Yes CF is still the fastest. Up to about 6 months ago should be the primary goal of web any application developer, according to MM. They stressed how cost effective it is to speed up development and use less programmers. They told us to shrink our web development teams, develop on CF, and web applications will be done cheaper and faster. Cost effective. The boss will be happy. Yaddy yadda yadda. Call me a fool, but I bought into it, and I still believe it.
The philosophy of the company has done an about face. Now it's about investing huge budgets & large teams. This contrast couldn't really be more extreme. Basically, Macromedia taught me to oppose the notion of RIA for these reasons. Now they want me to change my mind. It just seems like ill timing to get us to spend more when the economy is in a slump. Now more than ever is it important to cut the fat and not be as frugal as we were in the late 90s. I'm speaking from a few years of meeting a lot of developers and seeing how companies have adopted Cold Fusion. The large majority of companies I've seen using CF have development teams under 5 people. Additionally it's rare that an entire department is working one sole application. So most teams are very small, if not lone. As I said, it's a failure to me. If I launched a large corporate site that was this unresponsive, neglected the _large_ majority of users without broadband, and didn't display properly across browsers... it's a failure. But I'm one of those people who like to beta test _before_ making it live. I think the 'beta' label is just a reaction to the negative feedback. You are right... it is just a website. But it's a website for a company that claims to be the end all resource for building websites, so of course the bar is much higher than say http://www.realultimatepower.net/. I'm also not talking about the website, I'm talking about MM, RIA's and the future of the web. Adam Wayne Lehman Web Systems Developer Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Distance Education Division -----Original Message----- From: Chris Kief [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, March 06, 2003 3:12 PM To: CF-Talk Subject: RE: The New Macromedia Website >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. How has this really changed though?? CF is *still* the fastest way to get web apps out the door. >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. I don't agree with this. I don't hear MM replacing one statement with another. Rather, the RIA initiative is an *additional* statement. >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. If a prerequisite to all software development was the ability to produce said software with one developer, we would probably be in a sad state of affairs at the moment. That being said, you *can* still produce CF web apps with one developer. But if you would like to tackle larger, more complex projects such as RIAs, your associated development time and costs will have to change accordingly. If that wasn't the case, we'd all be building Amazon.com for $200. >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. I think it's a little too early to label the site a failure. Come on, it's only been 1 day. Like any project, there will be bugs and other issues to iron out. But I'm glad to see MM taking this step and pushing the limits of what's possible on the web. It's only going to make my job easier in the future as they will find and address problems with the development and deployment of RIAs. As for the broadband issue, that is a strategic decision by MM based on, I would guess, massive amounts of data gathered from users of their site. Obviously they felt that the majority of their customer base could handle the requirements of the new website and moved ahead accordingly. >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. "boiling water"..."another bullet in the list of curveballs"...come on...please...it is *just* a website after all ;) chris ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| 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 Get the mailserver that powers this list at http://www.coolfusion.com Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.4
