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?"

Re:CF Market Growth?

[rednox]

I work at an even smaller shop than Lars, and we develop 90% of our web sites using ColdFusion.

For the smaller clients, they don't even ask what programming language we're going to use. We host most of the sites ourselves, but when a client has their own host, we are finding more and more ISPs waking up to CF and providing it.

A lot of our medium-sized clients are getting in to hosting their sites on their own boxes, and they are definitely interested in what software will be running the site. Once the benefits of ColdFusion are explained to them, they're happy to use it. The fact that the server software is so inexpensive doesn't hurt either. We usually also sell them on the fact that the development will cost less, since developer productivity is excellent with CF.

For the larger clients, I have to do a lot of talking. They sometimes run other sites/applications on the same web server, so they are very careful about what to install. That's one reason I'm very happy CFMX will now install on top of Java Application Servers like Websphere/etc. Larger clients also want to know how this will fit in with the scope of their larger development strategy. Is it a good choice for other applications? (usually) Does it run on our platform of choice (usually yes since it runs on windows, Solaris, Linux, etc.) Is there a large pool of CF development talent to draw on? (yes) Is high-quality tech support and training available. (yes)

On the other hand, although we can convince people to use it, nobody comes and asks for a site to be developed in CF. It's just not a buzzword right now. Everyone is talking about Java and JSP. We are moving towards JSP ourselves, but the environment needs to become more robust before we can make the switch. Coldfusion MX will help with this a lot, since it supports JSP as well.

You are doomed

[Hard_Code]

Gah. The web is just the WRONG paradigm (can I say that?) to use for complex interactive applications. When you purchase a car, does it come with a "page-based" interface metaphor? Are there "steering-wheel-emulation" frameworks for emulating a steering wheel on a piece of paper? Yet that is what all these MVC frameworks which attempt to emulate an interactive stateful application on the client side propose to do.

It's just wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong. The web is great for displaying PAGES, not applications.

For the complicated applications people are trying to shove on the web, we need a new solution. Something in between a standalone fat application, and completely server-rendered pages (web). Something like cURL, or XULUX, or (choke) XUL + scripting glue.

When you try to add complicated statefullness and interactivity to the page-based server-based metaphor, complexity scales exponentially...it's just crazy. Your app just becomes a Big Hairy finite state machine DSP.

Re:CF Market Growth?

[madstork2000]

What are the benifits of CF as opposed to an open and freely available tool like PHP or PERL? What do you tell potential customers to have them choose your CF development over another companies PHP development? Does CF support rival the near ubiquitous support for PHP and PERL? Do you feel at all locked into the proprietary software module (i.e. do you feel forced to upgrade when a new version comes out?) Do you feel confident security issues will be resolved in a timely manner (and what is the track record for CF security)?

I've used PHP and PERL for several years, I also have used proprietary web scripting tools like Progress WebSpeed, but since I am now working for myself full time, I'm interestedd to know what else is out there. And how it stacks up compared to the tools I am familiar with.

Thanks,
MS2k