I am a big ColdFusion fan, and I love the ColdFusion 8 features, especially the Ajax stuff. But being in the ColdFusion space you are inundated with Flex stuff, there is a lot of Flex at every ColdFusion conference, a lot of CF people are moving to Flex and writing blog posts and tutorials etc. Try finding a CF conference that doesn't have Flex path or topics.
Even the CF god Ben Forta is heavily involved in the Flex side of things these days.
Adobe and the general community is pushing Flex. Now there is a good reason for this, it's a good product, but the overwhelming push into the CF community is seeing a lot of CF developers move to Flex.
I have to say that the more Flex I do, the more I like it and the less I want to do in ColdFusion, mind you I do use ColdFusion for the back end. There are some things that Flex has that ColdFusion missed the boat on.
1. A nice ECMA scripting language ActionScript.
2. Full OO Capabilities.
3. A Fully integrated and good IDE.
Honestly, writing Flex / ActionScript code then going back to CFSET and GTE is a bit painful. So once ColdFusion programmers pick up Flex, how many of them will want to do Flex only and leave the ColdFusion for others.
8 comments:
Dale,
I think you described that Coldfusion is a backend language, and as you know it always has been and always will be.
As far as Coldfusion developers flocking to Flex, I disagree in someway they still use Coldfusion to do the backend stuff.
Coldfusion will always be just that, a backend server side solution to deliver content to the client side. Whether it be for Flex, Silverlight, Air or whatever others are using for their RIA's.
Perhaps you are correct, and that's why I asked it as a Question.
Perhaps Flex is the ColdFusion saviour.
While I now prefer coding in Flex, I can't imagine moving all the backend to something other than ColdFusion.
But still in a way I am being pulled away from ColdFusion. Something I may have considered doing in ColdFusion 8 with Ajax, I also now think about Flex.
They are complimentary technologies. A good development company will focus on providing rich front-ends with a back end that is built rapidly and is very flexible. The combination provides both.
In regards to CF developers flocking to Flex, Id say no there as well. Go to your CFUG and ask around and see how many people are even doing Flex, and how many of those are doing more Flex than CF. The percentage is small. I'd say 20% of our group has even touched Flex, and about 5% have even done anything significant with it.
Of course, the goal is get to get them to know and use both, because you can't built a good app without a front end and back end.
I agree the %'s are low, but people are moving, some completely, some partially, some playing and sure a big % of people who haven't touched it yet.
However it does get a lot of exposure within the ColdFusion market, so you can say that ColdFusion is likely to loose more programmers to Flex than other languages.
Wheather this is a good or bad thing, time will tell.
Dale,
I think those developers that are switching to Flex are seeking more of a career change. Flex is a front-end markup and scripting language while ColdFusion is for back-end application logic. Your specialist are generally a front-end or back-end developer. So for those developers leaving CF for Flex, I wouldn't worry about it because they were either:
- Looking for a career change
- Using CF for the wrong things and they were really front-end developers all along.
Hope this helps.
Dale - One area that you didn't touch on was that Flex works with a multiple of backend languages (eg, Java, PHP, .net). Adobe, even on their own website, pushes many of these backend technologies ahead of using ColdFusion. Just take a look at the Flex Developer Center. This is where I feel Flex may hurt ColdFusion. If you're a .net shop or a Java shop you can use Flex without having to change your backend. That's good for your shop and a very nice marketing point for Flex, but it does nothing for ColdFusion adaption.
Bruce
CF and Flex do very different things. Having said that, there IS some UI (HTML/JS, some Flex) generating funcionality in ColdFusion, but it's not for everyone.
What IS for everyone is the broad backend productivity, connectivity and one-stop-shop capabilities ColdFusion offers (PDF/RTF/Excel Generation/LDAP/FTP/HTTP/Reporting/Presentations/SMS/IM/LCDS/RDBMS/RSS/PDF Manipulation/PDF Form handling/Image/File/etc).
All best-of-breed and available to all front-ends.
And from Adobe.
I think you will find that a lot of people do both front and back end.
If they start using Flex for front end and do the CF for the back end, I was wondering if a % of those will eventually only want to flex.
The Flex / ColdFusion is a very good combo, hooks in nicely. And that's what i'll stick with.
And it's good thing for Adobe having Flex and the CF audience to tap into. I know without the constant attention that Flex gets in the CF space I probably wouldn't have looked at it.
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