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SkipMunk
Participant
November 3, 2008
Question

The Future of ColdFusion

  • November 3, 2008
  • 6 replies
  • 1161 views
I was recently asked to perform a task using ColdFusion. I had never worked with CF before and this seemed like a good opportunity to learn about it. I was able to find a FEW (2, and one of these was outdated) books covering CF, and enough information on the web to get me through the task. However, it seems as though there is not the volume of resource out there that once was around for CF (perhaps this is only my perception). This got me to wondering if Adobe plans to sunset CF. I know they are discontinuing FlashPaper, which they also acquired from Macromedia. But FlashPaper is also a competing product to Acrobat, so killing that off seems logical.
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    6 replies

    A
    Anonymous
    November 10, 2008
    Even if Adobe was wiped off the face of the Earth tomorrow, CF would not be dead. Adobe owns ColdFusion, the "Adobe ColdFusion" application server. CFML is not owned by Adobe (though they extend it somewhat), but is actually an entire language available on several different application servers. To name a few, Railo and Blue Dragon. Both of which I believe are free and open source (or at least soon to be).

    The fact of the matter is, Adobe just happens to be the leader (though some may not see it this way) in the CFML world, bringing great functionality to the language - often leveraging its own; very popular technologies like PDF and Flash etc. However, even with very minor changes, developers can usually port their code to an entirely different platform like BlueDragon, which has nothing to do with Adobe whatsoever.

    CF is small, yes, but not dead, and NOT dying. In fact, CF is growing and is more popular than ever before. CF9 is already in planning / development for next year.

    If you're interested in learning more on the language etc see:

    http://www.riaforge.org/
    http://cflib.org/
    http://www.cfquickdocs.com/
    http://www.railo-technologies.com
    http://www.newatlanta.com/bluedragon/


    Mikey.



    BKBK
    Community Expert
    BKBKCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    November 8, 2008
    SkipMunk wrote:
    ... wondering if Adobe plans to sunset CF

    Nah.
    A
    Abinidi
    Inspiring
    November 5, 2008
    Forum Troll alert!
    R
    richardELeach
    Inspiring
    November 5, 2008
    I love these postings, quite often they're masked Microsofties looking to try and plant some seeds of doubt. These folks never thought they'd have to be concerned about learning any other technology as long as they were in the Microsoft camp, which is unfortunate and short sided thinking.

    As an independent consultant it's my job to lift my head up 2 or 3 times a year and see what's hot, what's new and what's not. There are so many Microsoft alternative solutions a small group of us is seriously considering branding "ASP" to mean "Alternative Solutions Provider to Microsoft" (we're still working out that last "M", we may just forget about it since Microsoft has forgotten about many of it's core users, developers and customers.... )

    Adobe sees a well entrenched vehicle in ColdFusion to deploy it's other products into so I doubt it's going away. On the contrary, it wouldn't surprise me to see future CFML tags like <cfphotoshop> and <cfindesign>, just as examples of how Adobe could use CF to piggy back some of its existing product base.

    Too many good (and free) CF resources out there to mention, try a quick Google. But if you're genuinely concerned about the future of CF, I've been coding it since '97. It's come a long way, suffered a few bumps in the road but it's still out there and growing again. Like I said, try some google searches and you'll find all the stats you'd need.

    Good luck,

    Rich
    N
    Newsgroup_User
    Inspiring
    November 4, 2008
    Hi Skip -
    if you want to get going with CF, *the* top resource is the ColdFusion
    Web Application Construction Kit, aka "CF WACK" by Ben Forta and
    friends. There are other good CF books, and of course, y ou can check
    out communities like these groups, the coldfusioncommunity.org site,
    coldfusionbloggers.org , CF google groups, and more.


    Michael Evangelista, Evangelista Design
    Web : www.mredesign.com Blog : www.miuaiga.com
    Developer Newsgroups: news://forums.mredesign.com
    M
    MarcovandenOever
    Inspiring
    November 4, 2008
    First of all you begin by:

    "I had never worked with CF before and this seemed like a good opportunity to learn about it."

    Then you state:

    "However, it seems as though there is not the volume of resource out there that once was around for CF (perhaps this is only my perception)."

    How do you know what was once around for CF when you just started :)

    There is a huge amount of resource available for CF, just have to know where to look.

    Further, even if adobe would stop with CF, the language will continue to exist as there are also other CF products out there without any link to adobe.

    Best :)
    N
    Newsgroup_User
    Inspiring
    November 3, 2008
    God, is it this time of month again already?

    --
    Adam
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