OK - while I'm happy that CF may survive (as a developer my strength is CF
not ASP though I now have second thoughts) - my main worry is in my
knowledge and experience of MacroMedia:
I purchased Drumbeat 2000 (Drumbeat is the company that MM bought to develop
UltraDev). Drumbeat was a visual tool that incorporated database access -
though it's visual side lacked a lot of features. I never upgraded because
it took so long for MM to release their UltraDev Version. So - time to
market after company purchase. This worry extends to CF 5.0/6.0 with the
Java Engine.
I'm familiar with their FreeHand product, and have seen (what I believe)
slow development of a product even in light of strong competition (Corel
Draw and Adobe Illustrator), with a tendency to ignore the development
community. I have never seen a product "pony show" so viciously ripped apart
as they were up here in Calgary a while back. There was real venom from a
lack of corporate response.
I looked at .asp and went .cfm instead because of Unix support. Macromedia
is inherently not Unix, UNLESS it's a Mac OSX port to be done. We are taking
people who love their Macs. (I love Macs too - just server based, hell,
DATABASE web work is generally Unix or NT, some J2EE).
I own DreamWeaver and Studio. I use Studio. Enough said.
Amazing Allaire off-line support and customer retention: I received a
t-shirt because they rescheduled an online presentation. They are one of the
few company's that has gone out of it's way to maintain my interest and
support as a developer.
Finally: Macromedia is primarily a graphics-platform company, and recently
really only competed with Adobe. This is their first move into something
much more founded in the structure of communication - not just the look and
feel. I have some concern if the culture can bend to give the Allaire staff
a sense of home.
I hope most of the Allaire staff join Macromedia.
Sniff! Hey - what happens to Ben Forta?
(Ok so maybe from those last comments I'm just knee-jerking).
But I guess I've staked close to 2 years of hardcore development on CF (with
experimentation and some development in other areas), and my belief in
MacroMedia as a corporate entity that can enter the server/code side of the
market (because Allaire really isn't Studio - it's the underlying code base
in Cold Fusion), is troubled.
Can a graphics company successfully incorporate a hard-code set of
engineers, and maket/maitain/grow a server product successfully?
Well,
I hope - and I'll try to give a benefit of the doubt.
:-)
Stephen Cassady
President, Ububik new media
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
403.271.0468
http://www.ububik.com http://www.tallylist.com http://www.spankmag.com
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