Coldfusion vs ASP .Net PHP etc.

Wow! I had no idea this was such a contentious topic! Thanks for everyone's comments!

Here's the situation: We have a custom database that was built as an extension to another membership-management product. At this point the customizing has provided most of the functionality we use. The base product is no longer supported and we would like to "divorce" the two products. That's a lot of work and there's some talk of just rebuilding the whole thing. Everything up to now is in ColdFusion. If we start over, going with another technology is an option. So I've been asked about the future of ColdFusion, why we would use it over another product, scalability, etc. The product manages about 3000 kids in an after-school program in several states. Eventually it will have to manage 10,000+.

I've been using ColdFusion for several years and I like it. But I'm not as up to speed on the other technologies. So I was looking for an unbiased comparison of several products. Not sure if that exists out there!

All help appreciated!

Alias number three

>>A higher-up asked me about the future of ColdFusion and it's strengths and
weaknesses compared to .net, php, etc.

php is free, more powerful than cf, and you will find lots more support out
there for it. (MM support sucks!) We are moving away from cf for these
reasons.

"mpc" <webforumsuser@macromedia.com> wrote in message
news:ee9gjq$sbi$1@forums.macromedia.com...
> A higher-up asked me about the future of ColdFusion and it's strengths and
> weaknesses compared to .net, php, etc. I haven't been able to find any
> resources on the internet that compare the different technologies in a way
that
> a non-techie would understand. Any suggestions?
>

You can get a look at its popularity here:

http://www.tiobe.com/tiobe_index/index.htm

Put bluntly, it's not that pouplar compared to php and asp etc. But that
doesn't mean it is better or worse.

I reckon there is no real way to do a valid comparison unless you know
exactly what you need. For example, if it is a large site with lots of
developers working on it - cf likley is not the way to go as it is missing
alot of the stuff that asp.net/vs.net offer for team development. But if you
are building a small site with just one or two developers, cf or php may be
valid choices.

Post more info??


"mpc" <webforumsuser@macromedia.com> wrote in message
news:ee9gjq$sbi$1@forums.macromedia.com...
> A higher-up asked me about the future of ColdFusion and it's strengths and
> weaknesses compared to .net, php, etc. I haven't been able to find any
> resources on the internet that compare the different technologies in a way
that
> a non-techie would understand. Any suggestions?
>

>>> A higher-up asked me about the future of ColdFusion and it's strengths
and
> weaknesses compared to .net, php, etc.

It has 2 major weaknesses - it is not widely installed and therefore has a
relatively small developer base. This makes it harder for companies to adopt
as a) not so many coders available in a lot of locations B) relatively few
third parties targeting the platform with things like libraries, out of the
box apps, books, training course so on and so forth.

A possible third weakness is that it doesn't really have a proper coders
IDE, just Dreamweaver (a designers tool) and a small exlipse plug in with
soem basic features called "cfeclipse" - this makes wrking with cf a little
less productive that working with platforms like asp.net with visual studio.

My take is that CF's strength is that it is good for newbies wanting to
build small to medium sized website, and wanting to buil them as quickly as
possible. Though you can meet these objectives much more easily an cheaply
with Ruby On Rails, RoR has yet to gain any major accpeted in enterprises
whereas CF is used in some parts of the world by some well known companies.

At the end of the day, cf only really compares well to php. To me, asp.net
and j2ee are in a whole different ball park as they use compiled and
strongly typed languages as opposed to dynamic langues. These are targeted
much more toward building large scale web sites and applications. CF and PHP
are stronger at building smaller sites and "script" like problem solving.

Just be careful with cf, you will almost certainly need to learn some Java
if you adopt it. CF is not quite as powerful as java and the languages used
in asp.net!! (But can do most common tasks quite well and quite quickly)









"mpc" <webforumsuser@macromedia.com> wrote in message
news:ee9gjq$sbi$1@forums.macromedia.com...
> A higher-up asked me about the future of ColdFusion and it's strengths and
> weaknesses compared to .net, php, etc. I haven't been able to find any
> resources on the internet that compare the different technologies in a way
that
> a non-techie would understand. Any suggestions?
>

Check out http://www.forta.com/blog/index.cfm?mode=e&entry=1266 for a list of articles comparing CF to competing technologies.