> By "the rest of the web app scripting world", I assume you're > referring to Ruby-on-Rails? My personal opinion is that RoR > is currently--and will remain--more hype than reality. I > could be wrong, of course. Are there other examples you're > thinking of in addition to RoR? Python, maybe? Again, you > hear a lot of buzz about Python from certain quarters, but I > just don't see it actually be used that much in real-world > production environments.
Well, actually, I wasn't thinking of a specific language or environment. If you look at the general progression of web application scripting, however, many environments are becoming more like CF in many ways. For example, as you're well aware, both Java and .NET have embraced the use of tags for presentation logic. And I agree that RoR is not popular in the corporate world, despite the amount of hype that is out there. But it's worth examining why this hype exists - J2EE web app development, by and large, is tedious and painful in comparison. And, over time, whether RoR itself is successful in the marketplace of ideas, people will certainly adopt the things that make their lives easier. As for Python, its use in things like Zope/Plone makes it a bit more widespread than you might think. And, personally, I think that people will be writing Python long after everyone's forgotten what CF was - it's a general-purpose programming language that's easier than Java, but suitable for large, well-structured projects. Lots of Python at NASA, from what I've seen. > A counter-example that certainly is being much more widely > adopted than RoR is Visual Basic.NET, which has moved VB away > from loose typing, etc., and solidly into the camp of > traditional object-oriented languages, to the point that > VB.NET is a serious alternative to C# for .NET development, > whereas VB was previously viewed as a "toy" language. In > fact, I see a very strong analogy in the VB-to-VB.NET > transition to what I'd like to see happen to CFML. > > The problem with VB.NET is that Microsoft did it in a way > that broke backwards compatibility with prior versions of VB. > I think we can avoid the same mistake, and maintain full > backwards compatibility as we help CFML grow-up to be a real > object-oriented programming language. The problem with VB.NET is that it's largely superfluous - you might as well just learn C#. VB.NET doesn't make .NET development any easier, from what I've seen. But that's neither here nor there. Despite being seen as a "toy" language, VB was the core development tool for custom app development in the corporate world for many years. Personally, as a CF developer, I don't care what other developers think about CF - I care that I can do my job better and faster with it than I can with other tools. Part of what makes that possible is that there are a lot of things I don't have to think about. When the language becomes complex enough that I do have to think about those things, it will no longer have the appeal that it once did. For example, if you compare the data access model in CF to that of "classic" ASP, CF won hands-down. This is primarily because you didn't have so many damned choices! Now, of course, you wouldn't need to use all of those choices, but the additional complexity is a barrier to learning and adoption. But in any case, it's a vendor's job to add new features, and I'm confident that you'll do a good job at figuring out how best to do this. Dave Watts, CTO, Fig Leaf Software http://www.figleaf.com/ Fig Leaf Software provides the highest caliber vendor-authorized instruction at our training centers in Washington DC, Atlanta, Chicago, Baltimore, Northern Virginia, or on-site at your location. Visit http://training.figleaf.com/ for more information! ---------------------------------------------------------- You are subscribed to cfcdev. To unsubscribe, send an email to [email protected] with the words 'unsubscribe cfcdev' as the subject of the email. CFCDev is run by CFCZone (www.cfczone.org) and supported by CFXHosting (www.cfxhosting.com). An archive of the CFCDev list is available at www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]
