ColdFusion Anyone?

[Websync]

I was wondering if anyone here has any experience with ColdFusion? I am thinking of purchasing some shopping cart development software that comes in three flavors – ASP, PHP, and ColdFusion. I wouldn’t have hesitated at purchasing the PHP version, but these guys are raving about ColdFusion so it just made me curious.

Even though there is a free developer’s download of ColdFusion 8 - it only works locally. Matt can correct me here, but it seems that you must then purchase the server side software, which is pretty expensive. I certainly wouldn’t want to send clients off to a special ColdFusion Host, which would be the only alternative.

So, what do you think? Is it something that is so great that it justifies not only the learning time involved, but also the expense?

[Matt]

Try asking bdominick

Perhaps he will see this thread, and perhaps I mixing up members, but I am pretty sure bdominick knows CF and probably has some insight for you.

You might try the PM option, and reference this thread to bdominick, so the public can see the conversation and opinions on ColdFusion.

Please do not keep the conversation in private! I know others have similar questions

EDIT: To search for a forum member, click the advanced search option. (Search > Advanced) When the screen loads, you will see a lot of options, but at the top, to the right of the regular keyword search, you will see a username search. Use that to find all posts by one of the forum members.

[Websync]

Thanks Matt - I will make sure the thread stays public.

[andychev]

I was wondering if anyone here has any experience with ColdFusion? I am thinking of purchasing some shopping cart development software that comes in three flavors – ASP, PHP, and ColdFusion. I wouldn’t have hesitated at purchasing the PHP version, but these guys are raving about ColdFusion so it just made me curious.

Do they by any chance sell coldfusion hosting? If they do that is why they will be pushing it on you as then you get tied into their hosting aswell (not many people can host coldfusion)

I have worked with coldfusion in the past and tbh it is nothing special. It is no better than php or asp. I inherited a site that was designed in it and it didnt take long to pick up the basics as will all programming languages they are similar in a lot of ways. However it does give a lot of drawbacks on hosting. Mainly because not many hosts provide coldfusion and when they do the packages are expensive an under spec'd. You are right in saying it needs some server side software, this runs into multiple thousands of pounds to purchase hence why not many hosts do it. If you have the option between the three, coldfusion, asp and php, i would choose php every time. However i wouldnt rule asp out of the question if this is your prefered language.

As an example with coldfusion hosting you would look at paying 10x more a month than you would with php or asp.

Also with php and asp you are more likely to find answers to any problems as more people use it.

[jmarcv]

I agree with andychev, but didnt want to say it first (g)

I too inherited a CF job on 2 occasions but never got good enough to see what the fanatics are raving about. And the 2 CF programmers I know are fanatics. So maybe it is really good, but....
As you pointed out, you are stuck with sending clients to a CF host, and worse --- if your client ever gets to the point they need a dedicated server -- ouch! Now THEY have to purchase it! And what if they grow beyond that? Its a per server, not a per domain license I believe?
Sure some would argue that if they get that big they can afford it, but people always seem to equate growth with success until they actually start growing and get a rude awakening when their costs tend to grow faster than their gross profits.

Back in my dBase days, I used a product that was far superior to dBase and all the other dBase clones out there. After much development of my libraries, come to find out the product was bought and killed. So, licking my wounds, I put up my white flag, cut my losses and moved to Foxpro, the microsoft version of dBase.

I would be a little leary of jumping on CF myself, because at some point I would be suspicious that Macromedia may decide to shelve it. It can't be generating that many sales, but I could be wrong.

I went PHP because of its wide user base. Its not going away any time soon.

And then I am a PHP fanatic so my views may be skewed.

[Websync]

Thank you both for your sharing your insights on ColdFusion. This pretty much validates what I was thinking. It really doesn’t sound like it is worth all the expense, especially if the license is per domain! I have only had to turn down one job that required ColdFusion, so I won’t lose sleep over it.

I may check out the developer’s version, just out of curiosity, but I wouldn’t waste my time or money specializing on something like this. PHP or ASP will be just fine.

I am not sure if they are selling hosting, but they are certainly involved directly with Adobe. You can see the shopping cart software here and a bit about the developers:

http://www.cartweaver.com/

Now, I am not soliciting this software. I haven’t even decided if I will pursue it. I am researching different shopping cart solutions and just recently came upon it. What I do like is the control it gives the designer to integrate it seamlessly into a website. I also like the fact, that it gives little to no client “admin” control over the design elements. It is a bit simplistic when it comes to features, but I have found that many small businesses don’t need much and keeping it simple helps them to stay focused - instead of wandering around breaking things!

[Websync]

Also with php and asp you are more likely to find answers to any problems as more people use it.

This is a really good point. I am not a seasoned programmer, mostly a designer, but learning out of necessity. It is important to have a strong support base.

[Websync]

Back in my dBase days, I used a product that was far superior to dBase and all the other dBase clones out there. After much development of my libraries, come to find out the product was bought and killed. So, licking my wounds, I put up my white flag, cut my losses and moved to Foxpro, the microsoft version of dBase.

I had a similar thing happen to me with Adobe Atmosphere. I was one of the early beta testers. I messed around with it for a couple of years, but got side tracked and just when I finally had the time to seriously start creating something - they killed the program. Luckily, I wasn’t one of the people who spent years developing “worlds”. They got hit hard.

[bdominick]

I was wondering if anyone here has any experience with ColdFusion?

Matt is right, I have many years' experience with CF -- in fact, it's the only platform I code web software from scratch on, though I sometimes install Perl or PHP scripts/apps for specific uses.

I am thinking of purchasing some shopping cart development software that comes in three flavors – ASP, PHP, and ColdFusion. I wouldn’t have hesitated at purchasing the PHP version, but these guys are raving about ColdFusion so it just made me curious.

If an app you're looking at comes in these flavors and you are already familiar with PHP, it's a no-brainer -- especially if it's OSS and you might need to hack it a bit. In my experience, CF has vast advantages over PHP, but price is of course not one of them.

Even though there is a free developer’s download of ColdFusion 8 - it only works locally. Matt can correct me here, but it seems that you must then purchase the server side software, which is pretty expensive.

This is true.

So, what do you think? Is it something that is so great that it justifies not only the learning time involved, but also the expense?

If you want to reduce your coding time -- or your dev team size -- by 2x - 3x, CF is worth the investment and learning time. Most people believe it is far easier to learn than PHP, and the scripting syntax is mindbogglingly simpler.

But that doesn't make it a good solution unless you want to start seriously coding in it. I would say that about any platform/language -- don't "learn" it if you're just going to dabble in it, and don't pay for an expensive platform unless it's going to pay off with other dividends, like the ability to offer unique packaged solution to your clients (unlikely with CF, since most types of apps are also avail in Perl/PHP/RoR/JSP/ASP, etc). The real reason to learn/run CF is to be able to code robust applications very rapidly. It's superior in most ways except it's expensive and it's not open source (if you care about that, which I don't).

[bdominick]

You are right in saying it needs some server side software, this runs into multiple thousands of pounds to purchase hence why not many hosts do it.

Not sure about this. Last I looked, the CF8 Enterprise server for Linux was $1200 USD. You don't need any other server-side software to run it -- at least nothing proprietary. I'm cheerily running CentOS / Apache / MySQL / ColdFusion / PHP on my GlowHost server right now.

As an example with coldfusion hosting you would look at paying 10x more a month than you would with php or asp.

That's just silly. Lots of places offer a robust shared hosting package for $20/month or even less. In fact, I offer it for $20/month...

Also with php and asp you are more likely to find answers to any problems as more people use it.

This may or may not be true. But remember, CF is produced by one of the largest software companies in the world (Adobe), so you can actually get support from paid professionals. And the community is pretty big and active, I've found. (It's funny that I'm saying this, because I typically find ALL software circles to be decidedly unhelpful when you need them most.)

The biggest difference with CF is that its originators and subsequent producers have had a mandate to make it easy to learn and rapid to code in -- in other words, there's a REASON some of us pay the $1200 for a license instead of struggling with PHP. Otherwise, CF wouldn't be on its 12th major release (it used to cost $4500/license -- something like 10,000 licenses were sold at that price).