Inspiring

Question

Coldfusion Builder now available

Forum|Forum|16 years ago
March 22, 2010
3 replies
2045 views

Dunno if/when this was released in the States, but it's just come out in the UK.

However, it's £200 ($300), which for what it is I can't help but feel is pretty steep. Does anyone else have any opinions on this? Bearing in mind *all* it does is ColdFusion, whereas the (free) Eclipse IDE on which it is based also supports Java development, C, PHP, pretty much anything.

I was largely unimpressed with the Beta over CFEclipse, the only real benefit so far being that the CF9 syntax highlighting is there, plus the highlighting for script-based components.

I've never really been one for debuggers and addons, I've never really required them. Which means one of two things. Either:

1 - These features are largely unused gimmicks, which don't really perform any benefit - I'd always use SQL*Plus or SSMS for interacting with databases, I strongly dislike using RDS. Except for little plugins (Regex tested etc) I don't think I use any of the extra bits.I don't like having an IDE build my classes for me, because I like to have checked every single property and method myself and have thought about them one by one.

2 - I'm an idiot, and I'm massively missing out on some amazing features which would save me hours of my life.

I'd be genuinely interested to know if people will be purchasing Builder (and also if it's your own money or company funds) and if so, what is it that sold it to you?

Cheers

O.

This topic has been closed for replies.

ProDesignTools

Community Expert

If you hadn't seen, CF Builder is also available for free if you qualify... Just wrote about it, and from checking the terms I believe it extends internationally as well.

http://prodesigntools.com/new-flash-builder-4-coldfusion-builder-get-them-free.html

OwainnorthAuthor

Inspiring

Not sure I'm convinced enough by it to get myself fired for a free license, but at least they're *starting* to see some sense

Thing is, no-one uses Coldfusion, not in the grand scheme of things. I think Adobe say 750,000 developers (I assume they mean certified) in the world. That is NOTHING. And the *only* reason why is price. Every time I've shown someone CF they've emptied their bowels with excitement over how easy it is to do so much, but then you tell them the price and anything that still remained has just soiled your carpet.

Microsoft ASP.NET is free. In my opinion it's nowhere near as good, but MS bods would no doubt argue. Visual Studio Express 2008 is a great little IDE, and they give it away free. They give away SQLExpress free, SSMSE free. Oracle even give away Oracle XE for free, as well as SQL Developer. MySQL is free.

Microsoft have also just launched their WebsiteSpark programme, whereby small businesses are entitled to a free license of Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 for the next three years; why would any business choose to pay £1000 or even £4500 for a CF license when they can get that?

Telling someone how much CF costs and now having to tell them that they *charge* for an IDE?! That's quite frankly embarassing.

Sort it out Adobe, you're not exactly the smallest company in the world. Any money lost by dropping the prices would easily be made back up by increased sales volume.

O.

A

Adam Cameron.

Inspiring

Telling someone how much CF costs and now having to tell them that they *charge* for an IDE?! That's quite frankly embarassing.

Especially given the bulk of the work in creating the IDE is done by the Eclipse team (for free).

There are obviously paid-for Eclipse-based IDEs out there - Zend Studio is an obvious one - but:

1) Zend Studio is a far more polished and professional-seeming product that CFB (granted it's v7.x);

2) there is a free version of it.

I think every CF9 licence should come with some number of CFB licences. And there should be some free variation of CFB (which doesn't have debugging, or doesn't have extensions, or has a cap on how many projects one can create, or something).

--

Adam

Fernis

Inspiring

1. I do like RDS. I do not develop on production servers anyway, so why hate it? I also use RDS Database explorer.

2. I like the inline help of ColdFusion builder.

3. I really appreciate having the latest up-to-date function/tag insight available.

4. I wouldn't judge CF Builder on beta experience too much. Yup, there were bugs and annoyances. Shocking.

However, I do agree with you on some parts - for many ColdFusion developers, it might not be worth the price - i.e. for a lonely, poor developer who's coding for his own fun. Few people obviously need the debugging, even fewer the team development features.

I would have had second thoughts on the price, but there's one killer in the bundle: Flash Builder 4 standard. That's definitely something for everyone to try out, since there's no denying that Flex rules, and you can do pretty serious stuff with it in a short time. It *is* a matter of learning compeltely another world, and not very easy compared to ColdFusion, but I think Adobe has done maginificient job with the new video tutorials. (Learn Flex in a week)

So yeah, I purchased CF Builder. It cost me my own money, which I don't have much (as my personal one man company is still fresh)

I paid mainly for the comfort level I want to have when coding, and a really big point was the included Flash Builder 4.

Without Flash Builder, I would have felt the product is severely overpriced. Now I feel it was quite good value as a bundle.

--

- Fernis - fernis.net - ColdFusion Developer For Hire

A

Anonymous

To be perfectly honest I didn't really even know this was gonna be a pay for product. But I would agree that 300 bucks is over the top. I have been using the latest beta, and its not worth that amount of money. I will be moving back to cfeclipse.

For me the product is just not polished enough. It takes ages to refresh large project folders, regardless of heap size settings. The code assist to be honest is very poor (compared to Visual Studio anyway). Debugging is great, but where are my conditional breakpoints?

I don't really get Adobes pricing anyway. Licensing costs are pretty high, enterprise licensing is insane (why is server monitoring enterprise only? argh), and then they you have to pay for the tools? I can't help but think, ColdFusion would be more succesful if they gave the IDE away.

J

Joshua_Cyr

Participating Frequently

The performance and bugs found in beta have been addressed for final release. I had many of the same issues several months ago, and am a very happy camper now.

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded