
Ask HN: Why no Coldfusion love? - aepearson
Honest question here. Coldfusion was the first language I learned for web development...in fact, I&#x27;m pretty sure it was one of the first (and most popular) languages for quite some time period. Don&#x27;t quote me on that.<p>It&#x27;s come a LONG way in recent years, and of course the Railo project exists now...so no more paying license fees.<p>I&#x27;m curious - why do I NEVER hear modern day devs talking about it or using it?<p>In my experience it&#x27;s one of the most natural and fast (in terms of development time) languages I&#x27;ve ever used.<p>What am I missing here?
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scmoore
I wonder a lot of the same things. I just started picking up CF since that's
what we use at work. I consider it a character-building exercise but I don't
hold out hope that knowing it will bring me enjoyable work in the future.

It seems a lot like PHP in some respects -- there's a lot of hacky CF code out
there from the dark ages of web development, so maybe folks are just judging
the language by that. Or maybe it's the Adobe association. They've got kind of
an evil-empire vibe that I can't quite articulate (and could be imagining).

In 20 years, maybe CFML devs will be like those mythological COBOL folks who
got lured out of retirement with huge contracts to prop up awful old
enterprise systems once the kiddies stopped learning it.

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larrykubin
It was the first technology I learned for database driven web development in
2003 and I got plenty done with it at the time. It really made it easy to get
started since it was simple to write and understand. But when I changed
positions and stopped working in a "ColdFusion shop", I learned PHP and
Python, and haven't seen a need to check back in to see how ColdFusion is
doing over the past 10 years. I began freelancing, and people often want
things like Wordpress and Drupal customizations, or for you to install a
bulletin board, or want you to know Django or Flask. The demand for ColdFusion
developers just isn't there so that knowledge has mostly been erased from
memory.

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aepearson
I think if the average web developer, who had never tried CF, took a look at
how easy it is to interact with DBs in CF....they'd probably be a bit shocked
at how stupid easy it is. Definitely a strong point.

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macarthy12
I was heavily involved with CF back in the beginning version < 1, when it was
an Allaire product, and at the time is had some good points, comparing it to
perl, c or ASP of the time. But it has been blown away in nearly every segment
but other languages and frameworks. Only think it might be better at is
integration with flash, which no should care about...

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aepearson
I'm curious about which bits have been "blown away" compared to other
languages and frameworks.

I've done testing versus PHP for basically every sort of function related to
web development (for my workflow) and can't think of an instance where one was
better over the other in terms of speed...however CFML always won out in terms
ease-of-coding (example: CURL -vs- cfhttp, db queries, REST API development,
XML Parsing, etc.)

I can't say I've ever used Flash for anything on the web ever. I think it's
nice that CF makes it easy, real easy, but I have never needed to use flash
for anything.

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jpetersonmn
Our internet ticket/support site is built in CF. We can never get enhancements
or bugs fixed. We're just told that we don't have any cold fusion devs any
longer, etc... Instead of getting some things fixed up, unfortunately we're
moving to a salesforce system.

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rmason
I've given up worrying about it, think of CFML as our secret weapon OK?

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staunch
ColdFusion and XML are relevant. I have the proof:
[http://i.imgur.com/QvtEhG6.png](http://i.imgur.com/QvtEhG6.png)

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aepearson
HAHAHA, this is awesome.

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bdw429s
I talk about CFML all the time on my blog and Twitter. If you want to hear
more chatter about CF, I suggest you start talking about it more too :)

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aepearson
How can I find you on Twitter? Maybe I can join in ;)

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bdw429s
I'm @bdw429s on the tweety pages and my blog is codersrevolution.com It's just
as important that we're vocal outside of the little ColdFusion circles though.
For instance, attend a non-CF conference and talk to people about CFML. I do
:)

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aepearson
Full disclosure - because of some of the flack I've gotten as a CF developer
I'm actually a bit self conscious about it. I'm glad you spoke up here!

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bdw429s
That's not uncommon. I actually _like_ to tell people I program in CFML just
to start conversations :) For some CF apologetics, see my recent response to a
PHP programmer:

[http://www.codersrevolution.com/blog/cfml-good-
discussions-a...](http://www.codersrevolution.com/blog/cfml-good-discussions-
and-misinformation)

But to your larger point, non-CF devs don't talk about CF because 1) They
aren't familiar with it's recent state 2) The CF world isn't doing cool stuff
that catches their attention.

It's my belief that the more CF devs do cool (and modern) stuff with CF and
then talk about it outside of their little microcosm, the more visibility it
will get again and start to shake it's "legacy" label.

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davidgerard
At the time Cold Fusion was the thing that made PHP seem like a better idea by
comparison.

It'll have a lot of work to get away from that reputation.

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jasonkester
Sounds like you might not have been around back then. PHP was the thing you
used because Cold Fusion Cost $50,000 per server to deploy.

Apart from that, it really was the best of its breed (compared to PHP, classic
ASP, Perl CGI, or Java Servlets).

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davidgerard
Yeah, that was the main "better" feature :-)

And it turns out to have been the killer.

To bring back ColdFusion, you'd need some substantial useful tools written in
it. The way PHP support is buoyed along by WordPress, forum software, photo
site software, etc.

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bdw429s
I actually happen to think the tooling around CFML isn't all that bad. (The
link in one of my other comments elaborates more) Can you give me some
examples of tooling that CF doesn't have? I've found a lot of people just
aren't familiar with what's out there.

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davidgerard
No I can't, but that I can't is pretty much the problem I'm stating: that
people need to think of it as useful for things, not as "oh, that was that
template thing they used in the nineties." I'm talking about public image
here, not tawdry reality.

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aepearson
David, I can't help but to feel like you are making a REALLY good point. CF
only has a few outspoken advocates. Popular ones that I can think of I can
count on one hand.

It's definitely not "cool" among the startup culture, which seems to drive a
lot of the language popularity.

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davidgerard
So it needs lots of "Show HN: Cool thing I made with Cold Fusion" and first
comment lots of details as to why CF was _totally_ the right toolkit.

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yellowapple
Probably for the same reasons Flash and Dreamweaver aren't discussed at any
particular length around these parts.

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aepearson
I don't understand the parallel. You mean, being that the three are originally
Adobe products?

