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Coldfusion is “Unpopular” – I don’t care

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Re: Coldfusion is “Unpopular” – I don’t care

#61

Post by CydeWeys »

bdcravens wrote: post #54
CydeWeys wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The proprietary nature of it has really stunted it in the long term. Students aren't learning it in school because there's plenty of free (in all senses of the word) alternatives available, such as Python or NodeJS. I think the overall marketplace has shown pretty clearly that proprietary languages are doomed to insignificant market share at best, outright failure at worst. The writing was really on the wall when Mic…

CFML has had open source implementations for over 10 years. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ColdFusion_Markup_Language#H...

Too late. It was already dying a decade ago. Two decades ago might have made a difference.

Re: Coldfusion is “Unpopular” – I don’t care

#62

Post by bdcravens »

smacktoward wrote: post #21
badrequest wrote: post #14

> "Whilst y'all dimwits call us unpopular, we're busy running the world - from health and banking to government and Telco companies. Adobe's Evangelism Kit points out that Coldfusion is utilized by over 70% of the Fortune 100." this is unprofessional and doesn't help drive your point. You're arguing that "dimwits" perceive popularity as a good measurement of the value of a language, and then you point to the language…

The stronger argument is a few lines down: > The kit also points out that 70% of Adobe Coldfusion customers are still building new apps with CF - meaning that they still consider the platform viable for future expansion. If you believe that number (and I'm skeptical, but let's grant it for the purposes of discussion), that indicates that CF is still a going concern in most places that use it, rather than something co…

A lot of companies build CF apps internally but you’d never see

Re: Coldfusion is “Unpopular” – I don’t care

#63

Post by bdcravens »

CydeWeys wrote: post #61
bdcravens wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CFML has had open source implementations for over 10 years. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ColdFusion_Markup_Language#H...

Too late. It was already dying a decade ago. Two decades ago might have made a difference.

Wasn't speaking to that - only whether or not there are open source options. Being open source in and off itself seems to be a prerequisite, but it's more a matter of building a strong ecosystem (for example, imagine Ruby without Rails or node without npm), which never really materialized for CFML.

Re: Coldfusion is “Unpopular” – I don’t care

#64

Post by bdcravens »

tptacek wrote: post #8

A year or two ago I would have replied that ColdFusion is actually dead, and that using it or really, even, maintaining applications in it is irresponsible, because it's virtually impossible to secure. But I think it may have become so archaic that vulnerability researchers aren't really hitting it as much any more? Maybe you've weathered the storm, and CF will be safe to use from here on out? (Obviously: don't use C…

As the article indicated, there are new releases, both in Adobe's proprietary version and the open source version (Lucee). Foundeo is a company built around CFML security tools (scanners and a WAF), and they release lockdown guides that are kept up to date.

https://www.foundeo.com

https://www.adobe.com/content/dam/acom/en/products/coldfusio...

I think it's the CF applications that aren't being maintained that are the biggest risk (and there's plenty of those) - Adobe has indicated which version are EOL:

https://helpx.adobe.com/support/programs/eol-matrix.html

Re: Coldfusion is “Unpopular” – I don’t care

#65

Post by woah »

smacktoward wrote: post #21
badrequest wrote: post #14

> "Whilst y'all dimwits call us unpopular, we're busy running the world - from health and banking to government and Telco companies. Adobe's Evangelism Kit points out that Coldfusion is utilized by over 70% of the Fortune 100." this is unprofessional and doesn't help drive your point. You're arguing that "dimwits" perceive popularity as a good measurement of the value of a language, and then you point to the language…

The stronger argument is a few lines down: > The kit also points out that 70% of Adobe Coldfusion customers are still building new apps with CF - meaning that they still consider the platform viable for future expansion. If you believe that number (and I'm skeptical, but let's grant it for the purposes of discussion), that indicates that CF is still a going concern in most places that use it, rather than something co…

Not saying he's wrong, but this guy just basically rewrote the Adobe sales pitch with extra salt

Re: Coldfusion is “Unpopular” – I don’t care

#66

Post by akvadrako »

mhd wrote: post #60
pwnna wrote: post #3

Is there something we can do to the title to distinguish the Coldfusion language with nuclear cold fusion? The title seems applicable to both and even the first paragraph could be misleading if you assumed the latter.

Huh, is cold fusion still a thing? I thought it went the way of the bussard ramjet.

It says it's unpopular right in the title of the article.

Re: Coldfusion is “Unpopular” – I don’t care

#67

Post by JohnFen »

guitarbill wrote: post #33
bdcravens wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I definitely see better rates for CF contracting. I’m sure the same is true of FORTRAN.

Weirdly enough, this isn't necessarily true. Articles keep popping up about a shortage of FORTRAN or COBOL programmers. Yet when you look into it, they pay comparatively poorly... which explains the "shortage". I think this might be because there's still enough retired folks willing to contract a bit on the side. (And FORTRAN is not so bad.) On the other hand, you can definitely demand obscene hourly rates for old, c…

> Yet when you look into it, they pay comparatively poorly

Hmm. I know this is completely anecdotal, but the two software engineers I know who are COBOL experts also happen to be the best-paid software engineers I know, and not by a little.

Re: Coldfusion is “Unpopular” – I don’t care

#68

Post by JohnFen »

The popularity of a language does not tend to correlate well with how useful or good the language is for a given use, true. But it is not meaningless, either.

If a language is popular, then companies are more likely to use it, if only because the pool of engineers they can hire from is larger.

For example, two companies I've worked for have seriously debated shifting to Java. Not for technical reasons, but because Java programmers are easy to find, and often are cheaper. (Neither of them ended up making that shift, though.)

Re: Coldfusion is “Unpopular” – I don’t care

#69

Post by borkyborkbork »

vkhn wrote: post #25
bdcravens wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, there is an open source implementation. (We’ve run Railo/Lucee for years on our old CFML code)

You're right of course, but I'm betting that development didn't start with the open source implementation.

We've done quite a bit of new development with the Lucee open source engine. We switch back and forth between the open source engine and Adobe engine depending on if we want the remote monitoring that comes with Adobe CF.

Re: Coldfusion is “Unpopular” – I don’t care

#70

Post by borkyborkbork »

tptacek wrote: post #8

A year or two ago I would have replied that ColdFusion is actually dead, and that using it or really, even, maintaining applications in it is irresponsible, because it's virtually impossible to secure. But I think it may have become so archaic that vulnerability researchers aren't really hitting it as much any more? Maybe you've weathered the storm, and CF will be safe to use from here on out? (Obviously: don't use C…

When you say archaic are you saying that the language hasn't been kept up to date? (If so you would be wrong)
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