ColdFusion Programming Methodologies?

lars-o-matic asks: "I work at a small (dozen people) company doing quite well building small-to-medium sized sites on the ColdFusion platform and the Fusebox architecture (which also has PHP and JSP versions). With our growth, increasing demand for Flash apps, new features of CFMX, and wanting to take on larger projects, we are researching methodologies. We like Fusebox3 for CF but worry it does not leverage the new object-like CF Components, web services, Flash remoting etc. and wonder if some kind of model-view-controller approach would help separate presentation from business logic. And there's structured documentation, re-usability, maintenance and yes, performance to consider. We're happy with the platform, which suits our project scale. We're not (yet) building a Google or an Amazon.com. It's methodology we need. How have the Slashdot CF users out there scaled from 2 to several coders and from little sites to larger ones?"

FB is it

[mgkimsal2]

For CF, FB is about it. Not that it's bad, but you don't really have anything else to point to re: a structured, methodical approach to web development. Mind you, what's there is pretty good, if still a bit sketchy in some areas.

It doesn't leverage whatever OO might be available in CF. It can't, because FB has a history, and the latest CF is, well, the latest. FB will eventually catch up - I've heard the core fusebox team is working on this issue. Timeframe to 'recommended' specs? Dunno. If you're sticking with CF, stick with FB, or come up with something else which suits you better. If you want to migrate to PHP, consider having us come out and give your developers some custom courses in PHP, suited to the topics you need to brush up on. (subtle plug, but what the hey!) :)

misuse of terms

[DevilM]

First, Fusebox isn't an architecture. Second, MVC isn't a methodology.

Any good methodology wouldn't be specific to a programming language. A good architecture for Web applications would also not be specific to a programming language. MVC is a design pattern that can be applied to be different architectures and programming languages. About the only specific thing you really need for CF is an application framework. Fusebox is an application framework; it just isn't very good.

Re:FuseBox? Blech.

[Tablizer]

i can't stand fusebox. it's an artificial construct attempting to impose order on what is, essentially, a scripting language. a powerful one (i've been building fairly large scale applications in it for ~5 years), but a scripting language nonetheless. it's just not MEANT to have that kind of structure/organization.

There is nothing wrong with scripting languages and scaling. However, it does depend on your design style. I try to use the database to manage over-all structure, and not so much programming code. More on this at:
[geocities.com]
http://www.geocities.com/tablizer/misclang.htm#d ef ine

The most annoying thing I found about ColdFusion was it's lack of first-class functions/subroutines and funky variable scoping rules. You can get subroutine-like structures using custom tags or the scripting syntax, but they are just not "full citizens". There are certain things you cannot do with or in them. Thus, one tends to end up with long "main" scripts. I want full-blown subroutines.

On the plus side, it has something that PHP and ASP do not have: named parameters.

I looked at fusebox a bit, but found it not very adaptable. It seemed to force pages into one of a predefined set of categories and I needed a finer control for the more complex pages which did not neatly fit into a category or spanned multiple.

Personally, I would totally overhaul the way many biz-centric web forms are typically handled in web scripting languages. There needs to be a "view buffer" IMO on the server side, and one talks to that view buffer instead of to HTML directly. The view buffer is then echoed at the end of the script task to the client (after being converted to HTML), but does not disappear. It would make development more GUI-like. Complex form validation and lookup fields would be much easier because you don't have to keep redrawing the HTML from scratch each time with subtle changes.

Microsoft's dot-net stuff comes a bit closer, but they admittedly convoluted their approach for speed purposes. This is a mistake for most biz apps. The best techniques and optimization profile for building eBay and building an intranet are very different. MS sold out to the benchmark wars IMO. More about this at:

http://www.geocities.com/tablizer/webstif.htm [geocities.com]

Re:CF Market Growth?

[Tablizer]

We usually also sell them on the fact that the development will cost less, since developer productivity is excellent with CF.

Although it is quick at basic stuff, IMO CF does not scale in complexity very well (for reasons given in other message).

Is there a large pool of CF development talent to draw on? (yes)

In this anti-tech economy, just about *any* language/tool will have plenty of people who used it before and are available.

It's just not a buzzword right now. Everyone is talking about Java and JSP.

Fricken Java. The greatest Bloat-A-Tron in modern history. Its the New COBOL. It makes developers *look* productive by the shear amount of code it takes to do something, and makes otherwise simple things into tangled webs of GOF-gone-mad spehgetti.

Can I hire a Saprano to thunk it off in a dark alley?

Re:Market?

[Tablizer]

I am an ardent ColdFusion programmer, by the way, and I have noticed, if anything, that use of ASP has dropped while ColdFusion is showing up in more and more sites as people discover just how easy and powerful it is.

I think one of its strengths is in how easy web masters can relate to it because of it's HTML-like syntax and its vendor-neutral database wrappers. A web master that has a lite programming background will find it much more approachable than server-side Java.

And, one of the reasons for ASP slowdown is that MS is *changing* everything to support dot-net. Existing ASP code will not work directly on dot-net and original ASP support will probably dwindle over time. Thus, rather than starting over with MS, they would rather start over with PHP, CF, or Java because they are pissed over MS's heavy-handed switcheroo.