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A
Anonymous
May 18, 2009
Question

Concerning article about coldfusion

  • May 18, 2009
  • 2 replies
  • 778 views

I've been using coldfusion since the very beginning and I know it's come a long way. It was concerning to read the following article http://www.globalknowledge.com/training/generic.asp?pageid=2347&country=United+States

where coldfusion was listed as one of the 10 dying IT skills.

Is there any truth to it, do we need to start expanding to other scripting language? Comments welcome.

5. ColdFusion: ColdFusion users rave that this Web programming language  is easy to use and quick to jump into, but as many other independent software  tools have experienced, it's hard to compete with products backed by expensive  marketing campaigns from Microsoft and others. The language was originally  released in 1995 by Allaire, which was acquired by Macromedia (which itself was  purchased by Adobe). Today, it superseded by Microsoft .Net, Java, PHP and the  language of the moment: open source Ruby on Rails. A quick search of the  Indeed.com job aggregator site returned 11,045 jobs seeking PHP skills compared  to 2,027 CF jobs. Even Ruby on Rails, which is a much newer technology receiving  a major boost when Apple packaged it with OS X v10.5 in 2007, returned 1,550  jobs openings on Indeed.com.

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    2 replies

    T
    TLC-IT
    Inspiring
    May 18, 2009

    Funny thing about technologies:  once they get adopted by a company, they're deployed hundreds or thousands of times ... and what's more, they work!

    X years later, you find that they are still working.  This is especially true of timesharing web-deployed systems, where you really only have to get the thing running properly on the big iron blade server(s).

    The reality of the computing world hasn't changed much in fifty years:

      1. Once you've got something working properly (especially when it runs on just onecomputer, namely a mainframe server), it will probably continue running much longer than, well, than you will.    ("Dig me up and I'll fix it then...")
      2. Change, of any sort, is uncertain, disruptive, and expensive.  In any case, "change for change's sake" has no ROI.
      3. So, companies acquire quite a "hodge-podge" of systems, review them carefully, tend them carefully, and more-or-less-willingly use them quite successfully for years.
      4. The server computers still sit in enclosed rooms with lots of air-conditioning and raised floors.  (And now-and-then are programmed in COBOL.)

    So...  when you walk into any new "shop," you take a look around and "do as the Romans do."  Grab a manual on Friday and be competent by Monday.

    People tend to say that their companies are only using the neatest, coolest stuff when they're talking on the phone to journalists.  (And I happen to think that ColdFusion does qualify as "neat, cool stuff!"  For what it's designed to do ... which is a very commonly-occurring set of requirements ... it actually rocks.)

    tclaremont
    tclaremont
    Inspiring
    May 18, 2009

    This is a very old article. It has been discussed to death within these forums. Read the article for comprehension and you will discover a number of the top ten are questionable choices for the article... to say the least. Do some homework on the author and you will find credibility to be hard to find, too.

    On the other hand, if your only tool is ColdFusion, you should be expanding your skill set regardless of the possible death (rumored for at least six years and four versions ago) of ColdFusion.

    Michael Borbor
    Michael Borbor
    Inspiring
    May 18, 2009

    Yes it's true is dead

    http://www.iscoldfusiondead.com/

    Check it out, lol!

    A
    Anonymous
    May 19, 2009

    @Michael Borbor Hahaha! Brilliant.

    ColdFusion is NOT dead and will be around for a lot longer still. There are 3 main competitors. Adobe, Railo and OpenBD. Two of which have a free or open source version of the CF server (well, even Adobes developer and education editions are now free).

    Of course there are less jobs in CF than there are in PHP, because PHP is more popular right now. But that doesn't mean ColdFusion is doomed. There has never been in any area of IT a "one solution fits all" approach. If that were true, why do we have an array of different databases too? Oracle, MSSQL, MySQL, MS Access etc etc etc.

    As I said, there are free and open source versions of ColdFusion now that will continue to thrive, and even if Adobe planned to axe their ColdFusion today, it would still be releasing versions 9 and 10 (we are on version 8 right now) because it has already been discussed that these versions will exist (and are already in production).

    So even in a worse case scenario, Coldfusion from Adobe would still be around for at least 8 more years and ColdFusion from the community will continue on as open source like PHP.

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