ColdFusion and the Web Application Market

This is nothing new. This is quite far from new. This has come up again and again and again, and there's never really been an answer to the problem. ColdFusion is losing ground in the web application market. It could be, as with Adam Reynold's post on the CF-Community list ( http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm/link=m:5:12466:111963) that there's no jobs in the market for freelancers. It could be that Macromedia is dropping sales rather than making deals (as in a case that we have heard directly from a major company). It could just be that there's not enough "push" going on for ColdFusion. This is, and has always been, a problem, and has led to people thinking that Macromedia cares more about Flash than ColdFusion (rightly or wrongly), but the bottom line is still the same. ColdFusion is losing. This trend has to change, and the question is: How? Judith

At the risk of being flip: Chicken Little... The Sky Is Falling... On May 4, 2004, at 8:23 AM, Judith Dinowitz wrote: > ColdFusion is losing ground in the web application market. Regardless of the percentage market share, the number of ColdFusion   websites is increasing: http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2004/03/23/ aspnet_overtakes_jsp_and_java_servlets.html And this only includes *public* websites - we already know that that   ColdFusion is extremely popular for Intranets - which are not covered   by the NetCraft survey. > It could be, as with Adam Reynold's post on the CF-Community list (   > http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm/link=m:5:12466:111963) that   > there's no jobs in the market for freelancers. The market is depressed for *all* skills. I know people in both the MS   and Java worlds that have been out of work for ages! > This trend has to change, and the question is: How? It would probably help if the pillars of the ColdFusion community   stopped spreading Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt... ;) ColdFusion is stronger today than ever - there are at least four   implementations of CFML today, two of which have deployment options on   the J2EE platform. Competition is a good thing, don't you think? IBM   supports and promotes ColdFusion. IBM's support is a good thing, don't   you think? For the first time in ColdFusion's history, there is a   choice of application frameworks - a good thing, don't you think? One of ColdFusion's strengths is its community - be positive,   evangelize and spread the word... tell people why you choose ColdFusion   and convince them what you saw in ColdFusion is a good thing! Sean A Corfield -- http://www.corfield.org/blog/ "If you're not annoying somebody, you're not really alive." -- Margaret Atwood

Being one of those people who is currently looking for other opportunities I can attest that the CF market is not low. There are plenty of opportunities for both full time & contract work. Most of it seems to be in the contract world so if you've got the drive, determination and aptitude to search out and win the contracts you'll be fine. As for being an evangelist I think we all need to do this and we need to point out not only the positives of the CF language etc but what it can do to enhance your company / groups current code base. With all the API's and hooks being offered for JAVA, ASP, COM's etc there are very few areas ColdFusion can't grab onto and work with. Where I work we have a 99.9% JAVA shop. I'm the 0.1% ColdFusion portion but I've been able to time and time again beat back skepticism and prove they need ColdFusion around. I'm faster at getting rich and powerful applications out the door and I can still use their JAVA code & hook into their existing systems. I've even been know to do things that the JAVA people can't do. This has made me an asset over time and allowed me to overcome the JAVA Borg. If you talk to a PHP programmer they are 100% positive about all aspects of their language and community, even though it isn't without it's faults (I'm an old hat at PHP so don't chastise me for saying the truth). But it seems that when I talk to other CF programmers they are always downing CF here and there, it's like the idea's have been beat into them that they are afraid you'll bring it up, so they tell you first. Me I talk like CF is the best thing since the screw off beer bottle cap and it shows in my clients, customers and application users. ColdFusion used to be a thing as in "he uses that CF thing" in my organization, now it's a tool, language, and problem solver. Eric Jones US Army Intelligence Center Fort Huachuca   At the risk of being flip:   Chicken Little... The Sky Is Falling...   On May 4, 2004, at 8:23 AM, Judith Dinowitz wrote:   > ColdFusion is losing ground in the web application market.   Regardless of the percentage market share, the number of ColdFusion     websites is increasing:   http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2004/03/23/   aspnet_overtakes_jsp_and_java_servlets.html   And this only includes *public* websites - we already know that that     ColdFusion is extremely popular for Intranets - which are not covered     by the NetCraft survey.   > It could be, as with Adam Reynold's post on the CF-Community list (     > http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm/link=m:5:12466:111963) that     > there's no jobs in the market for freelancers.   The market is depressed for *all* skills. I know people in both the MS     and Java worlds that have been out of work for ages!   > This trend has to change, and the question is: How?   It would probably help if the pillars of the ColdFusion community     stopped spreading Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt... ;)   ColdFusion is stronger today than ever - there are at least four     implementations of CFML today, two of which have deployment options on     the J2EE platform. Competition is a good thing, don't you think? IBM     supports and promotes ColdFusion. IBM's support is a good thing, don't     you think? For the first time in ColdFusion's history, there is a     choice of application frameworks - a good thing, don't you think?   One of ColdFusion's strengths is its community - be positive,     evangelize and spread the word... tell people why you choose ColdFusion     and convince them what you saw in ColdFusion is a good thing!   Sean A Corfield -- http://www.corfield.org/blog/   "If you're not annoying somebody, you're not really alive."   -- Margaret Atwood

At the risk of responding flip, for many the sky not only is falling, but has already. I know many former CF programmers and CF people whose main work is no longer CF. I know companies who have dropped CF. Maybe things are rosy in England, but in NY it's far from it. As for that netcraft survey, I think you're missing their point. Look at the increase in .Net sites. If this continues than .Net will be beating CF. In the time it took CF to go from 70k to 80k, .Net has gone from 12k to 55k. Your take on that link is factual only if CF is not compared to anything else. Finally, yes we are pillars in the CF community and yes we're sounding a warning bell. If MM doesn't wake up to what's happening then the worse will come to pass. If no warning is sounded then there will be no move to change. If you see other numbers then let us know; we'll publish them. If you see such an upswing in jobs then point it out. As for the community argument, I'm surprised to hear it from you, a Macromedia employee. Macromedia has removed the CF community manager position and replaced it with a general server manager one. We don't get direct email from MM when tech notes come out. We don't get emails letting us know anything that's not really marketing driven or CYA stuff like security. We don't have a MM employee talking to us directly to hear what's going on and we don't have 'representation'. The community is strong because of community members. The community will die because community members leave. ColdFusion will die because the community and the business world will both lose confidence in it. What has MM done recently to boost confidence? And no, I don't personally feel the sky is falling even though I havn't had a full time CF position in NY for a while now. I don't feel the sky is falling when I hear MM lost a big contract because they were unwilling to make a deal on per CPU licensing. I don't feel the sky is falling when I hear of many (MANY) businesses not moving to CFMX because they still don't trust it. I don't, but others do. Someone has to let MM know, even if they don't want to hear what the community is saying. ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more -----

On May 6, 2004, at 4:12 PM, Michael Dinowitz wrote: > At the risk of responding flip, for many the sky not only is falling, > but has >  already. I know many former CF programmers and CF people whose main > work is no >  longer CF. Right, but that's true of pretty much every technology area - lots of people are out of work or have had to change technology or even change careers completely. You're not looking at the big picture. >  As for that netcraft survey, I think you're missing their point. Look > at the >  increase in .Net sites. If this continues than .Net will be beating > CF. No, you're missing the point: CF usage continues to grow because the web application market continues to grow. It matters little whether one technology is growing faster - as long as your chosen technology us growing. A smaller market share of a much bigger market is still "more work". If the NetCraft survey shows the *number* of CF sites was declining, then I'd be worried. >  As for the community argument, I'm surprised to hear it from you, a > Macromedia >  employee. I'm not signed on to this list as a Macromedia employee - I'm signed on as a ColdFusion developer and I speak as a ColdFusion developer. I'll leave the official comments to the official Macromedia spokesfolks like Christian and John and so on. Sean A Corfield -- http://www.corfield.org/blog/ Got Mach II? -- http://www.mach-ii.com/

----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more ----- No, I'm not missing the point. The net is still growing. The stats that you're seeing there show ALL of the technologies growing. It's not zero sum where the growth in one is the shrinkage in another (at least represented in those stats). The small growth for CF and the huge growth for .Net shown in comparison to all the new sites coming up is basically saying that CF is stagnant or at most very sluggish in its growth. ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more ----- You mentioned that a pillar of the CF community should not... So basically, your saying that Judith's post shows her as a pillar of the community even if she did not represent herself as such. Just the same, almost everyone knows your a MM employee and even when your posting from your own server, you still represent them. This is why there was a firestorm about your MM site rebuild on CF-Talk. Your words are for better or worse seen as a reflection of MM. Putting your title as "Director of Architecture in IT at Macromedia" just cements that perception.

On May 6, 2004, at 4:46 PM, Michael Dinowitz wrote: >  No, I'm not missing the point. The net is still growing. The stats > that you're >  seeing there show ALL of the technologies growing. Er, that's what I said... >  This is why there was a firestorm about your >  MM site rebuild on CF-Talk. Huh??? The "MM site rebuild" was launched over a year ago when we rewrote most of our BroadVision applications in ColdFusion (and it was hardly *my* rebuild - that does a terrible disservice to the numerous hard-working engineers on the Macromedia Web Team!). Sean A Corfield -- http://www.corfield.org/blog/ "There are no solutions, only trade-offs." -- Thomas Sowell

Sean, I believe he means your posting of code guidelines, which frankly, was way overblown. We are not children. We understand your guidelines don't count as official MACR policy for how we should code. Just my 2 cents.

Yes, it was overblown but that's exactly my point. It took how long before we got a MM response on it? Everyone can be childish on occasion and programmers are not immune. ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more -----

Sean, I agree with Michael on this, although I can not vouch for the US or UK market I can vouch for the Australian market. I began developing Coldfusion from version 3.0, I was an ASP programmer that came from a perl background. I like the fact that coldfusion is very easy to learn, I like the fact that it is very easy to integrate with but when you look at cost of development then developing in coldfusion is fast and cost effective. But lets be realistic, from a managers point of view if I was to look at the cost of running coldfusion compared to the cost of running ASP, perl, PHP then I am afraid that they win hands down. The fact that php is free is seeing more and more people develop in that language, than any other language. I stopped programming for a few years because of the dot come downfall and moved into retail, but missed the development and excitement of this job. I started looking for Coldfusion work, and here in Australia it is very hard to find work, the jobs for perl and php are all there and .Net is leaping in leaps and bounds in the job market. It is extremely rare to see CF jobs advertised to 100's of ASP and dot net jobs. These are the facts that we see, the decline in jobs means a decline in coldfusion as a presence. I just did a quick search for jobs in Australia Coldfusion 10 - around the country some of these are a month old ASP 1300 - around the country and 5% of these were a month old Perl 300 - around the country php 150 - around the country JSP 200 - around the country I remember the days when CF jobs were around the 500 a month, not 10 a month. Since Macromedia has taken over coldfusion, the job market has declined in this area. If the jobs have declined that means no one is is doing new websites with coldfusion or they are the ones like us who have decided to remain and see how things pan out. But even we are looking at Bluedragon because our clients are saying that the CF License is too expensive compared to ASP, Perl and PHP. How do we live knowing that to survive we have to look at other options than coldfusion? That is reality Sean, and reality is what puts bread and butter on our plates. Not $12,000 (US) software that is marketed at a declining market (btw flex is not something we would look at) and I'll admit that I see another generator here. does anyone remember generator and how it flopped, the idea was right the pricing was not. Flex is the same, overpriced but full of features. Would have been better as a module based piece of software that you decide to add to or not. Anyway that is my rant for the day, now where did that JSP book go. Regards Andrew Scott Technical Consultant NuSphere Pty Ltd Level 2/33 Bank Street South Melbourne, Victoria, 3205 Phone: 03 9686 0485  -  Fax: 03 9699 7976     _____ Sent: Friday, 7 May 2004 9:12 AM To: Macromedia-Talk Subject: Re: ColdFusion and the Web Application Market At the risk of responding flip, for many the sky not only is falling, but has already. I know many former CF programmers and CF people whose main work is no longer CF. I know companies who have dropped CF. Maybe things are rosy in England, but in NY it's far from it. As for that netcraft survey, I think you're missing their point. Look at the increase in .Net sites. If this continues than .Net will be beating CF. In the time it took CF to go from 70k to 80k, .Net has gone from 12k to 55k. Your take on that link is factual only if CF is not compared to anything else. Finally, yes we are pillars in the CF community and yes we're sounding a warning bell. If MM doesn't wake up to what's happening then the worse will come to pass. If no warning is sounded then there will be no move to change. If you see other numbers then let us know; we'll publish them. If you see such an upswing in jobs then point it out. As for the community argument, I'm surprised to hear it from you, a Macromedia employee. Macromedia has removed the CF community manager position and replaced it with a general server manager one. We don't get direct email from MM when tech notes come out. We don't get emails letting us know anything that's not really marketing driven or CYA stuff like security. We don't have a MM employee talking to us directly to hear what's going on and we don't have 'representation'. The community is strong because of community members. The community will die because community members leave. ColdFusion will die because the community and the business world will both lose confidence in it. What has MM done recently to boost confidence? And no, I don't personally feel the sky is falling even though I havn't had a full time CF position in NY for a while now. I don't feel the sky is falling when I hear MM lost a big contract because they were unwilling to make a deal on per CPU licensing. I don't feel the sky is falling when I hear of many (MANY) businesses not moving to CFMX because they still don't trust it. I don't, but others do. Someone has to let MM know, even if they don't want to hear what the community is saying.

On May 6, 2004, at 4:39 PM, Andrew Scott wrote: ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more ----- A good manager should see that CFMX is a more cost effective solution - not only is it faster (and therefore cheaper) to develop solutions in ColdFusion, it is much easier to maintain such solutions. Go look at Ben Forta's article about "Free" and look at what it would really cost to deploy a solution based on ASP (I don't believe he's done a comparison with PHP yet but similar arguments apply). Macromedia's web team uses CF because it's a better (and cheaper) solution than, e.g., JSP. We're capable of deploying both - we have access to CFMX and JRun, after all - but we chose CF. Initially, we were very skeptical, especially since we had a team of Java / C++ developers, but it didn't take long to realize that CF was a really good choice. Admittedly, a lot of people are blinded by the initial cost and getting over that hump is the hard part. The enthusiasm and dedication of the CF community are testament to how good the technology is (once you 'convert' people). Sean A Corfield -- http://www.corfield.org/blog/ "If you're not annoying somebody, you're not really alive." -- Margaret Atwood

> Admittedly, a lot of people are blinded by the initial cost and getting > over that hump is the hard part. The enthusiasm and dedication of the > CF community are testament to how good the technology is (once you > 'convert' people). That is the problem, the initial setup cost. And as I said in my previous post, in Australia the jobs are not there and if the jobs are not there then the people are not using CF anymore. Sean you can rant and rave on how good it is, we are CF developers and we are very well aware of its potential. I don't like to say it but have a look at how .Net has jumped in leaps and bounds there are more people developing in .Net than CF today. The survey you mentioned shows sites that have already been developed and need to be maintained, the lack of new sites being developed means that there will come a time that these people will bite the bullet and redevelop in another language.

> I remember the days when CF jobs were around the 500 a month, not > 10 a month. How many ASP,JSP,PERL and PHP jobs where there at that time? I'm sure they were also much higher than they are today. > Since Macromedia has taken over coldfusion, the job market > has declined in this area. Didn't the merger happen to coincide with the bursting of the dot com bubble?  Everything started to decline then.  Lets keep some perspective here. > If the jobs have declined that means no one is is doing new > websites with coldfusion or they are the ones like us who > have decided to remain and see how things pan out. Or maybe all the venture capital funding ran out and there were a lot of jobs for a lot of sites that were for really bad(un profitable) ideas. Those jobs don't exist anymore, but neither do the sites and their companies. Look past the numbers.  People look back at the 90s with such nostalgia and forget that it was a fluke.  Money was free and customers didn't matter as long as there was VC funding--and there was a lot of that (until it ran out!).  If you want a realistic idea of how things are going, forget everything before 2001 and then compare numbers. Paul Kenney paul@pjk.us 916-212-4359 ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more -----

Paul, I have been developing in CF for now nearly 8 years, coldfusion jobs have always been around and before the dot com... Now do a search for jobs and from a developers point of view if the market is going .Net don't you think the developers are going to be harder and harder to find. That was the point I wanted to bring forward, the less jobs in one area (CF in this case) means that I would look at the market and say, well for me to be competitive I will need to learn .Net, Perl again or PHP. You can see it in the mailing lists here in Australia they are quieter than they have been for many years. Look I hope CF kicks but again, but lets look at reality. Look out the window and see where the market is going, the stats on the net show .Net as the main area of growth and nothing more and nothing less. Regards Andrew Scott Technical Consultant NuSphere Pty Ltd Level 2/33 Bank Street South Melbourne, Victoria, 3205 Phone: 03 9686 0485  -  Fax: 03 9699 7976     _____ Sent: Saturday, 8 May 2004 6:19 AM To: Macromedia-Talk Subject: RE: ColdFusion and the Web Application Market > I remember the days when CF jobs were around the 500 a month, not > 10 a month. How many ASP,JSP,PERL and PHP jobs where there at that time? I'm sure they were also much higher than they are today. > Since Macromedia has taken over coldfusion, the job market > has declined in this area. Didn't the merger happen to coincide with the bursting of the dot com bubble?  Everything started to decline then.  Lets keep some perspective here. > If the jobs have declined that means no one is is doing new > websites with coldfusion or they are the ones like us who > have decided to remain and see how things pan out. Or maybe all the venture capital funding ran out and there were a lot of jobs for a lot of sites that were for really bad(un profitable) ideas. Those jobs don't exist anymore, but neither do the sites and their companies. Look past the numbers.  People look back at the 90s with such nostalgia and forget that it was a fluke.  Money was free and customers didn't matter as long as there was VC funding--and there was a lot of that (until it ran out!).  If you want a realistic idea of how things are going, forget everything before 2001 and then compare numbers. Paul Kenney paul@pjk.us 916-212-4359 ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more -----   _____  

One of my points was to remove the causal relationship between the Macromedia/Allaire purchase and the decline in CF jobs.  I don't think its fair to call MM to task for the failures of the marketplace. As for learning other languages for the web, if you find that CF is a limiting factor in your market, then by all means do learn what is selling. I would say, though, don't do it to leave CF behind.  You can only keep it a viable option if you understand where it fits in the larger picture--next to the other languages out there.  There is a wisdom in the saying, "Know your enemy." Paul Kenney paul@pjk.us 916-212-4359 ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more -----

Very true, But the point is that Sean is saying that CF is holding its ground, it is not holding its ground. I and many other developers are looking at the big picture here, CF is dying fast and until there is a push to retrieve the market share or a look at reducing the cost of CF Server then it will continue to slide. From my point of view we are developing Coldfusion applications for our clients, we host as well so it easy for us to share the code we develop amongst our clients. But for other clients we are moving away from CF, as others are. Seans argument was that CF is a cheap and fast development tool, but what it makes up in its ease it loses in the initial setup costs and this is what our clients don't understand, they are M$ related partners and know that ASP is free and want to remain that way. How do you fight and stay alive when the server software comes free with a web development scripting language. So for us to develop a $500 application and deploy it on a server, then tell them that they need to purchase an A$2045.00 product to run it on does not make sense. For our intranet clients we can charge A$50,000 and absorb the cost in there, but for a small website that the client wants to host makes no sense at all. I have tried to remain faithful to coldfusion, returning last year as a web developer and found it extremely hard to find a coldfusion development role, and looking at the mailing lists the number of people that go into a job and out again and out for months says that the market is not supporting coldfusion as a serious player any more. That is the facts, and that it will remain until macromedia get a campaign to compete again. Regards Andrew Scott Technical Consultant NuSphere Pty Ltd Level 2/33 Bank Street South Melbourne, Victoria, 3205 Phone: 03 9686 0485  -  Fax: 03 9699 7976     _____ Sent: Monday, 10 May 2004 9:05 AM To: Macromedia-Talk Subject: RE: ColdFusion and the Web Application Market One of my points was to remove the causal relationship between the Macromedia/Allaire purchase and the decline in CF jobs.  I don't think its fair to call MM to task for the failures of the marketplace. As for learning other languages for the web, if you find that CF is a limiting factor in your market, then by all means do learn what is selling. I would say, though, don't do it to leave CF behind.  You can only keep it a viable option if you understand where it fits in the larger picture--next to the other languages out there.  There is a wisdom in the saying, "Know your enemy." Paul Kenney paul@pjk.us 916-212-4359

On May 9, 2004, at 4:21 PM, Andrew Scott wrote: >  But the point is that Sean is saying that CF is holding its ground,   > it is >  not holding its ground. Have you actually looked at the NetCraft data? http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2004/03/23/ aspnet_overtakes_jsp_and_java_servlets.html Going from 70k sites to 80k sites in just over a year sounds like   "growing" to me. As I said, the percentage of the market isn't so   important as long as there is growth. By contrast, that graph shows   Lotus Notes holding absolutely steady which says no one is deploying   new sites using it. Saying "CF is dying fast" is, frankly, arrant   nonsense... Also bear in mind that NetCraft doesn't reflect the market where CF is   really strong: Intranets. The NetCraft survey shows growth from 134k sites to 210k sites using CF   or JSP or ASP.NET or Lotus Notes. Note: not ASP - and I'll bet a lot of   the ASP.NET growth is from old ASP sites. Here's some stats from Google: -- search for --   -   -- # hits -- home filetype:aspx -  4,340,000 hits home filetype:cfm  -  7,600,000 hits home filetype:jsp  -  5,000,000 hits home filetype:nsf  -     12,400 hits home filetype:asp  - 10,400,000 hits home filetype:php  -  8,460,000 hits That makes CF look pretty healthy to me. >  How do you fight and stay alive when >  the server software comes free with a web development scripting   > language. By showing that ASP (and ASP.NET) are not really "free" at all - they   don't include much of the functionality that comes free with CF and   they are harder to develop sites with (therefore the initial deployment   cost is higher). There's plenty of information on Macromedia's website   to help and Ben Forta has more stuff on his site too. >  So for us to develop a $500 application and deploy it on a server,   > then tell >  them that they need to purchase an A$2045.00 product to run it on   > does not >  make sense. If you're building small applications for clients that don't already   run a particular technology, that's a different issue. If you're   developing a $500 application, you need to develop it according to the   client's technology requirements. Of course, you can tell them that it   would only cost $500 if you built it in CF but it would cost $1,000 to   build it in ASP / ASP.NET / JSP / PHP and it will be cheaper to enhance   the CF app than the ASP / ASP.NET / JSP / PHP app - assuming you expect   repeat business from that client, it should be pretty easy to show that   buying CFMX would be cost-effective for them. Or, heck, get them New   Atlanta's BlueDragon Server for free if price is such a strong concern   that they won't pay for the Macromedia product. That still gets   ColdFusion in the door in a situation where Macromedia's own product   wouldn't be considered. New Atlanta make a big point of saying that   they are aiming for the market that Macromedia wouldn't get anyway and   a $500 one-off app sounds right up their street, in my opinion. Then,   if you get repeat work, you can get them to look at CFMX as the   'definitive' ColdFusion engine with all that entails... ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more ----- But that is true of *all* technologies to some degree - there are fewer   jobs overall and companies often try to keep the small staff they have   (usually after cutting numerous positions) so you see fewer openings. I   have several friends who've been out of work for a while and their   specialties run the gamut of Java, MS SQL Server, project management   etc. Remember that when you see more job openings in a particular   technology there are usually more applicants and therefore more   competition (so the jobs are harder to get). Three years ago I was approached by head hunters every week offering me   all sorts of roles. Nowadays, I probably only get approached once a   month. Do I think that it's because of the technology I use or my   skillset? No, of course it isn't! It's because the overall market has   calmed back down to how it was pre-boom... I just don't think many of   us remember what it was really like back then Sean A Corfield -- http://www.corfield.org/blog/ "There are no solutions, only trade-offs." -- Thomas Sowell

Sean, Anybody can look at stats, netcraft is not a typically good example here. I don't agree that the more jobs in ASP means less work like you are saying, less jobs in CF means no one is using Coldfusion for SME sites anymore, and that they are slowly migrating over to other technologies. Again the job market shows that the increase in jobs for .Net and asp is increasing, the jobs for Coldfusion have died, how can you defend that coldfusion is increasing when the job market is showing otherwise. I can create another 10 sites here with nothing but a front page, and then claim that the coldfusion market is growing because I have added 10 more sites, but the jobs is the issue not the amount of sites using CF. Jobs is what we developers need, jobs is what feeds us and jobs is where it is at. People are going to learn what is growing in strength, not dying and CF in the SME market is dying. More jobs means more people using the technology, less jobs means well you get the idea. Sean, I know you would like to defend coldfusion to your death because of your position with macromedia. But face reality, we are in the position to see the facts for ourselves, the facts show that people are preferring to cut costs and go with .ASP and .Net for their applications. PHP is gaining ground because of the GPL of code, coldfusion suffers from this because people tend to not pass on open source applications and make money from their code, which I don't blame them for. But in this case this hurts coldfusion because a developer can find anything they want in modules for perl and PHP making the development cycle as short as coldfusion. I had to write a forum application to go into our hosted websites, after looking around for coldfusion written applications I ended up settling to install PHP and grab a PHP forum written application, it had all the features the clients wanted it was free and was able to slot in with no modifications. I couldn't offer them this as a solution in CF because it was too expensive to offer and that Sean is the reality of us developers trying to make money. The cheaper a developer can write the application the more we can earn and survive, the forum is a typical example of good functionality for nothing and CF didn't even come close to the price for the same functionality. And that is the reality of the development process we face. Unless macromedia wants to acknowledge that New Atlanta are onto a winner, its free and cheaper than Coldfusion and is a viable alternative to coldfusion. Which we have seriously looked at as well, and if we have seriously looked at it so have the thousands of others now using Blue Dragon but running cfm pages that google says are coldfusion but are not really coldfusion. Regards Andrew Scott Technical Consultant NuSphere Pty Ltd Level 2/33 Bank Street South Melbourne, Victoria, 3205 Phone: 03 9686 0485  -  Fax: 03 9699 7976  

On May 9, 2004, at 7:46 PM, Andrew Scott wrote: >  Anybody can look at stats, netcraft is not a typically good example > here. True because their sample is small. The Google numbers are likely to be more representative (millions vs a few hundred thousand). >  I don't agree that the more jobs in ASP means less work like you are > saying, You are so completely missing the point! I did *not* say there was "less work" in ASP. I said more job openings mean more competition which usually means more candidates and therefore it's harder to get the jobs. >  Sean, I know you would like to defend coldfusion to your death > because of >  your position with macromedia. Actually, no, I don't just slavishly defend the company products. I would hardly have suggested folks look at New Atlanta's offering if I was just being the company spokesman. I am just a ColdFusion developer like most of y'all out there. >  coldfusion suffers from this because >  people tend to not pass on open source applications Hello? FarCry? OpenXCF? And a number of other SourceForge projects. What about Fusebox - freely developed for the community - and now Mach II? >  The cheaper a developer can write the application the more we can > earn and >  survive By that logic, you'd give away all your applications... Should you sell an application for $100 or $1,000? It depends on the market. If all you're doing is selling one-offs, you should charge *more* not less. If you're doing a lot of repeat business, you can afford to charge less and make more money. >  macromedia wants to acknowledge that New Atlanta are onto a winner, > its free >  and cheaper than Coldfusion and is a viable alternative to coldfusion. As New Atlanta have said, they're in this to make money too. They see the free edition as a loss leader that they hope will win them other business in the low-end of the market. >  so have the thousands of others now using Blue Dragon but running cfm > pages >  that google says are coldfusion but are not really coldfusion. ColdFusion the language? Yes, they are. ColdFusion the 'official' product? Maybe, maybe not. But this all started with "ColdFusion is dying" and I'm saying that's nonsense - the fact that there is worthwhile competition in this market shows that ColdFusion is far from dying. Companies don't enter a dying market if they want to make money. Why do you think New Atlanta are in this business? They're not a charity. And they're not the only alternative CF engines. Someone else commented that ColdFusion probably has one of the most negative communities of any language out there and I'm beginning to see signs of that. PHP for example has a community that is positive and aggressive and go-getting - despite many flaws in their technology. Yet here we see "Macromedia needs to create jobs for us" posts. No company marketed PHP - the community made it successful, the community evangelized and battled to get PHP into companies. Any company listening to you go on about "CF is dying" is hardly going to want to invest in it, are they? Sean A Corfield -- http://www.corfield.org/blog/ "There are no solutions, only trade-offs." -- Thomas Sowell

um that was me. It's a bit one sided of course because I can't be in every community but "most of" the communities I'm involved in (including those here in the cf-* realm) tend to have some very negative conversations that I haven't seen in my many years in the PHP world. Eric Jones Editor Caffeineinfused.com http://www.caffeineinfused.com <http://www.caffeineinfused.com/>; CEO JPEC Services http://www.jpecservices.com <http://www.jpecservices.com/>;   On May 9, 2004, at 7:46 PM, Andrew Scott wrote: >  Anybody can look at stats, netcraft is not a typically good example > here. True because their sample is small. The Google numbers are likely to be more representative (millions vs a few hundred thousand). >  I don't agree that the more jobs in ASP means less work like you are > saying, You are so completely missing the point! I did *not* say there was "less work" in ASP. I said more job openings mean more competition which usually means more candidates and therefore it's harder to get the jobs. >  Sean, I know you would like to defend coldfusion to your death > because of >  your position with macromedia. Actually, no, I don't just slavishly defend the company products. I would hardly have suggested folks look at New Atlanta's offering if I was just being the company spokesman. I am just a ColdFusion developer like most of y'all out there. >  coldfusion suffers from this because >  people tend to not pass on open source applications Hello? FarCry? OpenXCF? And a number of other SourceForge projects. What about Fusebox - freely developed for the community - and now Mach II? >  The cheaper a developer can write the application the more we can > earn and >  survive By that logic, you'd give away all your applications... Should you sell an application for $100 or $1,000? It depends on the market. If all you're doing is selling one-offs, you should charge *more* not less. If you're doing a lot of repeat business, you can afford to charge less and make more money. >  macromedia wants to acknowledge that New Atlanta are onto a winner, > its free >  and cheaper than Coldfusion and is a viable alternative to coldfusion. As New Atlanta have said, they're in this to make money too. They see the free edition as a loss leader that they hope will win them other business in the low-end of the market. >  so have the thousands of others now using Blue Dragon but running cfm > pages >  that google says are coldfusion but are not really coldfusion. ColdFusion the language? Yes, they are. ColdFusion the 'official' product? Maybe, maybe not. But this all started with "ColdFusion is dying" and I'm saying that's nonsense - the fact that there is worthwhile competition in this market shows that ColdFusion is far from dying. Companies don't enter a dying market if they want to make money. Why do you think New Atlanta are in this business? They're not a charity. And they're not the only alternative CF engines. Someone else commented that ColdFusion probably has one of the most negative communities of any language out there and I'm beginning to see signs of that. PHP for example has a community that is positive and aggressive and go-getting - despite many flaws in their technology. Yet here we see "Macromedia needs to create jobs for us" posts. No company marketed PHP - the community made it successful, the community evangelized and battled to get PHP into companies. Any company listening to you go on about "CF is dying" is hardly going to want to invest in it, are they? Sean A Corfield -- http://www.corfield.org/blog/ "There are no solutions, only trade-offs." -- Thomas Sowell   _____  

>  You are so completely missing the point! I did *not* say there was >  "less work" in ASP. I said more job openings mean more competition >  which usually means more candidates and therefore it's harder to get >  the jobs. Which is why I have been hell bent on trying to point out to you, coldfusion jobs in Australian is slim. So all those developers have had to move on to other technologies just to survive. The increase in ASP and .Net jobs in Australia is increasing, and that is what makes it hard for someone like myslef to continue using CF. If there are no jobs for that technology what does that say!! >  Hello? FarCry? OpenXCF? And a number of other SourceForge projects. >  What about Fusebox - freely developed for the community - and now Mach >  II? Ok farcry is there, but what else is out there? Compared to the rest of the langauges, not to mention a little too late! > By that logic, you'd give away all your applications... Should you sell >  an application for $100 or $1,000? It depends on the market. If all >  you're doing is selling one-offs, you should charge *more* not less. If >  you're doing a lot of repeat business, you can afford to charge less >  and make more money. Our code is shared between clients that is how we keep their costs down and are able to devliver quality work to them, what we charge gets us the repeat business.. But still the intial costs are always questioned when setting up a CF server.. >  ColdFusion the language? Yes, they are. ColdFusion the 'official' >  product? Maybe, maybe not. But this all started with "ColdFusion is >  dying" and I'm saying that's nonsense - the fact that there is >  worthwhile competition in this market shows that ColdFusion is far from >  dying. Companies don't enter a dying market if they want to make money. >  Why do you think New Atlanta are in this business? They're not a >  charity. And they're not the only alternative CF engines. New Atlanta are playing on the fact that they are offering what CF should have had in the product, plus they are leveraging of the fact that developers know CF and for deployment it is cheap and means that the developer could potential keep using CF as a langauge not as a software, as their software has enhancements that WILL not work under normal CF servers. >  Someone else commented that ColdFusion probably has one of the most >  negative communities of any language out there and I'm beginning to see >  signs of that. PHP for example has a community that is positive and >  aggressive and go-getting - despite many flaws in their technology. Yet >  here we see "Macromedia needs to create jobs for us" posts. No company >  marketed PHP - the community made it successful, the community >  evangelized and battled to get PHP into companies. Any company >  listening to you go on about "CF is dying" is hardly going to want to >  invest in it, are they? No its not negativety is called passion, it is called being able to survive in a market that is not being supported. The bottom line Sean is that if I was to remain a CF developer I would not be working full time, if I have ASP skills which I do as well as .Net then I have more chances of moving straight into another job. But god forbid that this job ended tomorrow, and I want to remain a CF developer where do I go, the jobs are not there compared to ASP .Net, perl and PHP. That is the point we are trying to point out to you, it is no good saying you are a die hard CF developer. Because the reality is that we have to live and survive in a market that is now being taken over by M$ and other free langauges. From a carrer perspective, I would look at the papers and see where the market is. That would be like me learning russian and using russian as my native language and goiong to an english speaking country, I would not last without knowing the langauge. The point of this is that if there are now Jobs, and no new jobs comming into the market place then the langauge will die. If you're smart look at the company Commodore Business Machines, and the Amiga computer. I was die hard programmer on that platform till almost then end when I switched to the PC as others did and this was doomed becuase they figured we are still growing a little but not enough to pay the bills. In your case Macromedia has more money thta sense on this issue, they can afford to just drop CF and rest on the rest of their products. But how can you not see that if a company is not deciding to use CF anymore, that CF is still growing. If CF is still growing, why is is that .Net jobs are increasing by 800% compared to maybe 1% for CF?

On May 9, 2004, at 10:46 PM, Andrew Scott wrote: >  Sean, I know you would like to defend coldfusion to your death > because of >  your position with macromedia. Sean certainly can (and has) spoken for himself on this issue, but I just want to reiterate that Sean is clearly a developer/engineer/technologist before he is a Macromedia employee, and I have never known him to speak his mind. That said, reading this entire thread, I'm not really convinced either way as to what the state of ColdFusion is relative to the rest of the industry.  It's very difficult to make sense of the current job market after the market we saw in the late 90's.  I'll see if I can uncover some additional information. Christian

On May 10, 2004, at 3:27 PM, Christian Cantrell wrote: >  Sean certainly can (and has) spoken for himself on this issue, but I >  just want to reiterate that Sean is clearly a >  developer/engineer/technologist before he is a Macromedia employee, > and >  I have never known him to speak his mind. Oops, I mean I have never known him NOT to speak his mind.  I guess I shouldn't respond to posts while in meetings. :) Christian

I've been following this thread from the start and even chime in from time to time. Something occurred to me with this whole talk about the CF jobs not being abundant, or the growth being slow etc. I agree with Sean on a lot of points. I see any growth as a good sign, when the numbers drop, or they flat line we need to really worry. As for this whole "no jobs" argument I'm just not sold on the idea. Has anyone taken the time to consider that maybe because ColdFusion is such an easy language to "pick-up" that a lot of companies might be converting their in-house team to CF? I work for the US Army and a fortune 100 company and we did just this both on my site, and internally at the corporate offices. I was 100% PHP and converted to CF in 3 months. Now granted I wasn't the best CF programmer to start with but my skills have grown and I'm now converting other team members from JAVA to CF. We didn't hunt for people to hire, we just looked at our internal staff and the ease of learning CF. Now if we had decided to go to JAVA from some other language or one of the .NET's then I'm pretty sure we would have gone and looked to outside talent since it can't be easily learned in house with the same speed and results as we got from CF. just my nickel thought for the evening. Eric Jones Editor Caffeineinfused.com http://www.caffeineinfused.com CEO JPEC Services http://www.jpecservices.com

Good point.  Are there any stats on retraining of staff on ColdFusion from some other previous language?  How about site coverstions from PHP,ASP,JSP,PERL,C++,COBOL,and FORTRAN to ColdFusion and visa-versa? Paul Kenney paul@pjk.us 916-212-4359 ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more -----

Eric, Although Sean might have some good points he is very biased towards the product. Lets have a look at some good coding practices that shoot his theory down. Fusebox I hate it with a passion, it is over bloated for its functionality but it has an index.cfm for every circuit. So of course if you do a seach on google for index.cfm as sean did with home.cfm you will return 30 times more hits than you think you should. Default.asp is the gateway to ASP and it is used sparingly in all the sites I have seen so that makes Coldfusion 30 times less popular than Sean has indicated. Look don't get me wrong, I have programmed in ASP before moving to CF, as well as perl. And I have been developing applications in CF for over 8 years, and can quickly knock up some good sites, but having said that I can do the same website in either ASP or .Net in the same amount of time, libraries is good for ASP and CF and helps keep development time to a minimum. The point is not whether you are already in a job and converting to CF, because there is more being converted away from CF than being converted to CF. The point is whether CF can survive the new blood comming up, and it can't because there are no jobs for them. This means that this new blood has to go with where the market is, and the market is now .Net. We can talk till the cows come home, or until Macromedia realise that they need to concentrate on increasing the job market. I am not saying that this is their fault, but it hurts to see that when looking for talent you need expereicne and experience comes from developing in the technology. The job market is not here in Australia to support CF has a serious contender, I can't comment on the other countries and I did mention that earlier in a posting. Like I said earlier if I see 10 jobs a month for coldfusion I know that there is a small market for coldfusion. If I see 1200 a month for ASP then I see a career, and that is the facts. Regards Andrew Scott Technical Consultant NuSphere Pty Ltd Level 2/33 Bank Street South Melbourne, Victoria, 3205 Phone: 03 9686 0485  -  Fax: 03 9699 7976  

On May 9, 2004, at 8:45 PM, Andrew Scott wrote: >  Although Sean might have some good points he is very biased towards > the >  product. I am biased toward good technology - I've never been one to be unduly biased toward my employer (or my employer's technology). I got into a lot of trouble for my anti-BroadVision sentiment during the nearly five years I was a senior consultant for that technology - but I stuck to my guns: it was bad technology. I've also been roasted for criticizing C++ when I was still part of the ANSI C++ Standards Committee. Don't accuse me of unfair bias! >  Fusebox I hate it with a passion, it is over bloated for its > functionality >  but it has an index.cfm for every circuit. So of course if you do a > seach on >  google for index.cfm as sean did with home.cfm I didn't search for "home.cfm". Go and read my post again. I searched for "home" on pages that have a filetype of XXX - based on the principle that most sites have navigation links that include 'home' and therefore it was likely to get a lot of hits. I deliberately didn't search for 'index.cfm' or 'default.asp' or any such obvious measure. Sean A Corfield -- http://www.corfield.org/blog/ "If you're not annoying somebody, you're not really alive." -- Margaret Atwood

By showing that ASP (and ASP.NET) are not really "free" at all - they   don't include much of the functionality that comes free with CF and   they are harder to develop sites with (therefore the initial deployment cost is higher).      What technology/functionality does CF have that ASP.Net does not....? As for harder to develop with... perhaps ASP.Old but certainly not .NET-- in my opinion. Documentation is better. Support is better. The community is bigger. The functionality is much more realized, bug free and robust. But anyhow.. that's OT for the thread. My opinion, CFML is still a great option but only one tool of many. If you are a developer concerned with your future then you should spend some time expanding your skill set instead of asking MM to create more jobs for you.

Brian, I have come from the ASP world, I have also programmed in perl and now learning PHP. I don't need to be convinced of how easy it is to develop in CF, what I need convincing of is that my next job will not be CF and that is the reality of this world. The job market is the key to this thread that I have kept alive. If you can not convince a web development house to keep CF, how in the hell is someone learning CF going to keep a CF job... They can't. So developers move on to the flavour at the time, CF isn't it and I for one would like to see the CF jobs increase more. The problem is that we are tendering for projects down here, and a lot of these tenders are from companies who budget is tight. Now if the CF server software puts us $200 over our competitors that would mean we don't use it we will use ASP instead. That is the reality of this thread, If there are no jobs for CF, then there will be no need for a developer to learn CF. Again I have 8 years of CF development, would love to continue with it and it only. But face it, think like that and your dreaming to think that everything else would be fine. Sorry but just being passionate towards the technology that I love is not a crime. Regards Andrew Scott Technical Consultant NuSphere Pty Ltd Level 2/33 Bank Street South Melbourne, Victoria, 3205 Phone: 03 9686 0485  -  Fax: 03 9699 7976  

Oh that's cool man. I'm in total agreeance (sp?) with you. CF is in decline and it is a very good idea to expand your skillset. Its fun learning new stuff too. Brian, I have come from the ASP world, I have also programmed in perl and now learning PHP. I don't need to be convinced of how easy it is to develop in CF, what I need convincing of is that my next job will not be CF and that is the reality of this world. The job market is the key to this thread that I have kept alive. If you can not convince a web development house to keep CF, how in the hell is someone learning CF going to keep a CF job... They can't. So developers move on to the flavour at the time, CF isn't it and I for one would like to see the CF jobs increase more. The problem is that we are tendering for projects down here, and a lot of these tenders are from companies who budget is tight. Now if the CF server software puts us $200 over our competitors that would mean we don't use it we will use ASP instead. That is the reality of this thread, If there are no jobs for CF, then there will be no need for a developer to learn CF. Again I have 8 years of CF development, would love to continue with it and it only. But face it, think like that and your dreaming to think that everything else would be fine. Sorry but just being passionate towards the technology that I love is not a crime. Regards Andrew Scott Technical Consultant NuSphere Pty Ltd Level 2/33 Bank Street South Melbourne, Victoria, 3205 Phone: 03 9686 0485  -  Fax: 03 9699 7976   _____  

>By showing that ASP (and ASP.NET) are not really "free" at all - they   >don't include much of the functionality that comes free with CF and   >they are harder to develop sites with (therefore the initial deployment >cost is higher).   Be very careful with this analogy.  Microsoft hasn't been sitting on the sidelines letting ISVs continue to rake in the moolah on third party componenets. 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 (along with Whidbey, the next generation Visual Studio IDE).  Here is a quick link to what is planned for ASP.NET 2.0: (http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/04/06/default.aspx).   They are beginning to get the hint.  Also look at what's coming down the pipe for Whidbey: http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/default.aspx (currently the May 2004 Edition).  Pretty scary stuff if you ask me.  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... >What technology/functionality does CF have that ASP.Net does not....? As >for harder to develop with... perhaps ASP.Old but certainly not .NET-- >in my opinion. Documentation is better. Support is better. The community >is bigger. The functionality is much more realized, bug free and robust. 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.   One other point that Microsoft has going for them is their Patterns and Practices site. (http://tinyurl.com/3fr29)  This is Microsoft tested, Microsoft approved code that you can use at will in your sites or applications.  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... >But anyhow.. that's OT for the thread. My opinion, CFML is still a great >option but only one tool of many. If you are a developer concerned with >your future then you should spend some time expanding your skill set >instead of asking MM to create more jobs for you. Indeed!  Expand your toolset.  Learn Java.  Learn .NET.  It can only help you down the road. Cheers, Jeff Garza Manager, Phoenix CFUG jeff@hawkandheron.com http://www.azcfug.org

>By showing that ASP (and ASP.NET) are not really "free" at all - they   >don't include much of the functionality that comes free with CF and   >they are harder to develop sites with (therefore the initial deployment   >cost is higher). There's plenty of information on Macromedia's website   >to help and Ben Forta has more stuff on his site too. Since I know CF and ASP.NET both quite well, I can say with full confidence what ASP.NET doesn't have that CF does: 1) FTP (actually, this is .NET in general - there's no FTP classes) 2) CFGRID, CFTREE, etc. (those utterly useless Java applets). I can tell you what ASP.NET has that CF doesn't: 1) Much better implementation of OOP 2) Events 3) Better session management, and different types 4) External process session management 5) Better caching mechanisms 6) Much, much better transaction management 7) Built in configuration file management 8) An IDE that actually belongs in the 21st century, like letting me create a solution that contains multiple projects and doesn't work like molasses like DW is. 9) Serializable objects (actually .NET in general) 10) The whole damn .NET library - including image creation, COM integration that works, asynchronous operation, thread management, etc. 11) Interactive debugging As for Forta's silly little propaganda piece (which actually ashames me, as a CF developer), let's see the CF example that allows me to do a <cftransaction> across two databases.  Oh wait, can't do that.  I can't even do nested transactions.  Sorry, why should I hope and wait for MM to maybe perhaps put even basic features like this in, when heck, I can use Java or .NET _now_ and have them?  It only took you guys _6 years_ to fix CFHTTP, so I'm not holding out for <cftransaction> to work any better than it does now. And by the time ASP.NET 2.0 comes along, CF is in serious trouble: 1) Layout management via Master Pages.  This one feature will make me forever forget about using CF ever again. 2) Login controls 3) Built in, extensible via OO, composite controls that allow for much easier, faster CRUD screen creation 4) An even better IDE, that belongs in the 21st century 5) FTP classes 6) yadda, yadda, yadda. Oh lets not forget the third party support.  Want an O/R Mapper for .NET?   There's lots to choose from.  Want an O/R Mapper for CF?  Zero.  I'd like one from MM, but you guys seem to be busy pushing things like Flash and Breeze. Here's the state of the union: There's no compelling reason for anybody to use CF anymore.  Especially if they want to use OO in their daily life.  Before you give me the standard line about CFCs, remember that CFCs don't have: Interfaces No way to finalize either methods or classes Static methods Overloaded methods Constructors (and really, just how silly is this?  What was going through MM's minds when they didn't bother to put this in?) Oh, and let's not forget the whole silliness with "var", "this", "variables", etc. And of course, there was not even one CFC class beyond the base CFC class offered.  This is akin to Sun offering Java with the "Object" class, and nothing else.  I would have at least liked to have some sort of collection object, so that I don't have to write my own just so that I can have an aggregate of objects (and no, a structure doesn't count). Yeah, you're seeing some growth.  The harsh reality is that competing techs are growing faster.  And therein lies the problem.  There's not enough adoption of CF.  And really, who can blame them?  I can use free stuff in the Java world like Eclipse, Tomcat, JBoss and write awesome web apps.  I can pay $1500 for MSDN, and get VS.NET and lots of server software, and even 15 licenses of Win XP, Windows 2000, etc and write awesome web apps.  I can pay MM $1500 for DevNet, and I get a version of CF that puts a warning on top of every page that breaks all the XML I write and XHTML compliance just because you guys are so paranoid about piracy.   And I can't even run it on a QA server, because your license doesn't allow for it.  Thanks for all the fish.

Sean, I don't really think the sky is falling. I didn't mean to sound that drastic. But I felt that this problem needed to be brought up again, and as we can see, unless you say something publicly, often nothing gets done. This topic has spawned both useful information and direct interest from Macromedia. That is the most important thing. It's not the point of one person not getting a job -- it's the point of the community. I agree that ColdFusion is wonderful and the best thing out there in its realm. But what I think is not the issue. The key is: What do the managers and technology buyers in the corporate world think? If they're choosing Java, .Net and PHP over ColdFusion, then the jobs for ColdFusion just won't be there. We have to make them want to provide the jobs. And that means making them want ColdFusion. And for that to happen, we need us _and_ Macromedia talking about it. To keep alive in this marketplace, ColdFusion needs to be growing, or other technologies will creep into its market share. That was all I was saying. So let's get out there and plug ColdFusion. : ) Judith ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more -----

> Macromedia has removed the CF community manager position and replaced > it with a general server manager one. Michael, can you articulate exactly what you feel Macromedia should bring to the ColdFusion community, and how you feel the community is currently being underserved?  I'm taking a very critical look at Community Management right now, so this would be valuable information. > We don't get direct email from MM when > tech notes come out. Is this something that's important to a lot of people?  Do you think there should be a notification list?  Is posting them to MXNA not enough?  How about opening up a TechNote RSS feed, or what if we just posted the information to a few lists like cf-talk?  This shouldn't be a difficult problem to solve. > We don't get emails letting us know anything that's not > really marketing driven or CYA stuff like security. What do you believe is happening that you don't know about?  What kinds of things can we communicate better? > We don't have a MM employee > talking to us directly to hear what's going on and we don't have > 'representation'. Again, what do you feel like you're missing?  And do you feel like your voices are not being heard inside of Macromedia?  Even though there is not a dedicated ColdFusion Community Manager who spends all his time in forums and reading lists and blogs, the opinions of the ColdFusion community are very definitely communicated inside the company.  Do you feel like you aren't being heard?  On what topics?  Do you feel like the product is going in the wrong direction?  What features? Just looking for some specifics to see what we can do to better serve the ColdFusion community. Christian

Christian, RSS feeds are great but also support an email list subscription for everytime a kb article is added or updated. I KNOW you can do this.  back when I was an Allaire/Macromedia Sales Engineer we had that set up (pre-merger) where all the SE's were notified of any additions/changes to the knowledge base.  I had championed this to get it done and it was a great in-your face notification.  After the merger that capability died for some reason. And NO, don't tie it to only DevNET, there's already enough valueadd to the DevNET program.  Make it Free, throw in advertising at the bottom of the email, whatever, just keep the notification free. Use the same customerbase records you use for the dev exchange and allow the individual to select notifications.  It would be nice to select specific categories, in my case, I'd choose ALL. And Support different delivery methods 1) Instant with title and link to the macromedia site 2) Instant with enclosed rendered pdf of the technote 3) Instant as html 4) Instant as plain text 5) Weekly summation of title and abstract with links to article Regards, Wiggy Macromedia Certified Advanced CFMX Formerly - Senior Sales Engineer - Macromedia Now - Quite happy at a major Illinois Health Care Manufacturer as a Senior Systems Analyst Christian Cantrell <cantrell@macromedia.com> wrote: > Macromedia has removed the CF community manager position and replaced > it with a general server manager one. Michael, can you articulate exactly what you feel Macromedia should bring to the ColdFusion community, and how you feel the community is currently being underserved?  I'm taking a very critical look at Community Management right now, so this would be valuable information. > We don't get direct email from MM when > tech notes come out. Is this something that's important to a lot of people?  Do you think there should be a notification list?  Is posting them to MXNA not enough?  How about opening up a TechNote RSS feed, or what if we just posted the information to a few lists like cf-talk?  This shouldn't be a difficult problem to solve. > We don't get emails letting us know anything that's not > really marketing driven or CYA stuff like security. What do you believe is happening that you don't know about?  What kinds of things can we communicate better? > We don't have a MM employee > talking to us directly to hear what's going on and we don't have > 'representation'. Again, what do you feel like you're missing?  And do you feel like your voices are not being heard inside of Macromedia?  Even though there is not a dedicated ColdFusion Community Manager who spends all his time in forums and reading lists and blogs, the opinions of the ColdFusion community are very definitely communicated inside the company.  Do you feel like you aren't being heard?  On what topics?  Do you feel like the product is going in the wrong direction?  What features? Just looking for some specifics to see what we can do to better serve the ColdFusion community. Christian ---------------------------------

> > Macromedia has removed the CF community manager position and replaced > > it with a general server manager one. > > Michael, can you articulate exactly what you feel Macromedia should > bring to the ColdFusion community, and how you feel the community is > currently being underserved?  I'm taking a very critical look at > Community Management right now, so this would be valuable information. The job of a community manager (in my mind) is to do 3 things. 1. Act as a liaison between the community and the company 2. Provide information to the community that will help grow the community 3. Instill confidence in the community of users, the community of third party providers and the community of customers (pre and post sales). As a liaison, the manager should listen to the concerns of the community and both answer them and voice them to the company. He should talk to people privately as well as publically to hear what is being said and why. If people are griping about something, then it should be at least examined and discussed if not addressed. Talking on the major mailing lists, talking to community managers (user group and non), being in contact with those who help in advancing the community. If the community manager is on the phone and email 80% of his day, then it's perfect as his job is communications. As a provider of information, he should let the community know about things like hot fixes, tech notes, etc. as soon as they are released. Yes, the information is buried somewhere on the MM site, but it's not easily accessable and not everyone visits the site on a regular basis. Cross seeding of information from one location to another to connect the different clusters of the community together is also included in this. If someone comes up with a great technique on CF-Talk, it should be distributed to other lists and sites. You can depend on some random community member to do it, but as the community manager, it would be part of his job. Instilling confidence is the most important job and the one with the biggest return to MM. When there's someone from the company talking to the community on a regular basis, the community 'feels' better. They feel like they're being listened to. They feel like they, and by extension ColdFusion, matters. The community manager has to be part psychologist here to help advance the community's love of the product and their desire to advance it. If the community feels empowered, then they'll go forward and push CF into places where it's not. Back in the days we could call Allaire to get papers or information to help land large contracts and it really helped push CF into companies that were married to MS. The instilling confidence is not limited to the community but extends to those who write products that use, extend or leverage CF. Take Sapien for example. They make a product that goes directly against HS, which is a MM product. MM can ignore them or MM can talk to them and give them information that they can use to advance the product for CF users. Advancing the product will show the community that there are other editors out there and that CF is being taken seriously. This is not just for the community but the employers of the community. How many employers want to dump CF because they don't think it's enough of a standard? Which beings up the next point of confidence building. The community manager should be listening when someone says they have to write a report comparing CF to something else and chime in. Have answers for the report. Have canned responses. Help out not to get someone a job but to get CF into another company or to keep CF in a company. One license lost doesn't seem like a lot, but one here and one there adds up. And that's just the beginning, but those are what I see a community manager doing. MM sees it differently. ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more ----- Well, let's look at the last technote: "ColdFusion MX 6.1: Hot Fix for duplicate, GetHTTPRequestData and DateDiff functions" I'd say that everyone would love to know that this existed. I know that MM has a very strict email policy but this is something that I'd like in my box as soon as it came out. Yes, I could visit the MM site, dig through the various pages till I got to the information, but let's be honest, it takes time both to visit and dig. An RSS feed would be great. A direct email would be better. An 'official' post to the various mailing lists would be good as well, but there are people who aren't on any mailing lists (there are even people after all these years that don't know that CF-Talk exists). I posted up what would help greatly here: http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm/link=m:5:12476:112025 Basically, put all the CF related information from the MM site in one place. This would not only get the info to people faster, but will also foster the feeling that CF 'matters'. As it stands, CF is buried under a ton of other MM products. This does NOT lead people to feel that CF is a prime player at MM. Having coldfusion.com as the center of CF information changes that feeling. It's still a MM product, but it's important enough to have its own site. It's important enough to be seen on it's own. As an aside, what's MXNA? ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more ----- emails. Personal, direct, informative emails. ----- Excess quoted text cut - see Original Post for more ----- The community needs to hear from MM as well as speak to them. That's one of the major points which I posted above.