Jaye I think we're starting to argue semantics and not the facts. I agree with the trip methodology, but when I got in the car, macromedia told me the destination was rapid development and lower costs. The new altered path is u-turn, because now we are heading towards longer development and higher costs.
By all means, I am not arguing that Allaire didn't get us to that destination. Cold Fusion delivered what it promised. This is why I am a firm believer in the rapid development philosophy. But now that we've gotten there, why are we turning around and going back to where we started. If this is the sine curve of web development, then maybe I get off here, and be ahead of the game when you guys turn around again. Jaye. I fully understand this technology. I know what's going on under the hood. Yes there is some bandwidth saving aspect of flash apps, but my end user doesn't care. If it takes 30 seconds to load the page, they are gone. As a capitalist you are assuming that if you invest more, you will get a higher return. Even though there isn't much evidence to prove this. If amazon.com decided to go into an RIA, they would be negating the millions the spent to build their existing site, not too mention spending three times their original investment. Just because it's in flash, how is it going to sell more books? The fact that RIA means higher quality is still unproven. MM can give you the Starbucks lecture about how people will pay for 'experience', which I think holds true in brick and mortar. I think it's a pipe dream in the world of the web. If Barnes and Noble has a better price on Harry Potter, people will buy it there, regardless of the online buying 'experience'. If an RIA is going to cost me 3X as much, then I want to see 4X the return or it wasn't worth it. I don't think changing the media of the site will impact returns to that extent. For the last few years I've been telling upper management that I can cut costs, raise quality, and employ less developers. Cold Fusion is the solution for us. Am I supposed to go to them and say, I need 3 times the budget per project and quadruple my department size (4x my yearly operating costs) I have no evidence that this will bring us any return on our investment or will our application be higher quality. They will in fact be slower to load though, and probably won't be accessible to everyone. Oh yeah, please disregard everything I've told you in the past few years, about saving money and faster development. I've changed my mind. (Seriously, if I didn't write this, I'd think it was from a Dilbert comic) A year is not enough time to completely contrast a philosophy. Look, I'm just trying to shed light on this shock you are attributing to 'new technology'. I'm not making these facts up; I'm trying to logically explain them. In August of last year anyone talking about emerging MS technology on this list would get flamed and lambasted. I can't tell you how many times I got the M$ evil empire lecture. But last month I noticed a large part of this community actively learning .NET. Which is very concerning considering CFMX hasn't even been out a year. My underlying issue is that Macromedia is very fickle. I can't tell you where they are going to be in a year. Which mean I don't know where I, a MM developer will be in a year either. 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: Thursday, March 06, 2003 3:31 PM To: CF-Talk Subject: RE: The New Macromedia Website Adam, What I am about to say is simply based on my experience and impression. Point by point I would reflect it back to you this way: 1. " The shock is the complete turn of stance by MM." Jaye's Response: Instead of saying complete turn of stance, I would say altered course. It's like being on a trip. You may start out moving towards one destination and yet in the process end up somewhere else. As you take your trip you acquire experience and new information (and technology) that simply leads you somewhere else. That's a good thing. We are making progress professionally. 2. 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. Jaye's Response: That is still true. Try a side by side comparison of a CF APP and a JSP or ASP app. You will laugh. 3. 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. Jaye's Response: I have not actually heard MM say... he we want you to build bloat-ware apps and kill your client base. I am not sure if you are aware, but lets just talk about passing data to your html page. Every time you make a change that page must reload. Queries, XML, HTML, CFML, Javascript and all. Using remoting you can load the interface once and from there on out just pass data (e.g. a dramatic bandwidth savings) and your are not reloading the UI, etc... That is a cool thing. Also people seem to have a difficult time trusting what they may not fully understand (and that's no diss on you or anyone else). 4. as defined by MM will cost 3-4 times more than a common cold fusion application. Jaye's response: As the sophistication and robustness grows, so does the price to be honest with you. I am a capitalist, that does not bother me. Do you think it bothers the gas company if they charge you $2 instead of $1. RIA's in my mind bring us closer to the point that we can put desktop applications out, due to the robustness of CMFL, CFC's and Actionscript. 5. 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. Jaye's Response: MM's people make decisions about their website like we make decisions about the sites we develop. Personally I don't find it that heavy. 6. Fact of the matter is that instead of slowly warming the developer community to these ideas, MM has thrown boiling water on them. Jaye's Response: MM has been warming us up for about a year now. You can go back through DEVNET and read a huge amount of articles and tutorials. In addition MM provides Free online presentations (I attended one last week) giving greater insight to the technology. It's there and available to you. 7. Unfortunately this is just another bullet in the list of curveballs MM has thrown its developers. Jaye's Response: I am not sure if the expression "curve ball" can really be used. We have all seen it coming. Maybe people anxiety is increased a little saying, "where do I start". CFUG's are a great place to start. I attended a great CFUG meeting with Charlie Arehart (www.Systemmanagement.com) about a month ago. He focused on "getting CF developers over the hump" with building a RIA in about 15 minutes... start to finish. Once it was over, those fearing the FlashMX timeline said "wow that was painless." 8. 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. Jaye's Response: I cannot say I am in your shoes. When Microsoft released .NET for all intents and purposes there where a lot of developers who have been doing that stuff for years and then they had to re-tool and learn not only a new language and ways of thinking about their applications, but new standards and practices as well. To use a metaphor, this is like a relationship. The parties cannot possibly stay as they where when they first met. For the relationship to be a success... if they are to continue on together, they have to compromise and learn to accommodate each other. Macromedia standing over our shoulders (like our clients sometimes like to...lol) and say "YOU MUST CODE THIS EXACT WAY and MAKE YOU INTERFACE EXACTLY LIKE THAT" to be a solid coder. That is up to you. You are paid based on your coding and design skills, not Macromedia's. They are not god. They just make some pretty cool tools. Sorry for any typo's. Keep the Faith, -//- Jaye Morris - Multimedia Developer -//- [EMAIL PROTECTED] - www.navtrak.net -//- [EMAIL PROTECTED] - www.jayezero.com <!--- Adam's original message starts here ---> -----Original Message----- From: Adrocknaphobia Jones [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, March 06, 2003 2:12 PM To: CF-Talk Subject: RE: The New Macromedia Website 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
