Now, before you dismiss this as a troll, please let me elaborate. This isn't
so much an instigation or a whine as it is a call for us to take a step back
and reevalutate things periodically.
Over the course of my career as a web programmer/developer, I have worked
with a variety of sever-side languages and technologies: ColdFusion, ASP,
JSP, PHP, Perl and Python. I like some more than others, but I'm not an
evangelist for any; they each have their uses. And I recognize some of CF's
strengths: easy to learn for people who know only tag-based HTML or don't
have significant programming experience; built-in admin tool; specialized
editor; comes with pre-built tags and web-based administrator. There are
also major flaws: broken/sketchy tags; no XML parsing; not OOP; relatively
small community; etc.
Right now, I work at a web development firm that is primarily "a CF house"
(besides me). Our more senior programmers are looking at honing their CF
skills, while our less experienced webmasters are trying to learn
ColdFusion. But, I can't help but wonder whether they are wasting their
time. Would they be better off spending their time learning ASP, Java or
another non-CF solution? Why or why not?
And how would we tell if and when it was time to give up CF and try
something else, as all but the most stubborn experts in also-ran languages
(Ada, SmallTalk), applications (Netscape, Lotus Notes) and Operating Systems
(Amiga) have resignedly done?
Lastly, why do *you* still use CF? Is it because it's what you're best at,
and you don't want to try something new (where, temporarily, you'd be a
novice again)? Is it because your ccompany's legacy code is all in CF? Is it
because you genuinely think that ColdFusion is, generally speaking, the best
solution for web application development in 2001?
Joe
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