Known Participant

Question

Is ColdFusion dead, six feet under, pushing up daisies?

Forum|Forum|11 years ago
April 2, 2014
13 replies
25264 views

The security team here at the University seems to think ColdFusion is dead. Is it? I'm getting tired of trying to defend it. Do you have any resources to help? List of Companies perhaps?

Just so we're all on the same page, Adobe chat support's official response to this question was;

"... we don't have option for that, however if you are facing any technical issue you can contact our expert in technical team."

And calling tech support I was presented with the response;

"We can't help you. Go to the forums."

When I asked tech support to route me to a supervisor he said, "Adobe doesn't care if you discontinue use of their product" Yep. He actually said that to me

This topic has been closed for replies.

ConsoleGenRL

Known Participant

Myself and my current company have been using "ColdFusion" for nearly 22 years - yup since version 1.0 way back in 1995.

We use it exensively and will continue to. However I do agree that the pricing that Adobe applies compared to other products is killing it - but that's been the case at least since Macromedia owned the product.

WolfShade

Legend

True, dat!! Macromedia did start the price increase.

If I remember correctly (which can be questioned), when CF Server 4.5 was released I think the price for a standard CF Server license was ~$500. Then Macromedia bought Allaire, and I think the price was close to $800, or something like that.

Last I checked, the standard license (NO enterprise stuff) was more like $5k for an upgrade (not even the full install.. an UPGRADE.)

So, yeah, Adobe is killing ColdFusion with pricing; but the free, open source Lucee is, from what I hear, QUITE nice.

V/r,

^_^

R

Robin James

Inspiring

It is getting difficult to defend CF when bugs are not fixed in a timely manner, and when they are, they aren't released. The developers are the key to the continued success of CF. If the availability of programmers declines, then alternate solutions will be used. It's so frustrating because we, the developers, want to continue using CF. Work with us, Adobe!

K

karma007

Inspiring

‌

ColdFusion is in use at 75 of the Fortune 100 companies:

192.com

ACD Direct

Allied Office Products

America First Credit Union

American Power Conversion

Amkor Technology

Aspen Skiing Company

AT&T Wireless

Bank of America

Bertelsmann

BMW USA

Boeing

Casio USA

Caterpillar

Chicago Bears

City of Davis, California

County of San Diego, Department of Child Support Services

Crayola

Dallas Stars

DHL

Dial Corporation

East Carolina University

eBags

Eli Lilly

eMCSaatchi

FAO Schwarz

First Union

Foot Locker

George Washington University

Georgetown University

GlobalSpec.com

Goodyear

Half.com

Hasbro

iHotelier

Inmarkets Training, Ltd.

International Speedway Corporation

InvestEdge

Jaguar Australia

Legato

The Limited

Mayo Clinic

Mayo Health Systems

Michelin

Moen

MySwitzerland.com

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

New York Giants

New Era Cap Company

New York State Office for Technology

One World Alliance

Peace Corps

Pepsi

PGA of America

Pottery Barn

Prometheus

Quaker Oats

Roche Pharmaceuticals

Rugby Football Union

Schlumberger

Scott's Corporation

Seattle Times

United States Senate

Siemens

Simon & Schuster

SmartMoney.com

Sprint

State of New York

Symantec

Travelers

United States Olympic Committee

US Bank

The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania

K

karma007

Inspiring

‌bobbybro you obviously haven't heard of Railo. I use it on my live VPS. It is free and parses 99.9% of all CFML.

C

Capt Obvious

Inspiring

seems you are a bit out of touch, Railo is dead, has been for some time, the website doesn't even exist any longer and it is not safe to be running Railo any longer.

K

Kirill_Grishin

Known Participant

Many say that it is not dead because many government / financial / insurance etc companies use it. But they also still use systems which were written in Cobol. Ask yourself another question: would you start a new project with CF? I wouldn't now (the last one I did was about 3 years ago).

Just think about - you need to have ColdFusion server installed on your development machine and on the server. It means you cannot just git-clone your project and run it. And I am not even talking about that it is not free. And that ColdFusion is not really a programming language.

TonightWeDineInHELLAuthor

Known Participant

Would I start a new project with CF? YES.
Why? It's not perfect, but it's the best.

I've been creating websites since 1995. I've been using CF since 2003. I've tried .Net, PHP, JS-based frameworks such as Ember and nothing is as stable, secure and quick as ColdFusion. I version my development projects when necessary and have no need for git-cloning. ColdFusion was the first of it's kind and is still the best.

FYI: All of the Security Team's objections to CF proved to be unfounded. All the research I and the Security Team found showed the same thing; CF is the most secure middle-ware available.

B

bobbybro

Participant

I've been developing websites since 1999. When I found ColdFusion, the language really spoke to me at the time because it was much easier to understand than the other app languages. Ben Forta and Ray Camden (although not the founders) had incredible vision, and their books were clear, their enthusiasm was energizing and a community came out of that. But as technology advanced, and especially when Adobe acquired ColdFusion, unfortunately, CF got pushed aside in favor of Flash at the time, which Adobe was pushing for SaaS (web apps). I think that would have panned out, but so many people and companies hate Adobe because of their belligerent leadership. Flash's efforts were obliterated by both Microsoft and Apple. And ColdFusion was left, once again like so many times in its history, as the red head step child while this war was waged.

I've been on Adobe support for products, just like you have, and have had the same run around, along with getting on a call with someone at support who has told me to "stop calling because no one cares over here" about a product - PDF forms at the time, around 2007. That was after he hung up on me 3 times. And that wasn't the only experience. What a company. They are the same ones that introduced the rent your software idea to the world. Who your standing behind should be a huge consideration for your next project.

Why would anyone want to pay the CF licensing fee? That's a very hard sell when LAMP is so close to free. And like others have said, PHP has moved on to OOP/MVC frameworks that take a once disorganized approach and make it very meaningful and modularly scalable. Our SaaS projects are a lot of fun in PHP now, although I would honestly say that I would have more fun in CF.

The argument about the Universities, NASA and Governments still using ColdFusion is laughable. These sectors are notorious for being ~ 10 years behind on the technology curve. They should be the example of where technology "isn't". But on the other hand, if you simply love ColdFusion, you might sustain a career with one of these employers, could in fact get in that corporate environment, and politically coerce them to continue on with your beloved technology. I'm sure CF is better than it's ever been. And I hope that a community continues to keep it alive. I pray that we will all see another company acquire it from Adobe, or maybe Adobe will ramp it up now that Flash is almost dead. Because CF is in fact an excellent approach in my opinion, just in the wrong hands and in competition with a lot of cost effective strong alternatives with better product support and more promise for the future.

P

Pedro_Dodero

Participant

Here in Australia, CF is dying a slow and painful death. There are companies that are focused on transforming CF systems into other platforms, and they are making heaps of money from that. Most clients seem to be quite happy after the migrations. Don't get em wrong, I love CF. But Adobe is just worse than Microsoft at the moment in this battle. Adobe has been restrictive, whereas MS has been quite the opposite.

I myself might leave CF behind as well.

Cheers.

I

irvin00

Participant

Yes, ColdFusion is dead. Just like Cobol is dead.

TonightWeDineInHELLAuthor

Known Participant

Yes Cobol is dead, but ColdFusion lives on.

BKBK

Community Expert

Visitor interrupts doctor rushing along the corridor,

"Doctor, doctor, is Mr. Seeyeff dead, six feet under, pushing up daisies?"

"How so? You want him to be?". The doctor hurries along.

H

Hi_There

Inspiring

Lot's of colleges and universities use Coldfusion. To add to what BKBK said: Type in the Google search bar: college filetype:cfm and you will see many, many more results of sites utilizing Coldfusion. It is far from dead.

Those making the decisions don't care how much easier Coldfusion may be to develop on or whether you are more productive with it. They figure all development is the same. Additionally, your server admins have to like it and want to support it. Unfortunately, mine doesn't like it and reluctantly supports our current installation. For them, why bother trying to get Coldfusion/Railo up and running when there are many canned flavors of LAMP stacks that are easily installed and can be developed upon. (Have you ever tried getting Railo up and running on say MAMP? MAMP takes 5 minutes. In my experience it takes days of trouble-shooting a Railo install. It's a pain and a tough sell for a server admin.)

Ironically, the recent version of Coldfusion is one of Adobe's best offerings right now.

BKBK

Community Expert

TonightWeDineInHELL wrote:
The security team here at the University seems to think ColdFusion is dead.

Which university would that be? Since when did we listen to the guards at Fort Knox to know about the state of the economy?

I'm getting tired of trying to defend it. Do you have any resources to help? List of Companies perhaps?

Companies? Nah, too easy. Since you're talking University, with a capital U, let's talk University.

I'll let you in on a little secret. I bet it is unknown even to Adobe's ColdFusion folk, and you are hearing it here for the first time.

Type in the Google search bar: university filetype:cfm

You will get 178 000 000 search results. Among them are universities and university affiliations from all over the world, having ColdFusion pages on the web:

Georgetown University

University of Guelph, Canada

Liberty University Christian College Education

University of San Diego

Penn State

Clemson University

Massey University, New Zealand

Pace University

Stetson University

Purdue University

University of Groningen, Netherlands

University of Liverpool, UK

University of Namibia

American Association of University Women

University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center

Fisk University

Southwestern University

California State University, Long Beach

University of Colorado

Harvard University Press

State University of New York

University of Basel, Switzerland

etc.

Remember that those who publish with ColdFusion on the web are likely to have ColdFusion intranet, too.

S

Steve Sommers

Legend

To steal and hack a famous phrase: Reports of ColdFusion's death have been greatly exagerated.

Google "death of ColdFusion" and you'll probably find posts dated back to 1996 or earlier, yet ColdFusion still exists and is constantly being updated and improved. I'm not aware of too many corpses actively being updated or improved. My gues is that your security team just does not want to deal with "yet more stuff to keep track of."

BKBK

Community Expert

Steve Sommers wrote:
To steal and hack a famous phrase: Reports of ColdFusion's death have been greatly exagerated.
Google "death of ColdFusion" and you'll probably find posts dated back to 1996 or earlier, yet ColdFusion still exists and is constantly being updated and improved. I'm not aware of too many corpses actively being updated or improved. My gues is that your security team just does not want to deal with "yet more stuff to keep track of."

It's curious you should reply to me! I posted that quote in similar threads on April 13, 2010 and January 5, 2011!

Show more replies

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