one hand folks were asking Macromedia to provide some guidance and make some recommendations and on the other hand Macromedia was being condemned for picking a framework :( And all this after I'd gone to last year's Fusebox Conference and asked the Fusebox community specifically to submit articles on that framework (thanx go to Kay Smoljak for the sole article submitted so far!). Now I'm touring user groups talking about Mach II and its use at Macromedia - and I'll be at CFUN-04 this year with that talk. What do folks really want from Macromedia? Do they want 'official' coding guidelines? Do they want an 'official' framework recommendation? I make it pretty clear in my Mach II talk that it isn't the right choice for everyone - there are folks out there who are against any sort of framework and they won't be pleased if Macromedia endorses any framework. It seems to me that Macromedia is damned if it does and damned if it doesn't. I'd love to hear some discussion on this topic... > Indeed!  Expand your toolset.  Learn Java.  Learn .NET.  It can only > help you down the road. Yes, that's good advice - I've always recommended being multi-lingual... Sean A Corfield -- http://www.corfield.org/blog/ "There are no solutions, only trade-offs." -- Thomas Sowell