recruters say "CF on the way out"? ... FFS! not FUD from them too?

[Barry Beattie]

- came across another recruter today (deliberatly not saying who) who
straight-up said that CF was on the way out.

and yet they (recruters) are looking for CF'ers and can't easily fill
the positions they've got on their books, converting PHP'ers to fill
positions, and in one case, getting apps made (for their recruting
business) in CFML.

sigh...

[M@ Bourke]

and your response to this person was??

[Barry Beattie]

to be honest Matt, playing it very gently, not wanting to bite the
hand that may feed me...

but then again, what _could_ I say that the obvious couldn't say better?

[M@ Bourke]

So... how about those rainbow suspenders, Pretty cool way to keep your pants up, eh?

[Andrew Scott]

yeah very good at keeping them that way too.

--

Senior Coldfusion Developer
Aegeon Pty. Ltd.
www.aegeon.com.au
Phone: +613 8676 4223
Mobile: 0404 998 273

[KC Kuok]

Hi Barry,

I think the general feeling is that CF in Australia is on the way out.
But for us that keep up to that on the global front know that it will
be here to stay. Unfortunately for us it seems CF is not being used as
extensively as it should Down Under. The shortage is due to a few
factors, most important of which is 1) there are not enough good CF-
ers to go around, lets be honest you can get away with spaghetti code
in CF, which is a double sided blade. 2) There are not enough
companies willing to take on new coders without any prior CF
experience and 'train' them... 3) Which leads back to business
decisions being made that it is easier (and cheaper salary-wise/
contract-wise) to carry out a project in PHP, as you have a big pool
of novice-intermediate PHP coders compared to CF coders.

I think for Australia at least, if Adobe 1) Does not enforce lower
pricing for CF hosting by their hosting partners 2) push CF to Unis 3)
review pricing strategies to gain critical mass, In the long run no
matter how great the forthcoming versions of CF is going to be, only
big MNCs will use it, and unfortunately their coding teams are usually
not based in Australia, hence CF will probably keep becoming sidelined
in Australia while others continue to grow.

Just my 2 cents :)

[Joel Cass]

I agree with most of that but on the topic of recruiters - they are just
sales people and I wouldn't take them seriously. They have a position to
sell to the client, not just you.

Say they were selling fridges. You can get the super duper models with
the ice machines and built in tv's and then you have your everyday
run-of-the-mill fridges. You come in wanting a super duper fridge but
all they have is run-of-the-mill fridges - they still want their
commission so they will try and sell you an everyday fridge.

Now replace everyday fridge with PHP and super duper fridge with
ColdFusion, and that explains why they are taking the "CF is on it's way
out" pitch.

But let's not go into this *monthly* debate again. Nobody knows if it's
on the way out. As long as people keep coding and doing good work (e.g.
maintainable projects) than it will be here to stay, whether Adobe
shelve the technology or not.

My two cents

Joel Cass

[Detect]

Isn't CF in a constant state of being "on the way out"?

[Michael Dinowitz]

For almost 13 years

[Andrew Scott]

Joel,

To some degree you are right about them being sales people, but at the end
of the day it's the product that they are selling and that comes from the
client and what requirements they are looking for.

We struggled to get decent J2EE developers, and even though there is an
abundance of Java developers out there. We told our recruiters specifically
what we wanted.

Andrew Scott

Senior Coldfusion Developer
Aegeon Pty. Ltd.
www.aegeon.com.au

Phone: +613  9015 8628
Mobile: 0404 998 273

[Detect]

C'mon guys,

If CF was popular there would be no excuse to give to my employer to
send me to MAX or CFUnited.

Let's keep the myth going.

[Andrew Scott]

Agreed,

I had this debate with Sean Corfield awhile ago when I got back into
developing Coldfusion, after a 2 year break. And the first thing that I had
noticed along the way was that even though as pointed out, Coldfusion can be
gotten up and running very quickly.

There is not enough who actually are software engineers, meaning that it
places a bigger hole in the market.

It is a catch 22 for most of the people who do pick up Coldfusion and find
how easy it is, and find that they are better off along the php, or .Net
route.

I sometimes sit back and watch a project go through its DLC here, under java
and find that even though it gets delivered on time and budget. The amount
of work sometimes done for the project, and think how quickly it could have
been done in Coldfusion.

But that is the reality, I doubt we will ever look for a Coldfusion
developer to come on board. Because of the fact we are Java primarily, with
a few clients still being maintained in CF. Only because we have gone
enterprise, and the tools we use can't be fitted into Coldfusion in its
current shape.

Andrew Scott
Senior Coldfusion Developer
Aegeon Pty. Ltd.
www.aegeon.com.au
Phone: +613  9015 8628
Mobile: 0404 998 273

-----Original Message-----
From: cfau...@googlegroups.com [mailto:cfau...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf
Of KC Kuok
Sent: Tuesday, 8 April 2008 9:25 AM
To: cfaussie
Subject: [cfaussie] Re: recruters say "CF on the way out"? ... FFS! not FUD
from them too?

[Andrew Scott]

It isn't a myth, it has been this way for almost 12 years that I have been
developing Coldfusion for.

But the reality is that it will never go away, it has its place and that is
what keeps most of us happy.

Andrew Scott
Senior Coldfusion Developer
Aegeon Pty. Ltd.
www.aegeon.com.au
Phone: +613  9015 8628
Mobile: 0404 998 273

-----Original Message-----
From: cfau...@googlegroups.com [mailto:cfau...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf
Of Detect
Sent: Tuesday, 8 April 2008 10:08 AM
To: cfaussie
Subject: [cfaussie] Re: recruters say "CF on the way out"? ... FFS! not FUD
from them too?

[barry.b]

> For almost 13 years

Here! here! Michael. exactly the case. Tales of the demise seem
grossly exagerated...

I've got a few different skills under my belt, but I have absolutely
no embarrisment that CF is featured amongst them**

in fact, thanks to things like AIR and Flex, with support of the LCDS
products, Adobe are finally starting to get a solid technology
"stack" (top to bottom) happening. And CF riding on the coat-tails.

(I overheard a PHP'er complaining that all the Flex examples were only
written for CF - they obviously didn't look hard enough but also
didn't like the shoe being on the other foot...)

I can appreciate people moving larger apps to Java and whatnot but
geez I feel much safer with CF skills than, say, Progress or Delphi
or ...

maybe I should have taken M@'s suggestion and pointed out the irony of
the situation...?

"I think the general feeling is that CF in Australia is on the way
out.
But for us that keep up to that on the global front know that it will
be here to stay."

I'm suggesting it's only a "feeling", not being realised by the actual
situation.

but I do (first hand) see some shifts in the teaching of I.T generally
and Digital Media specifically. Enrollments in Australia are falling
and yet they're expanding (bigtime) in Europe (and the US if FullSail
is any guide).

meh, I'm not worried. the world is full of Chicken Little's...

b


** obviously not needing a spell checker isn't one of them...




On Apr 8, 9:55 am, "Michael Dinowitz" <mdino...@houseoffusion.com>
wrote:

> For almost 13 years
>
> On Mon, Apr 7, 2008 at 7:53 PM, Detect <det...@gmail.com> wrote:
>

> > Isn't CF in a constant state of being "on the way out"?- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[AJ Mercer]

Have a listen to the podcast on
    http://coldfusionweekly.com/

    -> Vince Bonfanti - Open Source BlueDragon
    -> coming soon Gert Franz from Railo Technologies

They have a few things to say about promoting CFML to the web community at large.

--

AJ Mercer
Web Log: http://webonix.net

[Dale Fraser]

I recently advertised a junior tester role.

 

129 applications, this is junior people with no real experience perhaps 1 year a uni degree.

 

I didn't see ColdFusion listed as skill on a single one.

 

Of all the people we have interviewed, we asked them about ColdFusion and they all said they have heard of it but never used it.

 

One guy even said, hasn't that been replaced by .NET

 

ColdFusion isn't going anywhere soon, but it has some serious issues with visibility and promotion. And after all these years, I have come to the conclusion that Adobe will never address these issues in a significant enough way to make a difference.

 

Will be interesting to see if the Open Source BlueDragon makes a difference.

 

Regards

Dale Fraser

http://learncf.com

 

From: cfau...@googlegroups.com [mailto:cfau...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of AJ Mercer
Sent: Tuesday, 8 April 2008 10:52 AM
To: cfau...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [cfaussie] Re: recruters say "CF on the way out"? ... FFS! not FUD from them too?

 

Have a listen to the podcast on

[Patrick McGLYNN]

Andrew,

I not sure if anyone here has tried it yet but where you say:

 "But that is the reality, I doubt we will ever look for a Coldfusion

developer to come on board. Because of the fact we are Java primarily, with
a few clients still being maintained in CF. Only because we have gone
enterprise, and the tools we use can't be fitted into Coldfusion in its

current shape."

I say what about BPEL (Business Process Execution Language)?

It is designed just for this purpose, that is plugging in external services, sometimes legacy.

Check this link out [online] http://www.adobe.com/devnet/livecycle/articles/bpel4people_overview.html

One of the points at the bottom of the page "Portability - The ability to take design-time artifacts created in one vendor's environment and use them in another vendor's environment."

I think that coldfusion is getting ready for a take of with agile development in mind, although people do need to be trained with the knowledge of the tool at Universities.

But keeping in mind coldfusion is just an abstraction of Java which is taught.

Cheers Patrick McGLYNN

[Andrew Scott]

Patrick,

 

It still will not happen.....

 

 

Andrew Scott
Senior Coldfusion Developer
Aegeon Pty. Ltd.
www.aegeon.com.au
Phone: +613  9015 8628
Mobile: 0404 998 273

 

 

 

From: cfau...@googlegroups.com [mailto:cfau...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Patrick McGLYNN
Sent: Tuesday, 8 April 2008 4:30 PM
To: cfau...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [cfaussie] Re: recruters say "CF on the way out"? ... FFS! not FUD from them too?

 

Andrew,

[MrBuzzy]

Maybe it's the recruiters that are 'on the way out' of the CF world ;)

 

I mean, with such a good (but small) community here and OS maybe recruiters don't add as much value as they do for the Java or .Net market. Plus, does a recruiter really know how to recognise a good CF developer? I'm not sure.

[Scott Barnes]

I'll be upfront and honest and you can take this however you want to.. but.. I've in the past been seeing a healthy amount of requests on folks wanting:

 

- How do I migrate from CF to ASP.NET

- How do I retrain CF folks to ASP.NET

- Barnesy, hook me up with some .NET jobs..

 

(thus my butt kicking a while back for daring to ask whom wanted help with this?)

 

These are from customers / friends in the CF biz, does this mean CF Is doomed? no (doubtful).. but its what I'm seeing...I think the skill shortage in Australia is what's driving this perception, my advice is to get back out there, hit the pavements and start stimulating the CF Community again. I state this as I think a large bulk of folks have moved onto Flex development or migrated to another language (Java, .NET, Ruby and PHP are big in Australia).

 

 

-

Scott.

[M@ Bourke]

Just in case anyone is new to the list, Scott is a .net product evangelist at Microsoft.

of cos he is most likely unbiased and posted his last comment via an iPhone :P

[CyberAngel]

Actually he is now a product manager for Silverlight…..

 

No more evangelism for Scott J

 

 

 

From: cfau...@googlegroups.com [mailto:cfau...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of M@ Bourke
Sent: Tuesday, 8 April 2008 8:03 PM
To: cfau...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [cfaussie] Re: recruters say "CF on the way out"? ... FFS! not FUD from them too?

 

Just in case anyone is new to the list, Scott is a .net product evangelist at Microsoft.

[M@ Bourke]

Sorry yeah forgot, he now owns the whole .Net platform :)
and will soon become head of the new small department they'll have within the Microsoft basement, new little department will be called Yahoo!!, just to be cool MS will give Yahoo! 2 "!'s" so its Yahoo!!

[CyberAngel]

*LOL*

 

 

From: cfau...@googlegroups.com [mailto:cfau...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of M@ Bourke
Sent: Tuesday, 8 April 2008 9:05 PM
To: cfau...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [cfaussie] Re: recruters say "CF on the way out"? ... FFS! not FUD from them too?

 

Sorry yeah forgot, he now owns the whole .Net platform :)

[Barry Beattie]

it's probably worth remembering that Barnes has cut CF code a lot
longer than he's been wearing an MS-logo'd jacket.

so when he says

"...I think the skill shortage in Australia is what's driving this
perception, my advice is to get back out there, hit the pavements and
start stimulating the CF Community again."

there's a fair bit of thought behind it.

you can't beat "vibe" for creating groundswells and getting a scene
happening. Whether it's "Kevin07" (or "It's Time" back in 1972) or the
Pepsi taste challenge or the promo for the Blair Witch Project, if you
haven't a vibe you just don't exist these days.

that thread I threw up this afternoon about "cfqueryparam 101"? - it
was an Ad (a very subtle one) advertising one of the many things that
the local user group can do to help people become better at their
craft, keep their skills up, have longeviy in the industry, etc.

Advertising the local CFUG for tonight (not expecting one extra person
to show, but at least it gets the name out there). Also pointing out
that there's CFUG's all around the region. From Andrew Mercer in Perth
to David Harris in NZ and people like Steve Onnis, Mark Mandel, Chris
Velevitch, Kai Koenig, Darren Tracey - Dale, you're in there helping
too.

you can stumble across all sorts of interesting things at CFUG's -
tonight for example it was about CF, LCDS and data management,
presented by a guy in the U.S who was up at 5:00am to present.
http://quetwo.wordpress.com/2008/04/07/speaking-at-the-queensland-cfug-tomorrow/

not your cup of tea? well, what is? and what are you going to do about it?

People who don't contribute to the CF community shouldn't be too quick
to bitch and moan about the lack of CF profile.

two ways to help:

- actively drive the agenda of your local CFUG: don't just be a
passenger, but help set the direction to what you think would make it
better - and then help make it happen.

- contribute to open-source apps/code. Ray Camden's blogCFC is almost
ubiquitous but it's still not the "foot in the door" that PHPNuke
created for PHP (or many of the other PHP-based apps). FarCry's there
waiting to be used, etc.

[Dale Fraser]

I use a site still called

www.experts-exchange.com

It is a big forum with different areas you can ask questions and help others
and you earn points.

Earn enough points you get a ranking and they send you a T-Shirt.

Now I'm top 10 all time in all CF categories, that is a result of how long I
have been on it and I occasionally answer questions, but I'm not hard core.

What is interesting, is that the people who are hard core in the CF areas
people with 500k or 1m points have vanished over the past couple of years.
Now they haven't stopped using the site, they have just gone into different
areas, you can click them to see where they are posting / answering
questions now.

So I don't work for Microsoft, and this is just me relaying the stats of
that site, but I can tell you that a lot of them have gone to .NET

For example (not sure if you can see this without a login)
http://www.experts-exchange.com/Software/Server_Software/Web_Servers/ColdFus
ion/

The ColdFusion area, all time ranking mrichmon (1,346,158 points)

Is now mainly posting in C# and ASP.NET areas. This trend is repeated for a
lot of ex major ColdFusion people on this site. So there is defiantly merit
in what Scott has said, I have seen it here and other places.

With that said, while I think there is a trend of CF people moving to .NET.
It's not something I would consider unless I thought that Adobe were going
to drop ColdFusion, as .NET compared to ColdFusion is just hard work. Even
Scott might agree with that.

ColdFusion is a good product with a bad rep and historically bad marketing.

Regards
Dale Fraser

-----Original Message-----
From: cfau...@googlegroups.com [mailto:cfau...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf
Of Barry Beattie
Sent: Tuesday, 8 April 2008 11:10 PM
To: cfau...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [cfaussie] Re: recruters say "CF on the way out"? ... FFS! not FUD
from them too?

[Michael Dinowitz]

<totally self serving suggestion>
You know, having a full set of Fusion Authority Quarterly Update on your shelf for people to see might have a positive effect. :)
</totally self serving suggestion>

We've been thinking about trying to set up a fulfillment center in Australia to ship the books out to people locally rather than send them from the US. Alternatively, we could give the CFUGs a discount for a mass order for their members. One thing we've always said is that books on a shelf and/or in a store can do more for a language than many arguments.

[Gary Barber]

<delurk>

Problem with all these suggestions are they are preaching to the
choir. Coldfusion needs to be seen to be a viable product OUTSIDE of
the Coldfusion community.

</delurk>

--
Gary Barber
Freelance User Interaction Designer/ Information Architect

Web: radharc.com.au
blog: manwithnoblog.com

[barry.b]

OK Gary - I'll bite: how?

everyone else shoosh (at least for a sec - please?) - I want to hear a
fresh perspective, considering a bunch of us has thrashed this point
many times...

> > than many arguments.- Hide quoted text -

[Gary Barber]

<summary of blog post>

Would I recommend Coldfusion to someone new in the industry, well
frankly no. Realistically it has no future (puts on flame proof suit).
So what can you do about it.

DON"T be complacent.

Consider this besides WebDU and your CFUG. How many presentations have
people done on Cold fusion. How many kill sites where highlighted as
Coldfusion sites.

I've not heard of any, so if I'm wrong tell me. But people you need to
get outside of the user groups back into the rest of the web industry.
If you really love this product and it's more than a day job get out
there promote it to others. The rest of the web community hears about
RoR, PHP and .Net all the time.. Coldfusion... - "oh thats that dead
language".

It's a PR problem.

Okay you say "but I have all the work I need, why should I bother at
all". Well you can sit around with all your work, but in a few years
the work level will start to drop and at that stage it will be terminal,
Coldfusion will be dead. The reason you have lots of work, simple
others have left, and you are picking up their slack.

Adobe are not going to help you. Australia is a small market, if the
Coldfusion numbers dropped in Australia but remained the same in the
US. I don't think Adobe HQ would really be that concerned. Lets be
very realistic here. Adobe doesn't make a lot of money out of Coldfusion
in Australia, it makes more out of CS3 etc.

Adobe guys, lets be real here, you don't have the budget. So if Adobe
isn't going to help, what can you do.

Encourage the installation of the CF opensource alternatives. Okay they
are not 100% cf8, but it is a good stable platform for cfml development
that is very low in cost. Stop being purists. CF has to Open source in
Australia to help it survive.

Also is you get industry to push the CF opensource alternatives, and
educational institutions will follow suit and train graduates in CF.
Adobe (US) may even wake up at some point.

So what can you do now. We email, phone, IM a web professional group
that is not your CFUG and go organise to do a presentation of your
latest CF project.

I would love to see this happen, but a little part of me doesn't think
you guys can do it. Prove me wrong.

--
Gary Barber
Freelance User Interaction Designer/ Information Architect

Web: radharc.com.au
blog: manwithnoblog.com

[CyberAngel]

Hmmmm...

I think that Geoff, Mark and a few others are always doing presentations on
Coldfusion related products.

As for recommending I would think it will depend on the situation and the
project.

As for Killer sites, yeah well I agree...

But I will say what Scott Barnes said, even though it is easier said than
done. But he is right.

Regards
Andrew Scott

-----Original Message-----
From: cfau...@googlegroups.com [mailto:cfau...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf
Of Gary Barber
Sent: Wednesday, 9 April 2008 7:25 PM
To: cfau...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [cfaussie] Re: recruters say "CF on the way out"? ... FFS! not FUD
from them too?

[Gary Barber]

Okay I'm not privy to where Geoff and Mark are doing these
presentations. Is it to Coldfusion people. If so it's a waste of time.

I've not hear of them and I do keep my ear to the ground so to speak in
relation to Coldfusion news outside of the Cf community.

Besides on or two vocal advocates I have heard nothing!

Do nothing and it won't effect me. But it will effect you guys. Sorry
to be all serious here.

--
Gary Barber
Freelance User Interaction Designer/ Information Architect

Web: radharc.com.au
blog: manwithnoblog.com

[Barry Beattie]

well, Geoff Bowers is doing smart evangelising (IMHO) with FarCry.

the leverage there is to get people interested in the FarCry
application framework - and the CMS as a killer app to get the
framework in the door.

just because it uses CF is not really the focus - building powerful
applications is.

this is pretty much the same model that saw a large spreading of PHP -
it wan't the "personal home page" concept - it was the "runtime" that
made PHPNuke or Wordpress run on people's machines.

thing edge of the wedge stuff

I'm seeing exactly the same thing with Sharepoint and MOSS (Microsoft
Office SharePoint Server) - sure they're products, but if you want to
add/modify it, you'll be doing so in .NET.

we need more killer apps.

[Robin Hilliard]

Funny... I'm interviewing a promising CF candidate this afternoon in Sydney and flying to Melbourne tomorrow to interview two more.  I'm working with experienced recruiters and they didn't seem to have too much trouble finding at least a few CF developers at short notice.

It's probably a case of sour grapes from the recruiters - they must have dreams where you say "What! Replaced by .NET?  Oh, well then let's hire every .NET developer you have at outrageous rates, and I'll give you a huge tip for your deep, albeit untutored sagely insight into the future of web technologies".

Actually I've found a leaked script from a recruiting agency that shall remain nameless, and I quote from pages 159-162:

IF THE CLIENT SAYS:

C:

...

C++:

...

COBOL:

...

ColdFusion:

OH! Wasn't that replaced by (d20):

1) .NET

2) Java

3) .NET Again

4) JSP

5) ASP

6) PHP

7) .NYET (Russian Developer Edition)

8) WebObjects

9) Ruby on Rails

10) Vista

11) Perl CGI scripts

12) Amazon Mechanical Turk and Russian HTML designers

13) Office 2008

14) Silverlight, Barnes Memorial Edition

15) Dreamweaver

16) .NET XXL Crinkle Free

17) MS-Linux

18) Frogger

19) The Windows Start Menu

20) .NET and the Kangaroo

CORBA:

...

Delphi:

...

Cheers,

Robin

	ROBIN HILLIARD Chief Executive Officer ro...@rocketboots.com.au RocketBoots Pty Ltd Level 11 189 Kent Street Sydney NSW 2001 Australia Phone +61 2 9323 2507 Facsimile +61 2 9323 2501 Mobile +61 418 414 341 www.rocketboots.com.au

[Mark Mandel]

Garry -

I'd love to go out to other UG's or such and do some sort of talk
(albeit I don't know how interested they would be in Transfer, as that
is my main talking point).

Did you have any in mind?

Mark

On Wed, Apr 9, 2008 at 11:39 PM, Gary Barber <gary.ba...@gmail.com> wrote:
>

--
E: mark....@gmail.com
W: www.compoundtheory.com

[Gary Barber]

Mark

If you haven't already I would be looking at the barcamps, web standards
groups etc or any events that bring the groups together.

CF needs more people like you and Geoff in Australia

Hat tip to Geoff for putting Farcry out there, which still needs to be
promoted.

--
Gary Barber
Freelance User Interaction Designer/ Information Architect

Web: radharc.com.au
blog: manwithnoblog.com

[barry.b]

just getting back to Robin Hilliard's point about recruiters having no
problem finding quality candidates for him...

... that may be specific to certain areas (Sydney, Melbourne) or
sections of the market (enterprise, RIA's). Besides, Sydney and
Melbourne are magnets from other areas of the country anyway. I
personally know of 3 CF good people who have moved to Sydney from
Brisbane.

According to a recruiter I spoke to this morning, one client on his
books who is just about to throw the towel in on CF and get his apps
re-written in another language - he can't find the CF developers to
maintain and extend it. Darren Tracey (QLD CFUG manager) sounded alarm
bells about this over a year ago (where the "new blood" was coming
from) - but it's typical free-market forces and there's not a lot that
can be done about it, even from the educational/student (supply) side.


do CF a favour - poach a PHP coder today...

[AJ Mercer]

So do you think if you showed a PHP developer a free CFML engine they would jump ship?

Or are they a part of them mob questioning CF's longevity??


Or should we be canvasing the new web developers - those that not know any different / better?


Should UGs run a meeting 'An introduction to CF for PHP developers'

Should we poach from other disciplines too?
 - RoR => they are more fanatical the CF developers ;-)
 - ASP
 - .Net => are they a lot cause?
 - JSP


And where do CFML Engine providers fit into all of this?
Should Railo and New Atlanta be taking on this challenge??

I think Adobe are happy looking after the enterprise end of the market, in which people don't respect 'free' application server products
They can afford to pay top dollar for skilled people or pay to train them up.


I was hoping Flex and AIR would mention CF a bit more.
But I guess Adobe don't want to give the impression that it is the only option and scare of the PHP/.Net market.



more questions than answers, sorry :-(

[Joel Chia]

Isn't that how cults recruit members? by preying on the poor vulnerable blank slates who don't know any better :D

---

From: cfau...@googlegroups.com [mailto:cfau...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of AJ Mercer
Sent: Thursday, 10 April 2008 2:09 PM

To: cfau...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [cfaussie] Re: recruters say "CF on the way out"? ... FFS! not FUD from them too?

 <---Snip---> 
 

 Or should we be canvasing the new web developers - those that not know any different / better?

 <---Snip--->

 

 

 

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[Kay Smoljak]

On Thu, Apr 10, 2008 at 12:08 PM, AJ Mercer <ajme...@gmail.com> wrote:
> So do you think if you showed a PHP developer a free CFML engine they would
> jump ship? Or are they a part of them mob questioning CF's longevity??
> Or should we be canvasing the new web developers - those that not know any
> different / better? Should UGs run a meeting 'An introduction to CF for PHP developers'
> Should we poach from other disciplines too?

You don't need to convert anyone. And if you try you will more than
likely fail. This is not a freaking religion. Someone telling me to
convert to a different development platform is no different from the
Mormons knocking on your door.

What CF developers should do - and those of you from WA will know that
I harp on about this a lot, to almost no effect - is participate in
their local industry communities. People who think CF is dead often
think so because CF developers are nowhere to be seen. They only go to
CF events and aren't interested in anything else. They don't
participate in BarCamps and WebJams and PodCamps and WSGs and Port80s
and AWIA events and WIPA events and blogger's meetups and *TUBs or
anything else where gatherings of PHP, Rails, JSP, ASP and plain old
web developers and *gasp* designers, sales people, business owners,
vendors, suppliers and recruiters congregate. If there's a healthy
contingent of CF developers at these events then CF must be thriving,
right?

BUT... people should go to these events not to push a CF barrow, but
because it's fun and will make them a better developer, networker,
contractor, business owner or whatever.

K.

--
Kay Smoljak
business: www.cleverstarfish.com
coldfusion: kay.smoljak.com
personal: goatlady.wordpress.com | heapsbad.com

[Dale Fraser]

I never have trouble finding people, there are two things you can do.

 

1.  Advertise and hire someone

2.  Hire a keen junior person and train them

 

I do both here, works out well.

 

As for promoting CF, this isn't going to solve anything. There are three reasons CF isn't as popular the way I see it, but Adobe (and the community) do seem to want to address it.

 

1.  It's not fully OO, more OO stuff would give it a better chance at being taught by schools etc.

2.  It's not ECMA style scripting, you have to write tags and developers hate that if they have come from other langagues.

3.  Its not Free

 

So as a young developer you could use.

 

PHP, .NET or Java (or many others)

 

Which are free, readily available, lots of forumns etc, you can write OO code if you choose and in a familiar syntax.

 

Or you can choose to do something completely out of left field and pick something that is the opposite of the above. Its not that complex, if you were a young developer with those options, its an easy decision, CF is NOT in the running.

 

PS: I don't want to hear the yeah but CF is better, or easier, or quicker to code. I know all that, but the developers when they are young or the unis when they pick their topics, discount it for those three reasons. Die hard CF'ers will say making CF more OO or adding full scripting support is bad for the product as that's not what it's about. Well I say it's about time that Adobe joined the masses in making a ECMA, OO, Free languages. And they already know this obviously, and they have it already, it's called Action Script.

 

Regards

Dale Fraser

http://learncf.com

 

From: cfau...@googlegroups.com [mailto:cfau...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of AJ Mercer
Sent: Thursday, 10 April 2008 2:09 PM
To: cfau...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [cfaussie] Re: recruters say "CF on the way out"? ... FFS! not FUD from them too?

 

So do you think if you showed a PHP developer a free CFML engine they would jump ship?

[Gary Barber]

Kay Smoljak wrote:
> <snip>

>
> What CF developers should do - and those of you from WA will know that
> I harp on about this a lot, to almost no effect - is participate in
> their local industry communities. People who think CF is dead often
> think so because CF developers are nowhere to be seen. They only go to
> CF events and aren't interested in anything else. They don't
> participate in BarCamps and WebJams and PodCamps and WSGs and Port80s
> and AWIA events and WIPA events and blogger's meetups and *TUBs or
> anything else where gatherings of PHP, Rails, JSP, ASP and plain old
> web developers and *gasp* designers, sales people, business owners,
> vendors, suppliers and recruiters congregate. If there's a healthy
> contingent of CF developers at these events then CF must be thriving,
> right?
>

What a great idea. I can't see that people have anything to lose.
Maybe I should be doing just that ;)

If only people just chat over a beer and wax on about their latest
project, it all helps.

<on soapbox>
Stop being mushrooms people get out and go to a new event this month
where you don't know anyone!
</on soapbox>

> BUT... people should go to these events not to push a CF barrow, but
> because it's fun and will make them a better developer, networker,
> contractor, business owner or whatever.
>

[Kay Smoljak]

On Thu, Apr 10, 2008 at 1:13 PM, Gary Barber <gary.ba...@gmail.com> wrote:
> What a great idea. I can't see that people have anything to lose.
> Maybe I should be doing just that ;)

Hahaha - yeah Gary, stop being such a recluse!
See you at PTUB[1] tomorrow night?

[1] http://ptub.blogspot.com/2008/04/ptub-3-god-save-queens.html for
any Perth people

[Chad Renando]

I now post here as often as this topic comes up, which is now about
every 2 years. At least it is migrated from the ".NET vs. CF" to "CF
is dead".

CF developer from way back due to starting my career at what was then
a CF studio, I am now out of coding and now doing studio Production
Management. In the Brisbane recruitment climate, both my clients and
I are challenged to find CF developers on any sort of notice, much
less developers in general. While my inherent anti-establishment
nature held me back from the Microsoft route, it is refreshing to have
available an end-to-end integrated approach that the client (and my
not entirely technical self) can comprehend.

I'll go hide again now, and wish you the best as I remember fondly my
posts about how to use cfoutput.

I always have a soft spot for CF and lie to myself about cracking open
the certification books sitting on my shelf at home. But I just don't
see it happening.

Chad
who sees many things happening and often feels powerless to change it

[Scott Barnes]

Yes, I did get promoted and thankfully no more Evangelism. I find the Evangelism scene, political, annoying and if i have one more heated debate with the competitors over something minor and trivial, I'll retire and go paint landscapes..

 

My new role is Product Manager in the Rich Client Platform Team (WPF/Silverlight).

 

Now that's out of the way.

 

Let me share some of my learned experience around technology adoption (specifically in Australia/New Zealand), and specifically brand awareness. Right now the benefits around why Coldfusion aren't there, in that they may technically be there but the fact is there is limited marketing around the product and not just the product but also the community surrounding the product.

 

My previous role was an Evangelist, and i bet if i asked anyone on this list what does that mean, I'd get various answers. An Evangelist role within Microsoft is simple, help folks with new emerging technology not by ramming it down their throats, but simply connecting them to people. In that, it wasn't my job to make you buy ASP.NET or adopt Silverlight, but if you showed an interest I'd connect you with some folks whom can either pay you to do the job, help you learn the technology or provide you with some overview/understanding of what the technologies we had offer could do. I'd also promote the new technology and with our team, do presos etc.. that and travel the world and attend really cool parties (but thats boring right).

 

Evangelism is crucial to keeping technical communities alive, as it's not only a contact sport but it's one that scales quite well - if architected correctly. Find generals in the field, help them, support them, provide as much as you can to enable them to scale. Right now you folks don't have Coldfusion Generals.

 

I mentioned at last years WebDU that Adobe should consider MVP programs or similar nature (I did myself no favours by doing this) and got laughed at, as if i was spreading some FUD around or something. MVP programs are extremely successful inside Microsoft communities, we ensure these folks are kept in the loop as much as possible and can call on the evangelists etc anytime should they need anything, some would say they are almost blue badges themselves. They also have no issue with beating us around the head should we screw up - some have and done really good job of it - we don't punish them for it, we instead fix whatever the heck we stuffed up on and apologise (should it be our fault) as to punish them would cause 20,000 times more pain for us then the original problem causes (basic math right).

 

Some fun facts about MVP's todate:

• Worldwide there are more than 100 million participants in technical communities.
• Of these participants there are only 4,000 MVPs located across 93 countries, spanning more than 30 languages and more than 90 Microsoft technologies.
• There has been a 10 percent to 15 percent MVP audience growth in countries such as China, Russia and Korea
• Over the past few years new regions with MVPs include the Republic of Congo, Ghana, Nepal, Macedonia and Macao
• In recent years, a handful of MVPs have been awarded in new categories such as MSN, Xbox, Visual Studio Tools for Office, Microsoft Dynamics and Visual Studio Team System.
• MVPs are a diverse group that includes accountants, teachers, artists, government workers, engineers and technologists.

 

Now, who's laughing? I'm not. It takes a lot of work to get someone into the MPV program, and just because your the most popular guy/girl on a mailing list doesn't automatically make you an MPV. It's not whom you know, it's what you know and I can say outloud, the paperwork internally to get someone on this program is an effort - but worth it in the end.

 

My point is really raw and simple. Call it FUD, i don't care - in fact i'd prefer to keep the politics out of this one. I spent a lot of years waiting for the Coldfusion scene to pickup. I like most of you at times took the crappy jobs while the market picked up, I also waited for Macromedia to finally get some budget to market and so on.. we got told a lot of promises and fast talkings at WebDU/MXDU's of past and yet nothing much has occurred. Year after year the Coldfusion question would come up, same or similiar responses would pacify us for only so long...

 

eg:

Remember Suncorp high-fives? Guess how many CF developers are left - over to you Darren.

 

I raise this point simply to say guys, enough. You have got realistically limited choices:

 

- Start acting like a community and foster better relationships. Don't bring in the same muffin eaters, look for new ones.

 

- Understand what motivates adoption in today's market.

 

- Older generation developers switch to languages simply due to boredom, perception of no work and last but most important of all, lack of support by the brand whom owns the language.

 

- WebDU should be bigger each year, but this year we're not even attending simply because I couldn't get an ROI story out of it. I'll be honest, year on year we attend, we really get low value out of attending. We'd rather focus our energy on events like WD07, BarCamps etc as these folks are not only agnostic but open to technology discussion, less about brand politics.

 

- Put more pressure on Adobe to get the budgets or better programs in place. I'm amazed that we in Australia have 13 Evangelists whom are kept busy 24/7 and Adobe has 0. One Evangelist for APAC? - how about you have your own local Adobe celeb to lead you instead of waiting for the US guys to fly out once a year?

 

If you think this thread is doing my employer any favours, think otherwise and i'm sure i'll get some feedback for it (Today is my last official day as Evangelist so i have a small amount of free reign here). I leave this as simply a parting gift to you folks before I head over to the US. I loved working in the Coldfusion space for many years, despite our petty email squabbles and thread wars - Taco Fleur, you're still cool - there have been some real quality friendships made out of this community (actually most of my best friends are Coldfusion Devs from past)

 

I'd hate to see that die off, but perception = reality and remember that. You can sit there and take it or whine about Microsoft all you like, but we didn't create this problem and more importantly there was a reason why i simply down tools and went over to Microsoft not knowing a lick of .NET and it wasn't to get one up on the Adobe/Macromedia crew.

That being said, my inbox is open to any whom wish to adopt .NET :)

[Matt Bourke]

There was a reason you down tools and joined bill, its called large ammounts of cash $$$ ka-ching!!

M@

Sent from my iPhone

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[Scott Barnes]

i got paid less then i was contracting, so no ;) - i joined because I saw potential in XAML and wanted to be as close to it as possible as this time i want to influence change.. now i have that chance ;)

 

 

Actually he is now a product manager for Silverlight.....

 

No more evangelism for Scott J

 

 

 

From: cfau...@googlegroups.com [mailto:cfau...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of M@ Bourke
Sent: Tuesday, 8 April 2008 8:03 PM

To: cfau...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [cfaussie] Re: recruters say "CF on the way out"? ... FFS! not FUD from them too?

 

Just in case anyone is new to the list, Scott is a .net product evangelist at Microsoft.

of cos he is most likely unbiased and posted his last comment via an iPhone :P

--
Regards,
Scott Barnes
http://www.mossyblog.com

[CyberAngel]

You know Scott…

 

We have had our debates over time, and at the end of the day. I can’t even raise a finger to disagree with you.

 

Your last few posts have been well put, and for someone who technically is the opposition but I long time poster here has seen and done everything that most of us has. The trials and tribulations of Coldfusion will more than likely as Chad said, be debated again 2 years down the track. I got very heated with Sean Corfield for the reasons that we are talking about here.

 

The attitude was that the sales look good and that was all they cared about, but the point that got lost is that the jobs slowly disappeared and as I said to Sean if the sales are good then why aren’t developer numbers increasing, rather than decreasing?

 

I got irate with Sean, because even though I respect his knowledge and who he is. I lost respect for him at the time because he wasn’t looking at the bigger picture. That was 5 years ago, and now it is being discussed again.

 

Scott, I must admit I never thought of an MVP style program for adobe but it would be rather good to adopt… Well it would, I could be subject to more applications by the company that I currently don’t use now, nor am I aware that they offer. But I don’t need to preach that to you Scott.

 

As for promoting the product, we as a developer can go so far. The rest is up to the company, and if there is no support from the company then we as a developer have to do what is right for ourselves. And if that means moving to .Net or Java then so be it, I must admit I love .Net and rather find Java a pain in the rear end. But I am forced to use Java in my job now, and there is nothing more that Adobe can do about that. If the business model was different, and the engine was open sourced it might have been a different story. (Sorry to bring that up again) But for those of you who don’t know my boss was a Coldfusion developer, but due to the lack of good developers he looked past that and looked at the money offerings in work from elsewhere.

 

That is the reality of our company, he would have continued with Coldfusion but not at its cost and lack of foreseeable future of support of our products. For web design, Coldfusion will always be seen as the niche application that does everything but costs your first born.

 

Anyway Scott, from me I wish you all the best. I miss our debatesJ

 

 

Andrew Scott

<br

[Scott Barnes]

Sean's a top bloke, and i wouldn't bare any grudges or blame his way. I'm sure he fought a lot untold / unsaid battles within the belly of the beast (just like I and others do inside Microsoft silently to the outside world - what you think it's all roses inside the firewall?). I also wouldn't of thought he was the man to talk to in this regard, but anyway.

 

I think at WebDU, you have your moment with Adobe, as a community decide what action items you want from them, calmly put forward your requirements and needs (as a collective audience) and make sure you get commitment / definitive dates. Don't settle for "we're looking into that.." (i know our audiences crucify me the moment i attemp that little question dodge / answer on serious questions)

 

Scott.

I think this the first time ever you've agreed with me Andrew.. you have no idea how nervous i feel now.. almost naked like vulnerable.

[CyberAngel]

Well make it two in a row then.

 

However I will state this though, Sean jumped into a debate about the future of CF at the time and working for Macromedia at the time he just happened to be well the wrong side of the line I guess. Nothing against him on that.

 

Hehe….

<br

[Peter Bell]

Scott, I must admit I never thought of an MVP style program for adobe but it would be rather good to adopt… Well it would, I could be subject to more applications by the company that I currently don’t use now, nor am I aware that they offer. But I don’t need to preach that to you Scott.

Well, this does sound a little like the Adobe Community Expert program - http://www.adobe.com/communities/experts/

There are only about 30 ColdFusion Adobe Community Experts worldwide, however:

http://www.adobe.com/communities/experts/all.html

and in Australia, I think it's just Geoff Bowers, Mark Mandell and Andrew Muller, so it's a little sparser than the Microsoft program . . .

Best Wishes,

Peter 

[charlie arehart]

I was about to make the same point, Peter, and checked before sending my note to see yours. :-)  Here’s some more I was going to add:

 

The raw numbers of Adobe Community Experts may not be as high as MVPs, but then the MS pool of developers (across all products) is just that much larger. I suspect the ratio of CF Community Experts to total CF developers may not be that much less than that of .NET MVPs to total .NET developers. Scott, do you know how many .NET MVPs there are, and how many .NET developers total? May be interesting for this discussion.

 

Anyway, someone may say, “however many CEs there are, why don’t we hear more from them?” Well, how do you know that you don’t? They may not emblazon their sites and emails with their title, and the reason may interest/disturb some:  we can’t just call ourselves ACEs, that acronym was already taken by the Adobe Certified Experts program, so anyone who’s passed a cert can call themselves an ACE. The CE program was introduced after the merger with MM. I don’t doubt that some CEs are reluctant to spell out the title because it seems a little arrogant (just as MVPs may if they had to do the same). I think this challenge a bigger shame and issue than most realize, but I’ve raised it before to no avail.

 

In any case, we just got through talking here about how there are many in the community who evangelize only within the community, with some asserting that they should do more outside of it. As a CE myself, I can say that there’s no specific push for us to be more involved in evangelism outside our communities. It is as much about supporting the current community.

 

But then do MVPs really focus on that so much? I don’t know.  Scott?

 

It’s an interesting discussion, but then like world peace and global warming, it may be bigger than we can solve here.

 

/charlie

 

From: cfau...@googlegroups.com [mailto:cfau...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Peter Bell
Sent: Friday, April 11, 2008 10:49 AM
To: cfau...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [cfaussie] Re: recruters say "CF on the way out"? ... FFS! not FUD from them too?

 

Scott, I must admit I never thought of an MVP style program for adobe but it would be rather good to adopt… Well it would, I could be subject to more applications by the company that I currently don’t use now, nor am I aware that they offer. But I don’t need to preach that to you Scott.

[Peter Bell]

And as mentioned when this came up on another list recently, I think people do evangelize outside the community. In the last year I presented at ooPSLA '07 in Montreal, the Domain Specific Modeling Forum, the British Computer Society Software Practices Advancement group and Code Generation 2007. In each case there are some pretty influential developers and in each case I mention the language I use and why I choose it over Python, PHP, Ruby, C# or Java.

Of course, the thing about evangelizing outside of the community is that nobody within the community knows when it's being done!

Also Dan Wilson is doing great stuff on DZone and Kay S on SitePoint getting the ColdFusion word out, so it's getting there . . .

Best Wishes,

Peter

[charlie arehart]

Good on ya, Pete. :-)  And good point about how more may be being done than is recognized. We clearly have a large hill to climb, and it may seem like we’re making no progress. Good to point out that there are indeed some efforts underway.

 

/charlie

 

From: cfau...@googlegroups.com [mailto:cfau...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Peter Bell
Sent: Friday, April 11, 2008 1:11 PM
To: cfau...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [cfaussie] Re: recruters say "CF on the way out"? ... FFS! not FUD from them too?

 

And as mentioned when this came up on another list recently, I think people do evangelize outside the community. In the last year I presented at ooPSLA '07 in Montreal, the Domain Specific Modeling Forum, the British Computer Society Software Practices Advancement group and Code Generation 2007. In each case there are some pretty influential developers and in each case I mention the language I use and why I choose it over Python, PHP, Ruby, C# or Java.

[CyberAngel]

Sounds like I was confusing mvp with something else L

[CyberAngel]

 

No offence Peter & Charlie,

 

But you are both non Australians, and here in Australia the job market is nonexistent and has been that way for 5 years.

 

The point I made to Sean was simple, if the sales of Coldfusion is stronger than ever before. Why are the jobs for Coldfusion not increasing? And since that discussion nothing has changed.

 

The perception is still the same, now whether we get out there more and promote the product is not the issue. But whether Adobe get out there and help us out more on this issue as well.

 

But till there is a market shift in more jobs, this could be discussed for the next 5 years and that’s when I want to see more jobs for Coldfusion developers. But right now what incentive is a prospective Coldfusion developer have if there is no job for him/her to go too?

 

Same words, same argument only 5 years later.

 

Andrew Scott

[Barry Beattie]

> But you are both non Australians, and here in Australia the job market is
> nonexistent and has been that way for 5 years.

Andrew, are you talking about raw numbers compared to .NET, Java, PHP?
then yes you're right - the available positions at any one time can't
compare

http://www.seek.com.au/jobsearch/index.ascx?DateRange=31&Keywords=coldfusion&searchfrom=quick

but with such low numbers (both of available developers and of
positions available) small fluctuations impact greatly - businesses
not finding CF people and therefore going elsewhere is one concern in
such conditions.

having said that, the project I'm now finishing off certainly wasn't
origionally written by an experianced CF developer...

[Peter Bell]

Hi Andrew,

Well, I may not be Australian, but I did just come back from 3 months in Sydney. Anyway, I wasn't debating the job market or the future of ColdFusion, I was just mentioning that the ACE program has similarities to the MVP program and that some CF devs are promoting the technology outside of the community.

Best WIshes,

Peter

[CyberAngel]

Barry,

No the raw numbers really can't compare, it is a big indication yes.

The problem is that and I'll have to say this because it is a catch 22
situation, and the evidence is in what has already been discussed.

People are having a hard time finding Coldfusion developers, those who are
coldfusion developers can't find work. So those who can't find the
developers move to something with the resources, and those who can't get the
work go to where the work is.

This has been the trend that I have seen for the last 5 years, the problem
is going to be how to break the cycle.

Andrew Scott

-----Original Message-----
From: cfau...@googlegroups.com [mailto:cfau...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf
Of Barry Beattie
Sent: Saturday, 12 April 2008 9:18 AM
To: cfau...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [cfaussie] Re: recruters say "CF on the way out"? ... FFS! not FUD
from them too?

[Mark Mandel]

> those who are
> coldfusion developers can't find work.

I have to disagree on this point. Every AU CF developer I know is
gainfully employed.

I actually don't see the lack of work in AU. I agree it's becoming
increasingly hard to find developers, but in terms of getting
employed, it's a real employee's market out there.

Mark

[CyberAngel]

Hey Peter,

 

And yes we can’t argue that, and people like you, Charlie, Mark, Sean and yes I could type a long list here. Keep the dream alive.

 

But while thinking about it some more, there isn’t enough open source applications for Coldfusion. I know there is a lot out there, but not enough in comparison to php, java etc.

 

So maybe this is something else that maybe can be enhanced some more, btw Geoff I downloaded Farcry 5.0 beta and so far I am very impressed. The ease of installing, and upgrading has put more faith into the product.

 

Andrew Scott

P.S So looking forward to BlueDragon J2EE open source, knowing how much this will change the direction CF heads.

[CyberAngel]

Mark,

True, but how many of these developers are fighting to stay a Coldfusion
dveleoper?

-----Original Message-----
From: cfau...@googlegroups.com [mailto:cfau...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf
Of Mark Mandel
Sent: Saturday, 12 April 2008 9:27 AM
To: cfau...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [cfaussie] Re: recruters say "CF on the way out"? ... FFS! not FUD
from them too?

[Mark Mandel]

How does 'if these developers are fighting for CF' mean that there is no work?

I'm failing to see the connection, Sorry.

I'm not saying there isn't things that can't be fixed, and we could
sure use the new blood, and various other bits and pieces.

I mean, I've seen you bring up the same issues times and time again,
but the question I guess is - are you in the same boat as those you're
actually complaining about? What are you doing to fight to stay a CF
developer? What are you doing for the community?

And I'm not saying that as a dig, but I'm saying that the solution is
in your hands. You want a better CF future, you should make one.
Preaching to the choir never did much for anyone.

And that goes generally for anyone who is worried about CF's future.
If you want something to happen, you have to make it happen.

It's actually a pretty simple equation I think.

Mark

[Peter Bell]

@Andrew,

I'll have to question that both CF devs can't find work and those with
work can't find CF devs. Of course, in a fragmented market with
inefficient distribution it is possible for there to be both a
shortage of developers and a shortage of work in localized areas. If
that really is the case, the solution is simply a more efficient
mechanism for associating CF devs to the work that is waiting for them
- marketing or building the size of the market isn't the problem at all.

I don't know enough about the Australian market, but my experience in
Australia, the US and the UK is that right at the moment there is
pretty strong demand for CF development skills and the lack of good CF
devs is the primary issue which is why I know people are looking at
ways of getting CF more involved in the education space.

Best Wishes,
Peter

[CyberAngel]

LoL...

Mark,

When I was looking for work a few years ago, the amount of Developers
looking for work was more than what jobs were available. Now it is the other
way around, now even though the amount of work is not what it was 8-10 years
ago, is maybe beside the point.

What is the point is that me as a developer, has struggled to remain a
Coldfusion developer in my work place. For the same reason that this is
being discussed, the decision was made a year ago that rather than try to
get the resources we need to move forward as a company. That we would switch
to Java, but once that decision was made, there was nothing more I could do
in our company to persuade the powers to be. And in the end after we
discussed the pros and cons, it was the best for our company.

Chad has already stated the same thing, and I am sure there are many others.
Me I no longer get to decide if Coldfusion is the best tool for the job any
more, and as much as I would like to remain a CF developer I can't in my
current position.

Now we all know that there are a lot of companies out there looking for
Coldfusion developers, and what percentage are these being redeveloped
because the resources are not as good as they should be?

I don't feel like getting into a debate, because at the end of the day we
all can see what is happening. The question remains, can we turn this around
and if so how do we get the companies that are looking for the resources to
get what they need with ease?

I have already put my hands up as an employee for my company, to offer our
companies services as a Coldfusion developer to anyone who needs help. But
that virtually fell on deaf ears as well, people seem to want that permanent
person. And that is understandable.

Andrew.

[CyberAngel]

Peter,

That's the issue, well as far as I see it anyway. And I made this same
statement 5 years ago as well.

I am coming into the market for a job, I want to be a developer so what do I
look at for my career. As soon as you look at the job market, the amount of
positions is going to determine that for me. If I see a hundred in php, .Net
and java and see 2-3 in Coldfusion am I going to pick up Coldfusion and make
a career out of it. Of course not, I need to know that if that company folds
or something happens beyond my control I am safe to find another job.

Coldfusion is lacking that and has done so for too many years. After the Dot
Com boom, the job market was flooded with developers looking for work and
lack of jobs and that meant a lot of people I knew that had been Coldfusion
developers are now Java or .Net developers.

It's a catch 22 situation, that we all seem to agree upon at the moment.

Andrew.

[Chad Renando]

And every 2 years, this board arrives at the same outcome of
diversification of skills. I will admit that there is value in
specialisation bot as a developer and a studio. But unless you are
niche or captive, any sort of growth will see a diverse sort of
working coming in the door.

In any given week I will have projects with solutions to be maintained
or developed in php, .asp, .NET, FLEX, Flash, and yes, CF. By
default, I will look for a resouorce with skills in the native
language of the application. Because we are a Microsoft house, we
have a visible agenda to migrate over to .NET, but only if it is in
the best interest of the business objectives. In the case of CF, we
are experiencing situations where the lack of available (eg., schedule
and budget) resources push a redevelopment to aa more accessible
language before it is comfortable for the business.

If the applicants walking through my door had CF as a line item, I
would welcome the opportunity to support existing CF applications, as
I think it's a great language. If they only had CF, I wouldn't touch
them because I would rather invest in developing technologies with
more opportunity in the market.

Chad
who wouldn't touch the developer either way due to his company's
sexual harrassment policy

[Mark Mandel]

>
> What is the point is that me as a developer, has struggled to remain a
> Coldfusion developer in my work place. For the same reason that this is
> being discussed, the decision was made a year ago that rather than try to
> get the resources we need to move forward as a company. That we would switch
> to Java, but once that decision was made, there was nothing more I could do
> in our company to persuade the powers to be. And in the end after we
> discussed the pros and cons, it was the best for our company.

Actually there is, you could leave your job and go somewhere else.

I think we've already agreed the if you are a CF developer today
trying to find work, there isn't an issue - so if you really wanted
to, you could move over to another company.

But that's a decision that you have to make, and noone can begrudge
you that, as that's your choice.

> Chad has already stated the same thing, and I am sure there are many others.
> Me I no longer get to decide if Coldfusion is the best tool for the job any
> more, and as much as I would like to remain a CF developer I can't in my
> current position.

Again, if you wanted it THAT badly, you could move.

>
> Now we all know that there are a lot of companies out there looking for
> Coldfusion developers, and what percentage are these being redeveloped
> because the resources are not as good as they should be?

Who knows. There are also a percentage of companies moving to
ColdFusion as well. It's always going to ebb and flow.

>
> I don't feel like getting into a debate, because at the end of the day we
> all can see what is happening.

Ha! Since when * don't * you want to get into a debate? In fact, if
you didn't want to get into a debate, you wouldn't be sending emails
to this mailing list in the first place.

And actually no, you're wrong, we can't ALL see what is happening.

> The question remains, can we turn this around
> and if so how do we get the companies that are looking for the resources to
> get what they need with ease?

'We'?
Okay, what part of the 'we' are you making up? I really would like to
know. Seriously.

I know of a lot of people who are working really hard for the CF
Community, and I know of lots of areas in which they could use some
help, or even areas in which there are not enough people to help out.

If you are really THAT interested in helping out ColdFusion, please do
let me know, I'm sure I can hook you up with someone, or find you
something to do.

That being said, it sounds like you have lots of ideas, so feel free
to pick one and run with it.

>
> I have already put my hands up as an employee for my company, to offer our
> companies services as a Coldfusion developer to anyone who needs help. But
> that virtually fell on deaf ears as well, people seem to want that permanent
> person. And that is understandable.

So that is the state of affairs at ONE company in Australia. I'm sure
your sphere of influence is larger than that, no?

Again, I'm not going to deny that there ARE issues. But when it
starts getting into this hand wringing, 'it's the end of the world as
we know it stuff', and 'This is what I think should be done about CF'
comments, I still think the message is very simple:

If you think CF could be improved in certain areas, help out to make
sure it happens.

GET INVOLVED.

Be at your CFUG Meetings, go to BarCamps (bloody good idea by the way
Gary, I wish I had thought of it sooner), go to webDU, talk to people
about Adobe tech, set up websites to promote CF (learncf.com and
www.coldfusiondeveloper.com.au come to mind off the bat), write OSS
software (it doesn't have to be anything amazing, start with cflib.org
even!), and probably a gazillion other things I can't think of right
now.

You would be amazed at what a little bit of work can accomplish, and
you get to reap the rewards as much as the next CF developer.

[CyberAngel]

And in a way that is similar to us.

When I started for this company, I had 5 sites I was maintaining in CF. Now
I am responsible for one major Intranet Application. At that time there was
3 of us, 2 Java consultants and myself.

We made the decision that if we as a company wanted to grow, java was the
way to do it. So in 8 months we grew to 26 developers (25 being Java), there
is absolutely no way this would have happened for us as a company if we
remained a Coldfusion house.

That seems to be the reality for a lot of companies, not just our
experience.

Andrew.

[CyberAngel]

Ok...

Mark, there comes a point in your career that moving to a new company all
the time is not building a solid career. Secondly, our company is heading
into an area that is exciting and going to be a challenge. I don't see
myself a developer for the rest of my life, I am older than most of you.

Being involved is not always just the be all and end all, granted it helps
and I know that if it wasn't for those who have done what they have, Yes
Geoff, Mark, Ray to name more would take forever, has helped us who are
still here. But the problem lies in Adobe more than it does for us, and
getting the product into more faces than just those who are still using it.
And the question is how do they do this, or what could be done about it.

Sales of Coldfusion may be good, but the amount of work that could be done
in Coldfusion in an Enterprise market is so small it is not funny.

Andrew.

-----Original Message-----
From: cfau...@googlegroups.com [mailto:cfau...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf
Of Mark Mandel
Sent: Saturday, 12 April 2008 10:15 AM
To: cfau...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [cfaussie] Re: recruters say "CF on the way out"? ... FFS! not FUD
from them too?

>

[Scott Barnes]

The difference between an MVP and Adobe CE is folks are measured yearly on their efforts. For example, if you make MVP this year because you did an outstanding job last year (and made the criteria that the independent body agreed upon) it doesn't automatically mean you'll get it next year if you decide to get bored with the idea.

 

It's apples for oranges really, but the point I was trying to make is whom are your/our (still consider myself a cfaussie) leaders, what recognition do they get and above all what level of support? (ie Barry Beattie comes to mind a lot when I think of this).

 

I could really go to town on this but I think I'm overstepping my boundaries as be clear, I'm Microsoft and can't speak my mind on this one topic.

 

Suffice to say the following:

 

• There is lack of maturity in the local CF ranks. Most of the ranking officers/generals in ANZ are either in management roles or in other languages (Java, .NET etc). This is really bad, as whom are mentoring the Juniors? and more importantly what are they teaching them?
• There is lack of marketing spend. This doesn't have to be billboards, events, rally points if you will are marketing amongst other means. We had really small budget to market Silverlight with last year, we made it scale and that product was zero install in January last year.
• There is lack of diversity. Folks, we are never one brand and i encourage you all to consider going beyond your comfort zones. There is a large IT world out there whom will not award you points for being 100% loyal to one brand. Allow yourself to be around other communities whom may not like your technology preferences, but i guarantee you, they will respect you as professional for looking at theres. Diversity is key, as it forms relationship and fosters various adoption lifecyles that benefit all. If you're not getting the numbers you need with a UG, look at merging or colloborating with others. People donate 1-2hrs of their personal time to attend these, make them feel its an investment, not a chore.
• The old days are gone. Who cares what happened in the last 3-5 years. What people care about is what's happening in the next 3-5 years. Cynergy Systems for example, told me last year at MIX07 in Vegas "we're announcing our support of Silverlight" and they did so because they believed in our roadmap and our vision for the future. I have countless more stories like this, roadmaps are currency as todays' technology weakness is tomorrow's strength. I won't preach at you, but ask yourself a simple question, where do you see Coldfusion heading in 3-5 years? not just the server itself but the surrounding ecosystem.
• There is lack of rapid prototyping. Rapid prototyping is something more and more companies are looking for daily. if you can't produce a solution in minimal time, whilst your competitor can, weigh up what you're doing and why you are doing it that way. Broaden your horizons and understand that it's not about quality, it's mostly about quantity. Ruby On Rails, can be the most awful solution known to man in the wrong hands, and it sadly does end up in the wrong hands a lot, but the reason why it had a nice amount of run on the boards was simply because it empowered engineers to pump out solutions rapidly.
• There is lack of community spirit. Go to a CFUG? what value does one get? It's an open ended question. If all folks get is to see a video or presentation they can view online anyway then what value are you adding to peoples lives. Whom are you inviting to speak and what value are they offering? Are you talking to the same people? Is debating on CFAussie really the right place to do so? and so on... where is your aggregation point for the CF virgin out there? how does one sound a bell and all flock to a single rally point and what is that rally point? 

CF locally "is" or "isn't" on the decline really is not the argument here. Assume for this exercise it is, say there entire system is about to crumble and FUD is based of truth. Now what would you do differently to change that and how would you execute it? I say this as we assume .NET is losing numbers daily and we expect it to grow by 20% each year and that's what we do, we work hard to make it grow year on year. We never relax as being successful is really easy, staying successful, now that is truly an art.

 

When I joined the CF Community many years ago, CFUG.org.au for one was my entrance, the people I meet throughout my career have been remarkable and have been close friends. I have a lot of good and bad stories to tell around this language and I'll be honest, it's something I hope to instill into the Silverlight/WPF community world-wide going forward. I understood what makes a technology community great, and it wasn't brand worship or individuals within Macromedia/Adobe we should worship, it was more the people around the brand/company. Folks you looked up to and respected because they knew xyz feature better than any and would drop what they were doing to educate you on it.

 

Anyway, enough my nostalgia, fact is there is a lot of weaknesses in Coldfusion right now and seeing a lot jobs for CF is one thing, seeing a lot of the same jobs a month later is equally as bad as not seeing jobs for Coldfusion. There's a distinction in quality vs quantity there.

[CyberAngel]

Scott..

 

That’s number 3 J

<br

[Peter Robertson]

..and, Mark, if it's becoming 'increasingly' difficult, then that
suggests that the demand is growing and that employers already with CF
haven't just given up and moved to other technologies? Perhaps some
growth is inevitable as the overall market grows? Is CF holding any
kind of parity in the market overall, or is some absolute growth just
a default in a growing market? (I dunno, just asking).

I'm in the very fortunate position of making all the tech decisions in
our company, but I still didn't mindlessly select CF, in spite of it
being my dev environment. If it had still been owned by MM, I may
have had to consider making the leap to .Net, and employing a .Net
coder, as my perception is that MM did next to nothing with it in
marketing terms. I don't know how much more Adobe really does, but I
have noticed that in business discussions, CF gets taken more
seriously as part of the Adobe stable than previously, "..Macromedia,
who are they?..". I'm also hopeful that people may discover CF as
they adopt Flex and start looking for the best way to talk to the back
end. As to what I can actually 'do' myself, I've pretty much done it
by committing us to CF for our next growth phase. I don't know how
many people can get into that sort of position, but suspect a lot of
other CF devs may have actually done the same?

Cheers



Peter Robertson

On Apr 12, 9:27 am, "Mark Mandel" <mark.man...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > those who are coldfusion developers can't find work. I have to disagree on this point. ...... Mark
>

[MrBuzzy]

This is exactly what I hate about Microsoft. They blind you with noise, give you a whole lot of crap you don't need.

Using ASP.net and such is a massive assumption that the general populous will continue to use Windows. There's a few people at Gartner saying Windows is dead :)

Scott you do make some good points, however 'going the microsoft way' is not the solution for everything (which generally is what microsoft people will evangelize, ie; what you're indirectly doing now).

[CyberAngel]

Well, I don’t fully agree with that.

 

 

 

From: cfau...@googlegroups.com [mailto:cfau...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of MrBuzzy
Sent: Saturday, 12 April 2008 11:06 AM
To: cfau...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [cfaussie] Re: recruters say "CF on the way out"? ... FFS! not FUD from them too?

 

This is exactly what I hate about Microsoft. They blind you with noise, give you a whole lot of crap you don't need.

Using ASP.net and such is a massive assumption that the general populous will continue to use Windows. There's a few people at Gartner saying Windows is dead :)

Scott you do make some good points, however 'going the microsoft way' is not the solution for everything (which generally is what microsoft people will evangelize, ie; what you're indirectly doing now).

[Peter Robertson]

It looks like Scott has clearly spent a good deal of time considering
his posts, and if we drill in, his points could be seen as
constructive as easily as not. Individually, we might or might not
like the whole MS ethos, but we would have to acknowledge that there
may be things of worth to be taken from their community model, given
their market position. Is there any doubt that CF could benefit from
a better and more concerted community program? My question then is,
where would the leadership for this come from, the community itself or
from Adobe?

On Apr 12, 11:06 am, MrBuzzy <mrbu...@gmail.com> wrote:
....

> Scott you do make some good points, however 'going the microsoft way' is not
> the solution for everything (which generally is what microsoft people will
> evangelize, ie; what you're indirectly doing now).
>

.........

[MrBuzzy]

Was it this part? "Scott you do make some good points".

I'm happy to retract it.

[Kevin]

Well, I DO fully agree with that.

 

Microsoft has ALWAYS done everything possible to crush any potential competition.

 

Im sorry to say, This thread is full of BS.

 

CF is the sleeping giant here. And it scares Microsoft just enough to send their preachers out.

[CyberAngel]

Sorry,

 

Hit the send button to quickly.. This part “This is exactly what I hate about Microsoft. They blind you with noise, give you a whole lot of crap you don't need.”

 

I think that it is a good idea, you can ignore the noise or you can embrace it when you need it.

 

But yes Scott made valid points. I said I agreed with him and that it’s number 3 J

 

 

 

From: cfau...@googlegroups.com [mailto:cfau...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of MrBuzzy
Sent: Saturday, 12 April 2008 11:28 AM
To: cfau...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [cfaussie] Re: recruters say "CF on the way out"? ... FFS! not FUD from them too?

 

Was it this part? "Scott you do make some good points".

[Scott Barnes]

*rolls eyes*..

 

yes that's right, we're so afraid that I secretly joined this list 9+ years ago, waited out my time for this point to seize the day. Bill called me last night and stated "Scott, CF is likely to make a comeback, and it's keeping me up at night.. i really need your help on this one pal, can you dig in there, can you do the flip now.. as this is your time, do this and I'll think about promoting you to the next level as by crikey if we can get Kevin switched over to .NET, well everything will fall into place".

 

I mean, how does one make such an ignorant remark and feel good about themselves at the same time? I've never hated a brand, I've been annoyed or ticked off by a brand but never "hated" a single brand. Ignorance continues to flourish.

 

Fact is, I gave some basic truths. If it annoys you fine, if you think retribution is to weigh in on the cliche "windows is dead" argument(s) or attack yet another Microsoft employee, knock yourself out, by all means if that's your answer do so. It still hasn't fixed your initial problem, and attacking or whining about Microsoft or my approach is just a waste of email - i really couldn't care :) (typing this on my weekend may i add)

 

Meanwhile friends i have in the CF local scene, and there are a lot of them, have moved onto other languages (not all .NET? does that mean i should break ties with them now? i mean isn't that a rule or something?) and have unsubscribe from this list - not because of topics like this, but because of ignorant stupidity shown by folks like Kevin. Stop the madness now, you're smarter and better than that.

 

Like i said, you win no points for blind faith in technology today, you gain more points for experience in competing technologies. The old days are gone, live in the now...

 

Preacher out.

[Chad Renando]

Reminds me of when I was a kid and got beat up, my mom used to say
they were just jealous. I love my mom, but she was wrong. They were
bigger, stronger, quicker, and I was crunched.

Hope you're not considering me in that plural there. I have thought
about following the preacher career path, but never considered
Microsoft the platform to preach from.

Chad
who has a grad cert in business from Brisbane's Heritage Christian
College as a compromise between preaching and business

On Sat, Apr 12, 2008 at 11:28 AM, Kevin <chor...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Kevin]

Hmmm sensitive guy.

Personally, I love .NET, and develop quite extensively on it.

I also love JAVA, PHP, ROR.. and many others.

I also know bashing any single one of these languages is total BS.

Make sure to call Bill and tell him I already dev in .NET and I am an avid MS user.

This does seem a bit emotional over a simple comment.

[Scott Barnes]

Kevin,

 

If you're going to make a stand, then do so with commitment. Firstly, MrBuzzy stated he hated Microsoft blah blah, to which Andrew stated he "disagreed with what was stated" which you then followed with - in your own words - Well, I DO fully agree with that.

 

You even made a point of using capital letters with the "DO" part. Now your saying you don't hate Microsoft? as i recall .NET = Microsoft and I'm pretty sure we base a lot of decisions around .NET ;). It wasn't emotional, it was me be sarcastic (with a smile) and shaking my head at how stupidity continues to flourish.

 

endless cycle of points could be made here, the fact is, I've given my opinion and if outlined what I think are weak points in the reasoning behind why locally there is likely to be a decline in future. You can put stock in a Microsoft conspiracy theory, which i find hilarious or you can weigh it up, make some decisions, work collectively at fixing it and move forward.

 

either way, i get my pay cheque and won't get promoted as my metrics for my role don't even have Coldfusion or ASP.NET adoption on it.

 

How do you like them apples :) (heh, Apple.. get it..)

 

Note: none of this anything to do with the original thread today.. amazing how threads evolve in forums...

Scott Barnes
http://www.mossyblog.com

[Kai Koenig]

Mr Buzzy,

sorry to disagree, but that's not what Scott is doing here at the
moment (not this time, LOL :) - actually I think he has raised a few
very good points in regards to ColdFusion and its situation in
Australia.

BTW: If you think that CF is bad in Aussie, come to New Zealand for
a change, you'll find that it's even worse. Sure there are a good
bunch of shops (including ourselves) doing CF besides other Adobe
or 3rd party technologies. A lot of CF-spin off is driven by various
CMS solutions, might it be FarCry, might it be Shado and there are
obviously the occasional small CF custom-build sites - besides a few
really large ones like the NZ Herald etc.

What I find from my own experience with CF here is that it depends
on what type of work you're after. If you're into the market of
building websites for end-customers, small/medium enterprises etc where
you might have the decision to choose a technology, then CF can work.

If one is looking for consulting work or developing in a larger CF
team instead, it's difficult to impossible. I can say honestly that
all of our CF work at the moment is overseas and not based in NZ. It's
a very different story with Flex, there's a good domestic as well as
international demand.

With a realistic view on government in NZ I can say that I know one
very small government agency (not even a ministry etc) that uses CF -
but they've been very close to jumping ship towards .NET a few times.
Why most of them are using .NET is pretty easy to answer - because
(like it or not) Microsoft is doing a great job in lobbying CEOs, CIOs
and middle management. Their ability of doing that lobbying work is
obviously driven by a significantly larger war chest and budget for
marketing, events etc.

And as much as I think the CF platform itself is superior to .NET or
pure Java for a lot of web development jobs and how much I try to
evangelize CF - it's as easy as that: I don't have the time and the power
to do Adobe's work. I, as a user group manager and as an Adobe Solution
Partner, can just assist them here, but it's not my job to sell and lobby
CF to CIOs and other upper management levels.

Believe me, if Adobe offered me a job as ANZ CF evangelist I might
actually consider taking it because there IS A NEED (there is a need for
2-5 people focussing on evangelizing Adobe technologies imho, but that's
a different story). The problem is that unless senior management at Adobe
don't see this need, it won't happen.

Note one point: We have a local Sales Director in NZ now and since he has
started, things have improved hundreds of percent, Adobe actually has
an official voice now in the country which is great! All of the Adobe
folks in AU I know are doing a great job - but obviously they are limited
to whatever head office in the US is providing them with in regards to
resourcing, funding and staffing local operations - particular when it
comes to ColdFusion.

Cheers,
Kai

[Kevin]

Well.. I'm sorry I came across that way.

My comment was taken out of context though.

 

But I can still hate MS and still love their tech.

I don't like Adobe too much either. But again..I love their tech.

I know that seems a bit wishy-washy..But its the truth.

 

Obviously there are some pretty passionate people in this group. That's a good thing.

I am not stupid though.. but I may be bit biased because the most successful sites I have built are in CFML.

 

Two of them are making millions, and have had 0 issues. Both were .asp before I rebuilt them.

And I can even begin to tell you how succesfull some of the CFML intranet CRM apps that I built have been.

 

So forgive me for flaking a bit.

[MrBuzzy]

It's subliminal :O

[Scott Barnes]

shhh.. if you let them in on the secret they'll think about putting tinfoil hats on and then i can't read their minds from HQ..

 

:)

[charlie arehart]

I’m really not looking to pick a fight, but folks keep praising the points Scott made, yet I found quite a few that I’d contend:

 

> The difference between an MVP and Adobe CE is folks are measured yearly on their efforts. For example, if you make MVP this year

> because you did an outstanding job last year (and made the criteria that the independent body agreed upon) it doesn't automatically

> mean you'll get it next year if you decide to get bored with the idea.

 

That’s the way the Adobe program works, too. No Adobe CE “popes for life”. :-)

 

> whom are your/our (still consider myself a cfaussie) leaders, what recognition do they get and above all what level of support?

 

Adobe CEs do get recognition, both by their acceptance into the program, and promotion of them as such by Adobe, themselves, and others. As for levels of support, they really get quite a lot, as do UG managers, and these benefits come both from Adobe and 3^rd parties who have teamed with Adobe to offer them things, both that make them more capable and that simply give them a form of repayment for their efforts.

 

> where do you see Coldfusion heading in 3-5 years? not just the server itself but the surrounding ecosystem.

 

Scott, here’s where we have to wonder how much you’re still following CF closely. CF8 has been an amazing release, and plans for CF9 are already underway. As for the surrounding ecosystem, Adobe have made it clear that CF is at a big part of the integration story for Flex, Blaze, AIR, and other leading technologies. Do those get the majority of play? Sure. Is CF always mentioned? No, not for now. They also want to reach developers using other backends, but CF is always going to be at the center of easy integration from those client apps to the back end.

 

> There is lack of rapid prototyping.

 

Um, really? I guess it depends on what one considers to be rapid prototyping, but I think many would say that CF is quite good at this. Sure, there are many ways to look at this topic, and it would be easy to trot out how much more VS provides to a .Net developer than CFEclipse, DW, or HS/CF Studio, but one may argue that CFML’s very ease of use and high-level nature allows folks to develop quickly even without a fully-evolved IDE.

 

> There is lack of community spirit.

 

Well, your points are well taken, but I don’t think most would agree that they equate to your conclusion. Indeed, the CF community has long (and yes, recently) been regarded highly for its community spirit. I see why some may feel that your statements smacked a bit of FUD, but we have to recognize the position you’re in. You could argue (and indeed are) that we are doing the same. This discussion is walking a fine line between a circle jerk and a bar fight, and we need to avoid it degrading into either. Again, I’m not looking to pick a fight. Just offering some contrary thought.

 

/charlie

 

From: cfau...@googlegroups.com [mailto:cfau...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Scott Barnes
Sent: Friday, April 11, 2008 8:42 PM
To: cfau...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [cfaussie] Re: recruters say "CF on the way out"? ... FFS! not FUD from them too?

 

The difference between an MVP and Adobe CE is folks are measured yearly on their efforts. For example, if you make MVP this year because you did an outstanding job last year (and made the criteria that the independent body agreed upon) it doesn't automatically mean you'll get it next year if you decide to get bored with the idea.

[Kai Koenig]

Charlie,

you're right with a few of your remarks and I think no one has
said Scott is totally right, let's all jump ship because MSFT
and .NET is much better anyway :-)

But imho it's reality that the recent and often talked about
boom in CF8 sales, adoption and cool projects doesn't seem to
have arrived in total (yet) in Australia and New Zealand. I can't
proof that with any figures, but I just need to see how many of
our Flex clients and inquiries for Flex work (in those cases
they're just asking for client development) sit on top of CF.
It's the vast, really the vast minority and it seems to be perception
a few people are having.

I acknowledge that Adobe (as a corporate or even as the platform
team) sees CF as part of the central ecosystem and as an integration
hub. But let's make a step aside here from being really heaviliy
involved into the whole Adobe ecosystem, knowing a lot of people
in Adobe and let's have a look at a) an average web developer in the
average web development shop. Or at b) a self-employed contractor
who's after 3-12 months jobs here in New Zealand.

A's company bosses decide to become a .NET shop - easy as: A retrains
in .NET or PHP etc. because A might not care as long as the salary is
coming in. And anyway, A probably doesn't care about AIR, Flex and
particularly not BlazeDS or LC and they just develop POWS (Plain old
web sites).

B would actually have a hard time finding any domestic contract work
in NZ, where as it would be as easy as to get paid very nice and high
hourly rates after retraining in .NET or Java. So - guess what this
person's decision would be.

Really, most people are not interested what some platform strategists
in the US consider CF to be. They want to do web development, full stop.
If they're having the perception they could better do that in PHP or
easier in .NET, they won't hesitate to move away. And really - with
Adobe positioning (as you've said yourself and I agree this approach
makes a lot of sense) their RIA platform to be server-neutral, it's
even easier "not" to adopt ColdFusion. I'm really not bitching, CF is
great and I live off it for a good part of my income, but the domestic
trend in the region for CF seems to be neutral at best.

I guess what I'm saying here is that a lot comes down to perception
of a product. Also Adobe US as a corporate needs to understand that the
rest of the world does not work in a way as the US market appears to
be ticking along -> Actually this is something also Macromedia used
to have a big issue with and from my experience this particular issue
here in ANZ is very similar to CF's standing in Germany. I do acknowledge
that Australia and NZ are small markets compared to the US, and that
any investment from a vendor's end has to be well thought of and must
prove worthwile from an financial point of view.

Cheers,
Kai

[Rae Buerckner]

>>But imho it's reality that the recent and often talked about
boom in CF8 sales, adoption and cool projects doesn't seem to
have arrived in total (yet) in Australia and New Zealand. I can't
proof that with any figures, but I just need to see how many of
our Flex clients and inquiries for Flex work (in those cases
they're just asking for client development) sit on top of CF.
It's the vast, really the vast minority and it seems to be perception
a few people are having.>>

Watch this space Kai, I'm working on it real hard down here in Canberra, expect to see a big in CF due to SOA implementations of LiveCycle ES as a whole of Government initiative :)

R

[Scott Barnes]

*cracks knuckles* ..oh it's on Chad, it's on like Donkey Kong! :) hehh.

 

• Adobe CE Program is as I say, Apples vs Oranges.I see firsthand more benefits in the MVP over Adobe CE and consider it a point of difference in our offering, now what does that have to do with the current thread. Simply that the existing model could be improved better, i won't stipulate exactly how as that's obviously not my job. What I am doing is trying to tease out some folks within the community whom are wanting change, to start thinking about the program, looking at what Microsoft MVP offers and even evolve it further or use it as a benchmark on what not to do, either way, start the dialogue..
  
  I wouldn't consider having a piece of glass that says "welcome to the yearly membership", t-shirt, pizzas and beer to be the end of it. Being recognised as a community leader is and should be a big deal, as these are the rockstars of your community. If you simply casually throw it out there to random names that have no story attached to them, or no visual clear definitive way to articulate whom they are and what they did to arrive at such point, then how can others look to getting insight into the value being offered by the program in question.
  
  Example: Right now there is a plane loads of MVP's from around the world, being flown into Seattle to meetup at the MVP Summit. In this summit they will have access to various Product Teams and folks from various levels. They'll get to ask the hard questions and get the hard answers, which they then take back to their respective regions and distill into what there peers have asked them to find out and so on.  They are the true backbone of a community, the connectors between Corporate and Community as they can/have one on hand praised us but then immediately backhand us for not doing our jobs. Product Teams listen and do what they can so next year at the next Summit, the beatings won't continue..
  
  Benefit Realisation.
  
• Now Chad, I like you sport, but you've got to be kidding if you assume I don't follow what Adobe does across the board. CF8 vs CF9 is not as important as where is Adobe taking its product range? More to the point, early this week they announced a bit of an executive overall, now what impact will this have and do you fully comprehend what it means for them to have David Mendels out of the picture? (could be nothing, could be something). Point is, where is this ship sailing towards and which direction. Adobe have a lot of fires on many fronts they are putting out piece by piece. Consolidation of products is obvious and a platform, true platform this time round is likely to happen, the question remains however how does Coldfusion play a role in this puzzle.  FYI, I follow CF8 closely as well as CF9.
  
  
• I'll leave the rapid prototyping alone as that could strike a bar fight, as there's some basic truths in this conversation that would be the same as waving a red flag in front of a room of bulls.. suffice to say, make note i used the reference to Ruby on Rails and not ASP.NET, but i could include that as well. In fact play it safe, lets strike that remark from the record shall we :)
  
• Rather then debate blow for blow on my point, i stand by my point's and i put it to you to prove me wrong. In fact, prove them all wrong :) as if there is a problem here, you've just fixed them in one email chad, yet if there isn't well you've just strengthened the entire proposition of Coldfusion - but what if you're wrong. The point is, CF community used to be more vibrant than it is today, and not much in the technology or ownership has changed. In fact I'd say Adobe's ownership of Coldfusion has given it a boost over Macromedia, but overall the bodies and minds haven't changed.. so what has?

FUD confuses me at times? like what's the agenda? disrupt the Adobe scene so it's chaos and you all turn on the company with pitchforks? I mean I could do that and there are techniques to do that, but i'd firstly do it via layers of abstraction as the key to doing so is to ensure you're not directly linked to the riot in question - or it could be a guy, on a Saturday assessing the thread and whines about how recruitment companies have got it all wrong, how these little press releases all have it wrong, again after again, after again. Hell, you can check out Netcraft reports and argue they have it all wrong to ...sure i can appreciate it all, but i've layed out my opinion, some weak data points in the armour of that which is Coldfusion and it's entirely up to you to digest them, reject them or use them.

 

Be clear however, there are more folks out there using alternative langaues today than Coldfusion. Why, are they all morons? what elements of success can you bring back to the able if you were to explore outside the CF bubble? (community, features, lighthouse wins).

 

FYI, i recommend http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tipping_Point 

 

In my experience, FUD is 3 letters layed down on the table, when one can't find reasons why to like or dislike something.

[Barry Beattie]

struth!

I started this thread a couple of days ago to highlight the irony in a
conversation with a recruiter. next thing you know incendiary bombs
are being thrown from all quarters.

well - just to add fuel to the fire... one interesting project I'm
looking at - teaching and learning systems/distance education
(leveraging my domain knowledge) ....

... turns out to be a .NET project...

[Scott Barnes]

he started it... *points*.. all is good. No children or animals were hurt in the process of making this thread, although I did stub my toe whilst trying to turn on my computer just then.. nice one Barry.. i blame you..

[Chad Renando]

Hi Scott,

I think you may have your threads crossed. Last time I checked, I was
the one making the case for cf devers to cross polinate into other
languages because I couldn't find anyone to support CF apps that come
in. I think you are aiming at Charlie, the other
CH-name-starting-dude. I dont' know half of what you're talking
about, but it sounds technical enough where I am wanting to take
credit 'cause it sounds like technical. I only know projects in,
resources to manage, work out, and making the fit in between. I are
manager now, I are not programmer.

But if you want, I'll have a piece of you on Donky Kong. You name the
place, I'll bring the mame.

Chad
who gets his behind kicked on the level with the bouncy spring things

[Steve Onnis]

We all know Scott does have a tendency to ramble though

Hi Scott,

> > . There is lack of maturity in the local CF ranks. Most of the

> ranking officers/generals in ANZ are either in management roles or in
> other languages (Java, .NET etc). This is really bad, as whom are
> mentoring the Juniors? and more importantly what are they teaching them?
> >

> > . There is lack of marketing spend. This doesn't have to be

> billboards, events, rally points if you will are marketing amongst
> other means. We had really small budget to market Silverlight with
> last year, we made it scale and that product was zero install in January
last year.
> >

> > . There is lack of diversity. Folks, we are never one brand and

i
> encourage you all to consider going beyond your comfort zones. There
> is a large IT world out there whom will not award you points for being
> 100% loyal to one brand. Allow yourself to be around other communities
> whom may not like your technology preferences, but i guarantee you,
> they will respect you as professional for looking at theres. Diversity
> is key, as it forms relationship and fosters various adoption
> lifecyles that benefit all. If you're not getting the numbers you need
> with a UG, look at merging or colloborating with others. People donate
> 1-2hrs of their personal time to attend these, make them feel its an
investment, not a chore.
> >

> > . The old days are gone. Who cares what happened in the last 3-5

> years. What people care about is what's happening in the next 3-5 years.
> Cynergy Systems for example, told me last year at MIX07 in Vegas
> "we're announcing our support of Silverlight" and they did so because
> they believed in our roadmap and our vision for the future. I have
> countless more stories like this, roadmaps are currency as todays'
> technology weakness is tomorrow's strength. I won't preach at you, but
> ask yourself a simple question, where do you see Coldfusion heading in
> 3-5 years? not just the server itself but the surrounding ecosystem.
> >

> > . There is lack of rapid prototyping. Rapid prototyping is

> something more and more companies are looking for daily. if you can't
> produce a solution in minimal time, whilst your competitor can, weigh
> up what you're doing and why you are doing it that way. Broaden your
> horizons and understand that it's not about quality, it's mostly about
> quantity. Ruby On Rails, can be the most awful solution known to man
> in the wrong hands, and it sadly does end up in the wrong hands a lot,
> but the reason why it had a nice amount of run on the boards was
> simply because it empowered engineers to pump out solutions rapidly.
> >

> > . There is lack of community spirit. Go to a CFUG? what value

[Scott Barnes]

Just a bit.. how embarassement..

[charlie arehart]

Kai, I don't disagree with anything you say, but really none of those points
counter what I'd brought up. Perhaps you thought I was trying to argue
against what you say, but I was just responding to the specific points I
referenced in Scott's post. I wasn't saying I disagreed with everything he
said.

As for the observation that things in A/NZ may be that much different from
in the US, I will say this: I hear this all the time from all over the
world. Everyone thinks things are worse where they are (whether uptake, or
user group participation, etc.), when the truth is (I think) that things are
the same all over. I don't many developers in the community would assert
that there's any significant uptake in CF. Sure, Adobe may say there is a
huge increase in sales, and that may comfort some, but I don't think most
really think that's translating into any *significant* growth in new
developers. It's more simply (I'd think) about existing sites buying the
upgrade (though I could be wrong), and perhaps some percent of new sales.

Again, I'm not denying what's being said here about what could be done to
increase the size of the CF community. Then again, while I accept that CF is
a much smaller community than either .NET, PHP, or Ruby. I don't let that
trouble me, myself. But I'm not denying the feelings of those who feel
otherwise.

/charlie

-----Original Message-----
From: cfau...@googlegroups.com [mailto:cfau...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf
Of Kai Koenig
Sent: Friday, April 11, 2008 11:28 PM
To: cfau...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [cfaussie] Re: recruters say "CF on the way out"? ... FFS! not FUD
from them too?

Charlie,

you're right with a few of your remarks and I think no one has
said Scott is totally right, let's all jump ship because MSFT
and .NET is much better anyway :-)

But imho it's reality that the recent and often talked about
boom in CF8 sales, adoption and cool projects doesn't seem to
have arrived in total (yet) in Australia and New Zealand. I can't

<snip>

[charlie arehart]

Like I said, “I’m not looking to pick a fight”, so the cracking knuckles don’t scare me. :-) Look, I’m just replying to the points made. You don’t need to see each response as a challenge to “put ‘em up”, literally or figuratively. Like I just said to Kai, I wasn’t disagreeing with everything you said, just the specific things I replied to. And again, I feel I must clarify again. (You ask about FUD, which is engendering “fear, uncertainty, and doubt”, for  the kids watching at home. This is perhaps a perfect example of it. You state things you feel to be true, from a lofty position, when they’re not quite, and when they have a tendency to assert cause for concern when there may be none.)

 

As for the AdobeCommunityExpert/MVP issue, you say, “I wouldn't consider having a piece of glass that says "welcome to the yearly membership", t-shirt, pizzas and beer to be the end of it.” Are you saying that’s your perception of the CE program? Again I’ll argue that you’re misinformed (which is a shame, when you carry your confidence so highly). The CE program offers many benefits, and none of them involve pizza and beer.  One can find more about the program, including benefits, at http://www.adobe.com/communities/experts/faq.html.

 

You also say, “Right now there is a plane loads of MVP's from around the world, being flown into Seattle to meetup at the MVP Summit”, as if that’s in stark opposition to anything Adobe offers. Yet, again, it’s not. There will be an Adobe Community Summit at Adobe HQ (the 3^rd annual) May 12-16. We, too, will have access to Adobe engineers, product managers, and executives, with the same chance to ask hard questions and get hard answers, and to be educated to take knowledge back to the community. Just don’t think things are quite as apples/oranges as you want to make them out to be.

 

As for one of your concluding remarks, “if there is a problem here, you've just fixed them in one email chad [I think you meant me, Charlie], yet if there isn't well you've just strengthened the entire proposition of Coldfusion - but what if you're wrong.”  I guess I’ll take the presumption that I’m not, so perhaps I’ve fixed things in one email. Good. :-) But I don’t suspect you (or even others here) really think that. I’m cool with that. Again, not looking to “win” the argument. Just debating specific points.

 

You then say, “The point is, CF community used to be more vibrant than it is today, and not much in the technology or ownership has changed.” Wow, talk about sweeping generalizations. Again, that’s FUD. You can’t defend that assertion. The first is debatable, and the second seems just, well, again, misinfoirmed.  You say “I follow CF8 closely as well as CF9”. Well, when so many think CF 8 has made great strides and it’s been pretty unanimously praised, this again just comes across as throwing water on an oil fire.

 

As for, “Be clear however, there are more folks out there using alternative langaues today than Coldfusion.” Again, as I said to Kai, this just isn’t a problem for me. There are more people in the US than in Australia. More bottles of Bud are sold worldwide than VB. So what? IT isn’t a zero-sum game. There’s no one winner. Those who think there has to be are setting themselves up for heartburn (if they’re feeling left out) or over-confidence (if they’re on the winning side). I’m simply arguing that things aren’t quite as bad as some would make them out to be.

 

Like you, I’m just putting thoughts on the table. People can take them or leave them.

[Scott Barnes]

Charlie,

 

Here we go.. I'm going to keep this onpoint as best I can as I feel it's trailing off.

 

In many respects, you're intent is to push the Adobe has it under control belief, which is perfectly fine, whilst I'm on the flipside simply saying - I really don't care if they do or they don't, but should you wish to change, previous threads are some data points to consider.

 

(Apologise if I cut out some of the rant, some of it, i felt was a little to - ahuh, and i'm not sure what made you assume I've been under a rock for the last 10 years when it comes to Adobe/Macromedia, but ok).

 

"..(You ask about FUD, which is engendering "fear, uncertainty, and doubt", for  the kids watching at home. This is perhaps a perfect example of it. You state things you feel to be true, from a lofty position, when they're not quite, and when they have a tendency to assert cause for concern when there may be none.).."- Charlie

 

I've stated criteria in which I consider to be weaknesses in Coldfusion, simply because in actual fact they are. If you break away from the MXNA blog sphere over time, and listen to the outer threads of conversations (over past 5years), compete analysis and basically interaction with folks whom aren't favourable to Coldfusion, you'll most likely come to a similar conclusion. Right now, for example,  If you were to look at this from a compete situation, PHP/Ruby on Rails is more ASP.NET (Coldfusion doesn't even rate on the radar) competitor, given factors like Wordpress etc play a role in online hosting. Check out Netcraft reports if you'd like.

 

On a side and personal note, I personally have the belief, that if one is to label FUD it's effectively saying " you have no integrity and will use any underhanded tactic you can to achieve your goals..", now for a peaceful chap like yourself whom as you say, "doesn't want to pick a fight", you're certainly heading in the wrong direction then.

 

Keep in perspective, everything that one says in a forum setting such as this will be vague, as it's human dialogue evolving as each new point arises. At times, a negative point may arise and to note this and simply assume that the person is then disseminating negative (and vague) information - therefore is FUD, is well...a weak/cop out posture to take. As I guess, I reserve the right to counter-FUD you? (is there a stamp we can buy for that?)

 

As in that perspective it's a case of, "say positive things only, should you find a negative point, halt the dialogue. Respective parties then are to go fact find, collect raw un-biased evidence, bring it back to the dialogue in question and present, or else it will be stamped & labeled as FUD". If that is likely to occur in this instance, then this will be even more of long drawn out thread. Accuse me of FUD, but substantiate it at the very least otherwise it's you whom are disseminating negative (and vague) labels.

 

I also say that without emotion attached (ie not with hostility, but with more of a less deepened amount of antagonism)

 

"..Are you saying that's your perception of the CE program? Again I'll argue that you're misinformed (which is a shame, when you carry your confidence so highly).The CE program offers many benefits, and none of them involve pizza and beer.." - Charlie

 

Awaiting the the actual argument.. referring to the website is weak, on two counts. It's insulting that you think i've not read the website in which the Adobe CE program outlines these and secondly you've not outlined what they are. To help you on this journey further, look at Google and search for "Microsoft MVP" even the "Microsoft MVP Summit". The point is that it scales, it's not just a badge or a collective group of people whom meet silently, have discussions and know inside secrets and then that's it. It gets amplified, not just by us but also by the community. It's the community spirit in which i'd like you to focus more in on, instead of defending the feature matrix or quoting FAQ. 

 

They are Apples and Oranges, simply because the MVP ethos is made up of more segments, different technologies and overall different approaches. Question is whether you're open to this projected theory.
 

"..I'm cool with that. Again, not looking to "win" the argument. Just debating specific points.." - Charlie

 

I agree, only the other person can let you win any argument. I find elements of your responses to be personal & in many respects whilst minor, insulting, my "crack the knuckles" remark was intended to be a joke, thus i followed with the "hehe". I raise this as I'm not sure you are just in for a debate on specific points? In that where is your position on the matter that doesn't orbit mine?

 

"..You then say, "The point is, CF community used to be more vibrant than it is today, and not much in the technology or ownership has changed." Wow, talk about sweeping generalizations. Again, that's FUD. You can't defend that assertion. The first is debatable, and the second seems just, well, again, misinfoirmed.  You say "I follow CF8 closely as well as CF9". Well, when so many think CF 8 has made great strides and it's been pretty unanimously praised, this again just comes across as throwing water on an oil fire.." - Charlie

 

Here's where I have to play the "..you know this from living in Australia for the last 10 years then.." card (which I'm disliking may I add)?

 

That, or did you assume I meant globally in the Coldfusion community?

 

If the later, please keep into context, we are talking about Australia/New Zealand in this thread and not US/Outer regions. Neither of us can defend that assertion as again, this is dialogue in a public forum for one, and secondly neither of us have attendance records for all Coldfusion related events and user groups over the past 5-10 years. I'd wager however, and assert my opinion that it has declined in numbers and it's not as vibrant as it once was (using Brisbane for example is quite clear, as i've attended CFUG meetings for the past decade, and used to on more regular basis prior to Microsoft - which is has only been 1yr). Having an opinion being asserted, whilst it has negative outcome, doesn't automatically qualify as FUD simply because lack of raw unbiased evidence. As how again, could we conduct open discussions as the moment someone raises a negative point put forward as an opinion, Charlie brings out the FUD stamp.

 

I'm not sure what your point about "..when so many think CF 8 has made great strides and it's been pretty unanimously praised, this again just comes across as throwing water on an oil fire.." as I don't recall provoking a point around whether or not it has or hasn't made great strides? That for me is you taking me out of context and soap boxing your pro-Coldfusion 8 speech, in which it has nothing to do with the current discussion at hand -  to which however, i would reply with - we know, we agree, how does this affect the community debate?

 

 

As for, "Be clear however, there are more folks out there using alternative langaues today than Coldfusion." Again, as I said to Kai, this just isn't a problem for me. There are more people in the US than in Australia. More bottles of Bud are sold worldwide than VB. So what? IT isn't a zero-sum game. There's no one winner. Those who think there has to be are setting themselves up for heartburn (if they're feeling left out) or over-confidence (if they're on the winning side). I'm simply arguing that things aren't quite as bad as some would make them out to be. - Charlie

 

Agreed in part, yes this isn't a zero sum game, as for things being as "bad as some would make them out to be" - i look forward to hearing about your attendance at next local events to point that out to a lot of folks whom disagree. This isn't a sudden shift in numbers overnight to this cause, this argument or debate has been ongoing for quite a number of years.

 

Barry: Would you say it's been happening for what? 5+ years now? 

 

I respect your input Charlie and this isn't me and you thing, I'm singling you out more so to also illustrate that its easy to adjust an argument to focus on the person and critique their specific points blow for blow, but in the end, I put it to you that it degenerates further and no initial solution is found and it's ends in character assassinations (subtle or direct). I'd also encourage you to accept that having a opposing opinion on a given topic within a public forum, that doesn't demand evidence follow doesn't automatically qualify as being FUD. 

 

Furthermore to all, aassuming Microsoft gains in this entire position is realistically quite clear, we don't from a ASP.NET perspective (ie ASP.NET side of the brain says, shhhh..let them be, but the rest of the products say ..."no, they need help..").

 

However, and to all let me be clear also, my intent is to simply state, Coldfusion is a solution, I still enjoy on a personal level working with and interacting with, Microsoft has an investment in this community from both a Windows market share as well as products like Office, SQL, Silverlight etc. It's in our best interest to ensure interoperability not just from a technical standpoint but also from a community perspective are in place and healthy. I'd rather Microsoftee's (staff/community) collaborate more than simply setup borders and continue to breed elements of distrust. We have 1000's of brands, millions of customers and so many intersecting points that it's ludicrous for us to draw battle lines and attack competing communities with underhanded tactics.

 

We have enough trust issues in this companies past, we don't end to create more for the future. It's a different culture than it was 5 years ago, reject or accept that, its up to you. No one person is/can be a single brand in todays IT environment.
 

[Gareth Edwards]

Scott,

Just curious, when did you learn .NET? Was it out of a book? while you were on a Coldfusion Job? or did Microsoft train you?

Cheers
Gareth.