advantages and disadvantages of ColdFusion?

re: A perusal of the results of that search should also be factored into
your decision process.

Absolutely. Like the vast majority of the web develoepr community, I firmly
belive that cf is not very popular and is grossly over priced in a market
where there is equivalent to far better available at no charge. CF barely
survived php, RoR will likely not even be kind enough to leave it the
measley market share php left it with.

Outside of this forum, this view is widely held and accepted. CF is nice
enough, but it just aint doing it for most people, even those that dearly
love cf are faced with the reality that it just aint happening anymore.
Sounds 'trollish' I know, but hey, call it as I see it and as I see most
others seem to be seeing it.


"tclaremont" <webforumsuser@macromedia.com> wrote in message
news:er2aph$8ek$1@forums.macromedia.com...
> Please do a search of these forums for posts by the previous author. A
> perusal of the results of that search should also be factored into your
> decision process.

sure looks like another troll (or the same one in another disguise)

Please do a search of these forums for posts by the previous author. A perusal of the results of that search should also be factored into your decision process.

re: I'm attracted to CF by the apparent shallow learning curve

Bit of a myth I'm afraid - the learning curve for cf is just as significant
as it is for php. All, and I mean all, the same concepts must be learned for
both languages. The only real differences are the syntax, at least with
respect to learning curve.

The platform that genuinely makes things 'easy' but maintains the
flexibility that CF sacrafices, is the RoR platform (Ruby On Rails). As with
cf and php, the same learning curve is required (eg; how to program) but
once this is done RoR makes life very efficient and productive.

re: Does anyone know of any honest, unbiased reports on the pros and cons
of
ColdFusion, compared to PHP or other programming languages?

It's going to be hard to get unbiased, but you could look at the TIOBE index
at http://www.tiobe.com/tiobe_index/index.htm to get some insight into the
level of interest in cf with respect to other languages. You will see its
not so popular, rarely used in fact. This is not becuase its no good, but
becuase there is similar and better available for free or with better
support from third parties. (and my presonal favourite, with far bigger and
stronger communities)

re: Can anyone point me in the direction of such an article or report?

As you say, they are nearly always biased. My take on cf is that is is
stagnant with only very few web developers using it compared to other more
widely supported and mainstream products. It will still be around a while
longer, but its definitely one thats not taken all that seriously by the web
developer community at large.

re: Does anyone know of any honest, unbiased reports on the pros and cons
of
ColdFusion, compared to PHP or other programming languages?

All I can say is that when listed side by side the pros are nearly always
outweighed by the cons when it comes to coldfusion. Cons being many and
varied (small community, very few publications, poor support from adobe,
very few third patyy products, not very many skilled cf developers out
there, not a decent enough selection of qulaity hosting services ..... even
worse, the simple fact that there are many tools as powerful and more
powerful than cf available for completely no cost.)














"mpjx" <webforumsuser@macromedia.com> wrote in message
news:eqfpqd$sla$1@forums.macromedia.com...
> Hi All,
>
> I need to make a decision on which scripting language or languages will be
> "officially" adopted by my design studio for producing web applications -
> both
> for internal use and for client projects. We're a small studio so we can't
> do
> the whole range of CF, PHP, ASP.NET, RUBY, JSP etc, etc in-house. I'm a
> designer, not a programmer, so not really experienced in any of these.
>
> I'm attracted to CF by the apparent shallow learning curve, interation
> with
> other Adobe products (Flash etc), apparent ease of communication with a
> wide
> range of databases, and finally the perceived value of the product to
> clients.
> Don't get me wrong, I love Open Source and many of it's projects, it's
> just
> that I wonder if corporates think OpenSource=free=cheap=low quality. In
> spite
> of this, if the studio doesn't adopt CF I think we'll probably settle on
> PHP
> because of the resources, hosting options and number of programmers
> available.
>
> Does anyone know of any honest, unbiased reports on the pros and cons of
> ColdFusion, compared to PHP or other programming languages? I've done some
> online searches but all the info that I've found appears biased because
> it's
> been written by "evangelists" in one camp or another (particularly PHP
> because
> there are so many programmers out there and ASP.NET because there are so
> many
> companies with a commercial interest in Microsoft products). Ideally the
> report
> would cover areas like application development time, total cost of
> ownership,
> availability of 3rd party hosting, scalability, reliability, security,
> hardware
> requirements, database connectivity, compatibility with other languages.
>
> Can anyone point me in the direction of such an article or report? I just
> want
> to base my decision on reliable information. Thanks in advance for your
> help!
>
> Martin
>

Hi Mike

Thanks for the reply. Definitely food for thought there.

Cheers

Martin

I know of dozens of comparisons but none of them that all agree are "unbiased".

If you want to do the coding yourself, CF is a great choice.

If you want to grab or buy a great, turn-key solution to your web problems, PHP has much more available (just google on your issue of choice.)

Both languages have ok support forums although CF might be slow on the really gritty issues.

You can get very fast code help, for either platform, and for almost no money using RentACoder.com.

Every single commercial hosting provider offers PHP. CF hosting is rarer and more expensive but still easy to find. Google PHP and Coldfusion hosting and see for yourself.

Total cost of ownership, scalability, reliability, security, hardware requirements, database connectivity are more dependent on the quality of the coders. No language has a major advantage here.

However, for things like databases, API's (using UPS, Amazon, Salesforce, Yahoo, Flickr, your stockbroker, you name it) the API will ALWAYS have a PHP hook and example but may require some effort to use with CF. (Again, see for yourself.)

All of the above you can verify with a few minutes of searching.

Here is my opinion:

CF is still the easiest to learn. CF will (with varying degrees of effort) allow you to do anything you need to do.

PHP can get your BUSINESS solution up and running TONIGHT but you may not understand how it works or how to modify it. (But the canned apps are usually best of breed so maybe you don't need to modify it.)

CF with Flex, has the potential to make really great sites that work reliably on any device (companies have been promising this for decades but flash (Flex) might actually deliver, maybe).