Jaye, You made some great points, but I'd like to elaborate on the culture shock. This isn't culture shock for new technology, as web developers, the only technology that can give us culture shock, is _old_ technology, or the lack of change. The shock is the complete turn of stance by MM.
Macromedia has marketed Cold Fusion as the fastest and easiest way to create dynamic web based applications. That's been the core of CF with the philosophy of getting applications out the door fast, at a very low cost. What's happens now, is that MM is saying the _complete_ opposite. They are contradicting everything they have said, which quite frankly breeds the mistrust I see popping up rapidly in the last few months. In my research an RIA as defined by MM will cost 3-4 times more than a common cold fusion application. Additionally it will take 2-3 times longer in development. I believe it was Kevin Towes who said at devCon that a successful RIA needs a team of at least 12 people, a drastic contrast to the lone CF developer ideology MM has endorsed in selling points. Now, I totally agree that RIAs are the next generation. However, I think Macromedia is getting to bold for its own good. As a web developer, if I launched MM.com, I would feel it was a failure. Not only does this RIA take more time, money and people to produce.... but now it has to be 'tweaked' just to get it to perform at a reasonable speed. Furthermore, I think MM is still jumping the gun with broadband. I could never implement something like this because I serve a worldwide audience. Only a small percentage of people in the US have broadband, in countries like Africa and Asia, the word broadband doesn't even exist. Fact of the matter is that instead of slowly warming the developer community to these ideas, MM has thrown boiling water on them. This backlash is a predictable outcome they should have seen coming. Unfortunately this is just another bullet in the list of curveballs MM has thrown its developers. To be honest. I don't trust MM at all anymore, which is very daunting being that I have only been listening to them since they bought Allaire. Adam Wayne Lehman Web Systems Developer Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Distance Education Division -----Original Message----- From: Jaye Morris - jayeZERO.com [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, March 05, 2003 10:41 PM To: CF-Talk Subject: RE: The New Macromedia Website Wow. Talk about culture shock. There has been quite a bit said today about the new (beta) version of the layout. I have checked out the site and it was well done. Personally I was impressed with some of the backend action going on. Pretty tight indeed. Try out the "Your account section". I assume they are using remoting on steroids. I am intrigued as hell at the entire gig and the richness of the environment. This is showing a great many possibilities, for all of us. Related to "the site seems slow (etc.)", this is a beta. Code gets tweaked, enhanced etc. All those people on the various soap boxes.. Have you not had to go back and tweak your own code, in order to make it faster and more responsive? Have you yourselves possibly had to work out some unintended glitches and gotcha's? Sometime I like to go back and study my code (and UI) and see how I could do it better. Tony Weeg, who is our lead developer many times will say "hey what about this." and in the end show me different (often better ways of doing something) in the end making me a better programmer. MM staff members are developers to. Instead of having such a strong knee jerk reaction, perhaps we should help them beta test this thing and offer "CONSTRUCTIVE DIRECTION". Even experts can learn new methods. They seem to put themselves out there, listen and where possible, integrate information from our massively strong. In closing I will leave you with this: 1. People have a tough time with change (if for not other reason than they might have to fix their favorites). BTW in psychology this is called a "paradigm shift" (e.g. learning to see things in a new way). 2. Macromedia put their money where their mouth is. Here's a realty check for you. How many times have you been to one of the elite prophets of flash (including the book writers) and there is no flash on their site? (gawd.. Now that is a true contradiction. Highly encourage something and then not use it or demonstrate it yourself (in terms of practical application use). What does that tell our client when we are out there promoting RIA? 3. CFMX and FlashMX (combined with remoting) can carry this process to the next level. I encourage myself and you to be there (and I am sure you will). Peace, Love and Soul Train!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Good coding, my friends. -//- Jaye Morris - Multimedia Developer -//- [EMAIL PROTECTED] - www.navtrak.net -//- [EMAIL PROTECTED] - www.jayezero.com ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Archives: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/index.cfm?forumid=4 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/index.cfm?method=subscribe&forumid=4 FAQ: http://www.thenetprofits.co.uk/coldfusion/faq Signup for the Fusion Authority news alert and keep up with the latest news in ColdFusion and related topics. http://www.fusionauthority.com/signup.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.4
