Coldfusion Marketshare

[fs22]

Greetings,

I have been a CFer for some time now and absolutely love it. Our company has been using it for a while now. Recently, though, some discussions have taken place within our organization about the future of CF and whether we should go to .Net or not. I am fighting for CF because I see its benefits, but my problem is that I am seen as biased since I have used and loved CF for some time. Are there any "objective" resources out there that speak to the future of CF and its benefits?

Thanks,

Clay

[j_beckton]

Read my post again...

"I know that the original post mentioned they are considering .Net over CF so factoring in retooling your devs would apply"

Then I said...

"when you hire developers typically you hire the ones that have  experience in the platform your using or going to use. The cost of  retooling existing developers is not always a factor and should not be  considered when comparing two platforms."

My sentence structure is terrible but The context being when argueing one is better than the other with everything else being equal including your developer experience on either platform. I'm not talking about switching from one platform to the other I am talking about an outright comparison.

[Dave Watts]

The OP, on the other hand, is talking about potentially switching from CF to .NET. And being familiar with all three of these platforms, I don't have any reluctance in stating that CF is the easiest to work with - there is simply less you have to learn to become minimally productive.

Dave Watts, CTO, Fig Leaf Software

http://www.figleaf.com/

http://training.figleaf.com/

[j_beckton]

You are absolutely correct, CF is easier to learn and get started with. I have no argument with that. And as the OP said they are considering a change in platform and I agree with you that retooling is a factor in that process as well.

But the OP as well as a few others stated... "CF and how it is superior to .Net." Along with several others that in summary stated that developing apps with .Net is more expensive, the time saved using CF will pay for it's licensing costs etc... This is where my posts begin, it silly to try to compare something you know very little about to something you favor.

Here is a simple scenario..

A client needs a simple web based issue tracking system. This sytem should contain a workflow engine that supports state as well as activity based workflows. The client should be able to add new workflows as well as edit existing workflows via a web based interface with little technical knowledge.

I realize this is a vague spec but the workflow engine alone is quite common in business applications.

The client does not want to use any third party code or applications, you have to use only what the platform provides out of the box.

Developer A has 5 years CF experience and Developer B Has 5 years ASP.Net experience. Dev A will use CF 9 and Dev B will use ASP.Net 4.

1. Is CF superior to .Net even in this project? if so why?

2. Who will develop this app faster and why?

[Dave Watts]

"But the OP as well as a few others stated... 'CF and how it is superior to .Net.'"

You just stated that CF is easier to learn, and easier to get started with. That would make it superior to .NET in those two aspects, now wouldn't it?

"Along with several others that in summary stated that developing apps with .Net is more expensive, the time saved using CF will pay for it's licensing costs etc"

If something takes longer to learn, and longer to get started with, developing apps with it will, all things being equal, be more expensive. And as far as licensing costs go, I had no idea that Windows was free. .NET isn't free, because it requires Windows.

"Here is a simple scenario.."

... which is somewhat carefully constructed to favor .NET, since it can access Windows Workflow Foundation. Although, come to think of it, so can CF on Windows through the .NET interop layer from JIntegra, I suspect. How easily can .NET access the vast library of existing Java code, on the other hand? Good luck accessing Java workflow engines or rules engines from .NET.

Rest assured I could furnish a bevy of scenarios as counterexamples, although I'd rather go eat dinner.

Dave Watts, CTO, Fig Leaf Software

http://www.figleaf.com/

http://training.figleaf.com/

[j_beckton]

I'll take it that no matter what you will defend CF as the better platform over .Net just for the sake of arguement. Market Share speaks volumes on behalf of .Net though. A group of devs can bicker all day about which one is better and why but the world IT community says it all. Microsoft .Net dominates Adobe ColdFusion globally in regards to developer community, vendor support, implementations and yes even open source. It's not even a close race. It does not matter what anyone here thinks they know about CF or .Net or which is better and why, the fact is .Net wins on a global scale.

I find it kind of odd that Adobe does not even feature CF on thier website anymore! You have to dig into a long list of product offerings to find a small link to the CF pages. CF is Adobe's red headed step child and not likely high on their list of priorities these days. On the other hand MS invests heavily into their dev platforms rolling out new releases and features on a yearly bases.

Maybe developers looking for the easier and faster to dev platform might have a harder time finding a job? Seems like if CF dominated .Net there would be more jobs for CF developers?

http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=ASP.Net%2C+ColdFusion&l=&relative=1

http://www.simplyhired.com/a/jobtrends/trend/q-ASP.Net%2C+ColdFusion

2,541 jobs:

http://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=ColdFusion&l=

28,634 jobs:

http://www.indeed.com/q-ASP.net-jobs.html

2,771 jobs:

http://www.simplyhired.com/a/jobs/list/q-ColdFusion

29,232 jobs:

http://www.simplyhired.com/a/jobs/list/q-ASP.Net

Hell, you'd be better off as a main frame programmer than a ColdFusion Developer!

6,153 jobs:

http://www.simplyhired.com/a/jobs/list/q-Cobol

5,058 jobs:

http://www.simplyhired.com/a/jobs/list/q-CICS

You can invalidate my statements on this thread all you like but at the end of the day every single one of us here all care about the same thing, "Having a Job!" And statistics tell me that devs with .Net skills are far better off then devs with CF skils. From the available job statistics posted above it appears roughly 90% of those companies seem to think .Net is better than ColdFusion, maybe if they read this forum thread there will be more CF jobs? Maybe if they had you guys to point out to them that CF dominates .Net and explain why they will switch platforms and create more jobs for CF devs?

[Dave Watts]

"I'll take it that no matter what you will defend CF as the better platform over .Net just for the sake of arguement."

Well, no. I think a careful reading of what I've written does not lead you to that conclusion. CF has advantages over .NET, and vice-versa. As I've already mentioned, I work with J2EE and .NET and CF. Each has advantages and disadvantages. I merely pointed out that you mentioned some advantages of CF in the same breath as your statement that .NET is superior to CF.

But for most development cases, yes, I think that CF is a better choice than .NET.

"I find it kind of odd that Adobe does not even feature CF on thier website anymore! You have to dig into a long list of product offerings to find a small link to the CF pages. CF is Adobe's red headed step child and not likely high on their list of priorities these days. On the other hand MS invests heavily into their dev platforms rolling out new releases and features on a yearly bases."

I agree that CF is just one product of many for Adobe. But it does continue to be a profitable product, and Adobe rolls out new releases and features on nearly a yearly basis as well.

I find it kind of odd that you're spending all this time on the Adobe forums telling people to switch to .NET. Why bother? If I had an existing codebase in CF, why should I recreate it from scratch in .NET (and vice-versa)?

As for all that marketshare stuff you've listed, I don't see how that tells you anything about the suitability of a product for a use. Clearly, by that measure, Miley Cyrus is a better musician than Miles Davis.

Dave Watts, CTO, Fig Leaf Software

http://www.figleaf.com/

http://training.figleaf.com/

[Adam Cameron.]

Clearly, by that measure, Miley Cyrus is a better musician than Miles Davis.

Finally something worth reading on this thread. Obnly because it's Friday afternoon, 34min from pub time, and it made me laugh.

Cheers.

--

Adam

[j_beckton]

Dave I am not trying to get anyone to switch to anything, I started off by saying it was silly for someone to compare the two platforms with no experience in both.Yes I am defending .Net, The rest is just you trying to do battle with me on the subject. Your like my 9 year old son, you'll say anything no matter how rediculous just to argue. At first I thought you were going to offer some intellegent contributions to this topic but the more you post the more I realize your becoming increasingly biased regardless of how silly your point becomes.

Your the one that agreed that CF being easier makes it dominate .Net, within that context we should all be using static HTML rather than all this coding and scripting mess. Staitc HTML is by far the easiest and you can get a $6 an hour student to maintain it for you. And notepad is easier to use than Eclipse, so that mkes it better too right? I mean not having to know what all these menus and buttons do, plus you have all these configuration settings and what not to get it to work. ColdFusion is easier than Java so would you agree that CF dominates Java as well?

And if market share does not prove (general) suitability then what does exactly? 98% of business software (I'm talking about web based just to stay within context) all have the same general components; UI, Domain Model, Data Acess and a DBMS. With having several platforms that facilitate the development and execution of these components as a system your telling me that the platforms having the higher adoption (market share) does not indicate their suitability? You'll say anything just to argue.

[Owainnorth]

Quite sensibly, the OP seems to have bailed out some time ago.

j.beckton - I really do not get what you're trying to prove here. I've grown to know these other guys replying fairly well by now, and believe me none of them are any kind of CF evangalist - everyone's more than happy to suggest when CF is simply not the tool of choice - I've seen many posts where it's been advised against.

Your the one that agreed that CF being easier makes it dominate .Net, within that context we should all be using static HTML rather than all this coding and scripting mess. Staitc HTML is by far the easiest and you can get a $6 an hour student to maintain it for you. And notepad is easier to use than Eclipse, so that mkes it better too right?

Now you're being ridiculous for the purpose of trying to wind people up. Trolling, if you will. You cannot make dynamic websites with HTML, so that's a pointless statement.

Anyway I've spent two days in Maidenhead commissioning PDUs, and the pub is calling. Plus I've got to overwrite my Kinda Blue tapes with some High School Musical classics.

/thread

[tclaremont]

Of course there are more NET jobs than CF jobs. It takes more people to do the same amount of work in NET.

[j_beckton]

It's mind boggling that devs who have little (at best) knowledge of a  competing platform think they can compare it to their platform of  choice. I see these types of threads all over the web about how  ColdFusion dominates ASP.Net. Some typical comments I hear are that  ASP.Net is not a RAD platform or that it costs a lot more to build apps  with .Net than ColdFusion and typically the ones doing the posting  have never written a single line of C# or VB.net in their life.

Don't you think it's a bit silly listening to someone try to compare  something he knows nothing about to something they are very biased to?  The most obvious thing I see here is a bunch of ColdFusion Fans stroking  each other.

Rather than sound ignorant one needs at least some experience working  with ASP.Net before they can compare it to ColdFusion.  Build an app or  two with ASP.Net then you will have the right to compare it to other  technologies.

I have been working with ColdFusion on a daily basis for 9 years. Almost  a year ago, due to the declining ColdFusion market share I started  working with the ASP.Net platform so that I would have more job  opportunities in the future. Currently I build web apps exclusively  using ASP.Net 4 MVC 3 & C# with Visual Studio 2010. I have 2 medium  sized CF 8 applications that I have to support and on occasion I have to  go in there an write code, and I can tell you that I absolutely hate  it! In my opinion CF is not even in the same class as the latest .Net  platform and tooling. You guys don't know what your missing. Working  with a strongly typed language like C# is a little more work but the  benefits are 10 fold when it comes to maintenance and coding. Having an  IDE like Visual Studio alone is worth switching to .Net.

ColdFusion's features and tooling are primitive compared to what  Microsoft has to offer these days. Like it or not Adobe is being left in  the technology dust by Microsoft in regards to server side application  development tools and platform and soon to be client side development as  well i.e Silverlight.

[Dave Watts]

It's worth noting that no one in this thread has mentioned ASP.NET's RAD capabilities. That said, strongly-typed languages are generally less suited to RAD than loosely-typed languages. You yourself admit that working with C# is more work. And you depend on Visual Studio, which pretty much locks you into a specific development platform and environment; there are costs and drawbacks to this that you ignore.

As for Silverlight - why do you think it'll be more successful than HTML 5 or Flex? Adobe of course has development tools for both. What kind of mobile development can you do with Silverlight? What kind of mobile development can you do with Visual Studio (other than the obvious web applications)?

Dave Watts, CTO, Fig Leaf Software

http://www.figleaf.com/

http://training.figleaf.com/

[macandrew2012]

Good ColdFusion programmers, based on what I have seen, are more expensive per hour than net programmers. What this fails to acknowledge is that the increased speed of development results in a reduced number of billable hours. Therefore the total development cost of a project tends to be lower.  Mac Attorney jobs