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Why ColdFusion?

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MicahDB

MicahDB

Programmer
Jul 15, 2004
96
US
This is a general question and I'm hoping someone here can answer it for me.

I've been doing a lot of work with banks as of late and all the ultra secure, biggest and best hosts for banks run ColdFusion. I'm wondering why. I'm not a CF guy, so I've had outsource the work (cutting into my profits).

Is there something specific about CF that makes it attractive to these secure hosts of financial instituitions over other platforms.

Any dialog would be appreciated...

Thanks,
Micah
 
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because banks are smart

maybe they think that CF is the easiest language to learn, the easiest language to code in, the easiest language to debug, the easiest language to optimize...

... and if they save money on the IT side, they can give more back to their clients, the depositors, and charge less to their other clients, the borrowers

:)

r937.com | rudy.ca
 
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Okay, your response begs the quesiton. Is it cheaper?

Off the top of my head I believe you have to buy ColdFusion server and I don't think it is cheap. There are plenty of languages that run on cheaper (if not free) platforms. So can it really be cheaper?

Is there an answer out there that has some substance to it. Surely there is an actual reason and not opinion, like the easiest language, easiest to debug, easiest to optimize. Granted I'm in a CF Forum, so I expect some slant towards CF. Just wondering if someone knew of a specific reason.
 
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There is no specific reason why one chooses CF over something else. Any programmer who favors one language over another can list features about that language, like we do here.

But your question about if CF is cheap, well, make no mistake, CF is not cheap (we're hoping one day it will become cheap when more and more people start using it). You *may* find hosting companies out there that CF plans starting at $100/year but at that price you only get Access dB, or a measly 50 MB of MS SQL/MySQL and not that much bandwidth.

Many of the banks, universities, government offices, etc use CF now mainly because of the pro's highlighted above. While it costs a lot to run and operate CF, you save that much on development costs. CF is 100000% easy to use and understand (if you know HTML tags then learning CF will be a breeze). CF supports pretty much any other OOP language, dB, security and is 100% faster then archaic languages like PHP and ASP.

Error catching in CF is also a breeze, and the error statements are very simple to debug. Some languages give cryptic error messages and then you need to debug the error message so you can fix the issue, not CF. <cftry>/<cfcatch> with <cfdump> gives you everything you need to know to address any issues.

But if you're looking for the holy grail on why CF is the best language to learn/use, there is none. Programmers choose a language they understand, love to work with, and flexibility it gives.

_____________________________
Just Imagine.
 
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Okay, that's an answer I can live I suppose. I was just curious if there was something specific (and I assumed it was security related) that lead these secure hosts to use CF. But if the answer is as simple as ease of deployment, etc., then I'll buy that.

Thanks...
Micah
 
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Allow me to give a more forceful answer.

You have to separate what programmers like to use vs. what makes the most business sense. Many programmers start off with PHP because it is free. They invest time and energy learning the syntax and form an emotional attachment. They then promote PHP (or whatever) out of self interest rather than what is best for the business or the client.

There are several things to look at when choosing a web development language but every one of them comes back to cost.

ColdFusion is a highly structured language. The tags encapsulate a lot of code you have to write out with many other languages (like PHP). This is denigrated by programmers (who I guess like to type) but there are several advantages from a business owner’s point of view. First, you can create code very quickly - much more quickly than anything else out there. Second, the code that is produced is more uniform than with other languages - it can be read easier and it more easily transitions from programmer to programmer. I'm not saying perfect - but easier. This greatly reduces maintenance costs and ease of transition between employees. Yes the server isn’t cheap. But if the project is any size at all then the reduced development time quickly pays for the cost of the server. Everything after that is money saved for the business owner. This is all assuming of course that the business is going to self host. If they are not, then the server cost isn’t even an issue. If they use third party hosting adding CF is generally only around $2-3 a month extra.

ColdFusion has no weaknesses.

Speed - Used to be an issue with high end sites for CF. However, CF 8 is fast enough so that unless you are getting billions of hits it is fine. For really major sites (things like Google) you would probably want to use Java. That is the only case I would use something other than CF.

Security - making your site secure is pretty straightforward with CF, especially compared to something like PHP which in my opinion is a convoluted mess.

OOP – there are some products out there like Django that can make life easier when it comes to making system wide application changes. However, using CF with a frame work like ModelGlue along with ColdSpring and Reactor can produce a product that is really object oriented. Django is cool – but as a business owner, especially if I am a Fortune 500 company, I want a proven, time test product, with the backing of a major company (Adobe). I’m not going (or should not) bet my company on a fringe product just because my myopic programmers, who live in geek land, want to use some toy just because they are familiar with it.

Power – CF is Java. So CF is as powerful as anything out there.

Scaleability – CF can cluster and scale up very large, very easily.

PHP – this is harsh but I think it is a toy for amateurs and people who worship at the alter of open source. CF is much faster to write and secure code is much easier.

Asp.net – before CF8 it made sense in some cases to use asp.net but now that CF can use .net objects natively I would avoid it (depending on the skill set of your programmers). The argument here is that it produces OOP code. The reality is it is flexible enough that it that it can produce great OOP code or pure crap – depending on the skill of the programmer. But again, producing web based content in CF is much faster and maintenance is much cheaper.

Ruby on Rails / Django. Viable – but honestly – kind of fringe - at least from a business owners view. I still think CF is faster for someone with good ModelGlue skills – based on what people tell me who have used both.

Bottom line, if I’m the business owner and I’m paying the bill to create and maintain web enabled software – I want to use ColdFusion – it isn’t just a choice – it is clearly the best choice.

And no - I don't work for Adobe :)





 
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Hey CTekMedia,

I agree with most of the stuff you say about ColdFusion. The only problem I have within the last 3 CF jobs (6+ years), I find that CF is not stable. I have never had a single week where JRun did not crap out. I never did any major programming in other languages you mentioned plus JSP, but I find this being a major problem. In my last work place, we had 12 load balanced CF servers, so the problem didn't cause as much headache. However, my current work place has only one CF server (yucks!), the server always has hick ups. I know CF8 has some new cool server monitoring tools. I will always wonder, if I put the same application on a JSP, or an ASP.Net server, will I have the similar issues?



 
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Thanks CTek! Well stated. That's the kind of thing I was looking for. As 'the business owner' in this situation and frankly a longtime Microsoft coder who is getting out of the codemonkey game and getting into managing teams of developers, I'm trying to be open-minded about the technology direction.

I'm an adobe fan from a Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign perspective and have done some CF work (some = very little).

This is great info.

Thanks!
micah
 
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FalconsEye - I have had CF6 and 7 servers run months and even years without a single issue. I don't think what you are running into is typical.

Are you locking when reading or writing session or application vars?

Anyone else here have issues along those lines?




 
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ColdFusion has just been awarded the Software & Information Industry Association < 's
prestigious codie award for "Best Web Service Solution".


Best Web Services Solution
Awards the solution that best connects disparate applications and data across an enterprise or between enterprises using web services standards such as SOAP, XML and WDSL. Includes Web services enabling technologies, infrastructure, middleware, system integration tools, etc.




 
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i wouldn't get overly excited about it

after all, they gave the "best database management solution" award to FileMaker Pro 9

[ponder]

r937.com | rudy.ca
 
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Ha. That's funny. Here I was ready to buy all the CF books I could find...now I question the credibility of the award just a bit.

Thanks,
micah
 
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Codie awards are voted on by both judges and members. That said, there were a lot of names that I don't know much about.

I have to say, reading the Filemaker Pro propaganda made me raise my eyebrows. It is positioned beneath Oracle and SQL Server but (again based on their marketing) it looks like it might be a really good product for most businesses. It appears to be reasonably powerful and extremely user friendly - a real relational DB that is easier to use than Access. It's all about money. Anyone here ever use it?




 
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There is a regional bias to what coders and biz owners use. In my area, it seems like many hospitals and medical-related orgs use ColdFusion.

My experience is that CF/CFML cuts down modeling and development time. We have more time to ponder "what" with less time needed for "how". My background was Perl/CGI (including sh/bash/ksh) before beginning PHP then landing my current CF position. My current employer used Tomcat/Solaris prior to its ColdFusion/Win2k3 setup.

Maybe one reason there are fewer frameworks out for CF (true?) because it's simply too easy to develop without them.

Glad to hear that CF scales well/better than some technologies.
 
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