[ShellyLynn]

Last fall I started learning some coldfusion when I helped a friend build a shopping cart for her website. Up until that point I had only had experience with basic web design and html. Now I have always had an good aptitude for learning just about anything computer related and decided to further my education a bit to expand my web site developing capabilities. So I picked up the manual I had purchased on coldfusion and started to work my way through it. Then I started to realise that I don't hear as much mention of coldfusion anymore. Basically what I am asking is: If I am wanting to develop my skills to make myself more marketable which is the best route to go? What language(s) should I learn that would enable me to get the most return on my time investment? I appreciate all of your opinions. Thank you!

ShellyLynn

[Larixk]

Macromedia Flex, maybe?

umh, Adobe Flex that is.

[datahound]

I would recommend PHP. It is easy to learn and free.

[freelancr]

Coldfusion has as far as I can tell come to the end of its development, not to say it isnt being used - as it is what is behind MySpace. Adobe/Macromedia Flex as far as I can tell is some Ajaxy thing, not a replacement for CF? (though I havent read up about it)

If you are looking to jump into something thats quite easy to grasp the basics of, then consider looking at PHP. Plenty of opensource code to help you in your understanding - and plenty of books and tutorials.

I have grasped the basics of PHP, but have now moved onto learning ASP.NET - it is proving harder to learn than php because it is quite new, there are different languages to learn within it (vb.net\c#\j#) and there are big differences between the versions so most 1.0 or 1.1 stuff doesnt apply for 2.0.

Also, I am using MySQL for the database which doesnt help when everyone else uses MS SQL.

[pgo]

If I ever get off my lazy ass and learn some server side programming, it's going to be PHP (I know a bit).

Ruby (on Rails) is hot shit right now, too.

Originally Posted by freelancr

as it is what is behind MySpace

And look how well that works!

Ba-zing!

Personally, I've never liked ColdFusion based sites. A CMS we use at work is CF based and I don't care for it. And then there's MySpace. So, perhaps my opinion of CF is tainted.

I guess it really comes down to it being a tool. A good programmer using CF is going to get better results than a shitty programmer using PHP. And vice versa.

[cam]

Originally Posted by pgo

A good programmer using CF is going to get better results than a shitty programmer using PHP. And vice versa.

Well said.

For making yourself marketable I'd recommend PHP or ASP.NET. As much as I'm loving developing in Ruby/Rails, if you're looking to increase your prospects of employment it's not the way to go, as there are less positions available and they'll be filled by people with more experience. Get solid experience in one of the more popular languages, like the two I just mentioned.

Ignore the talk of Flex - it's by no means an alternative for CF.

[ShellyLynn]

Thank you all for your advice. It's greatly appreciated. I was starting to think that asp.net and php was the way to go because its all I see. When I built this shopping cart last year I had a choice of using CF or asp and I went with CF at the time because it seemed to be very similar to html and since I already have a good grasp of that I figure CF would be the best way to go. Again, thanks for the advice.

ShellyLynn

[WeeJames]

Up until 3 months ago i worked at a company who develop solely in CF. We had developed some pretty advanced stuff in it; a shit hot CMS, an Emaily Marketing application, plus numerous other products. But the more we wanted to push it the more i found i was having to rely on using Java and interfacing that with CF to get some real work done. Ive now jumped ship to a PHP dev company which im enjoying much more (thankfully i had done a lot of PHP work on the side of my last job so it wasnt completely alien to me). I wouldnt set foot near anything CF from now on.

As far as im concerned (and Adobe probably aswell) its a dead language. Why would anyone continue to pay thousands of pounds for something that is bettered easily by free solutions like PHP and ASP.NET.

[Luke Redpath]

Originally Posted by cam

Well said.

For making yourself marketable I'd recommend PHP or ASP.NET. As much as I'm loving developing in Ruby/Rails, if you're looking to increase your prospects of employment it's not the way to go, as there are less positions available and they'll be filled by people with more experience. Get solid experience in one of the more popular languages, like the two I just mentioned.

Thats a fair point, *but*, as Rails jobs increase (and they are) then the need for more experienced Rails developers will increase. Start learning Rails now and in a year you'll be a very employable Rails developer. That doesn't preclude you from learning something else at the same time.

[pgo]

Originally Posted by cam

Well said.

I should have rephrased:

A good programmer using CF is going to get better results than me using PHP.

[cfjedimaster]

Lot of interesting stuff here. Let me address them out of order because - well - its Friday.

First off: MySpace was built badly. All languages allow you to develop badly. That isn't a CF or Java or PHP issue - it is true for all languages. The creators of MySpace have gone on the record as saying they simply wrote code and threw it live w/o testing. They did this so they could quickly get new features up. That ISN'T an excuse for them - but it explains why their site performed so badly.

Shelly - I think most folks would tell you to work with the language you are most effective with. If you are effective with ColdFusion, then you should use it.

Job Market: Learning just ONE language would be a bad idea in general, no matter what the language. The RAILS folks like to talk about how hot their language is now - and it is hot - but it doesn't make sense to base your career on just one language. I've been using ColdFusion for 10 years now and while it is my primary language, it is not my only language.

Flex: Flex is a language to generate Flash. Totally different from CF or PHP.

Adobe: Adobe is VERY much behind CF. Version 8 is being worked on right now.

Cost: Anyone who ONLY considers the cost of software is making a mistake. While software cost is a concern, so is development time and support. One of the benefits of CF is that it is one of the best languages for RAD when it comes to web development. I am obviously biased, but outside of that - you don't just base your decision on one cost - but factor in everything. That's why I use OSX and Windows over Linux - they are both just easier to use, setup, and support than Linux. Also do not forget you can run a 100% free version of CF on your desktop for learning. When it comes time to deploy your application for your client, plenty of ISPs support CF, and at very affordable costs.

[Nik Manning]

Coldfusion is not dead, but it isn't very popular. PHP is free so many coders can compete with the bigboys without much startup capital. Keep in mine that coding in coldfusion requires much less lines of code than any other language which can mean less mistakes and less development time. If some of these features are important to you then go with coldfusion.

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[WeeJames]

If you want a job in the real world dont touch CF. For 3 years after leaving uni i developed in CF and when it came time to move on i realised that job opportunities in it were minimal. Luckily i had been doing a lot in php freelance so i was able to leverage that to get a php based job.

CF is dead.

[pgo]

Yeah, my only experience with CF was a certain CMS I don't like. So, my opinion of it is not good.

Plus I don't like the way it looks like HTML. I like my programming to look different from my markup, so I can tell them apart at a glance.

[samuelcotterall]

I ditched PHP for Rails for the moment because I'm a student, my college don't touch it, I don't work with anyone else's code and I don't want to do personal projects in it.

I really enjoy Rails, but I don't think I'll find a job in it within the next 12 months. No matter how much people say it's the hottest thing at the moment.

[adrianoh]

hi shelly, in replying to the core of your question: "Basically what I am asking is: If I am wanting to develop my skills to make myself more marketable which is the best route to go?"

In my opinion, there's basically going to be 2 mainstream of web-based programming you need to stick to for "marketability" sake.

1) Microsoft asp.net
2) PHP (LAMP Stack)

Both are very dominant in the marketplace. Be very good at one of it and you won't go wrong as far as "marketability" is concerned.

Not to say others are not significant, like Googlers, they like to use Python, or some hard core stuff like LISP you probably never heard of.

Coldfusion doesn't look good in the long run, Adobe might stop further development anytime. And not to mention, coldfusion shared hosting is normally cost more than linux and windows hosting.

[cfjedimaster]

Originally Posted by adrianoh

Coldfusion doesn't look good in the long run, Adobe might stop further development anytime. And not to mention, coldfusion shared hosting is normally cost more than linux and windows hosting.

Adobe is working on a new version of CF right now. And to be clear - MS could make the same decision about dot net if it wants to as well.

I've seen shared hosting for CF as low as 5 dollars per month. Frankly, most clients are not going to want a host that costs around the same price as a cup of coffee. You get what you pay for. Also, you compared CF to windows and linux hosting. I assume you meant to compare to dot net or php, since CF runs in both Windows and Linux (and in the next rev, OSX).

[freelancr]

Originally Posted by cfjedimaster

Adobe is working on a new version of CF right now. And to be clear - MS could make the same decision about dot net if it wants to as well.

I read this too, but they aren't exactly on the ball with it, pretty sure Macromedia were prepared to dump it before they merged.

Also your comment about MS "could drop dot net" is total bollocks, if they dumped dot net then they might aswell dump this too:
- Silverlight
- IIS
- Vista
- Server
- C#
- J#
- VB.NET
- C++ CLI
- Visual Studio
- MS SQL
- Office
- every other single fucking microsoft product currently supported since 2002.

What exactly would they dump dot net in favour for, considering they have spent the last 5 years building all of their software around it.

I haven't heard anything about CF for years until the other day, hardly got an interested userbase has it.

[adrianoh]

Originally Posted by cfjedimaster

Adobe is working on a new version of CF right now. And to be clear - MS could make the same decision about dot net if it wants to as well.

I've seen shared hosting for CF as low as 5 dollars per month. Frankly, most clients are not going to want a host that costs around the same price as a cup of coffee. You get what you pay for. Also, you compared CF to windows and linux hosting. I assume you meant to compare to dot net or php, since CF runs in both Windows and Linux (and in the next rev, OSX).

Micro$oft will not in a million years stop the development on .net. it's in the DNA of every single line of their products, and it's already widely adopted in the enterprise field.

Still, i believe ColdFusion will still be around, the thing is, they will remain unsignificant.

Back to the main point, the question posted by shellylynn

Originally Posted by ShellyLynn

Basically what I am asking is: If I am wanting to develop my skills to make myself more marketable which is the best route to go? What language(s) should I learn that would enable me to get the most return on my time investment? I appreciate all of your opinions. Thank you!

She wants to know opinion on which web programming language should she learn if she want more "marketability". No doubt, it's either php or asp.net for now and forseeable near future. (+ MYSQL, of coz)

On hosting pricing wise, i'm talking about windows or linux hosting, for CF hosting, you need another app server, which is CF Server running on top of either linux or window, thus making much pricier. Just take a look at the price and you will know that for sure your hoster will pass the cost to you.

adobe.com/products/coldfusion/buy/

Originally, windows hosting cost more than linux hosting (windows server 2003std cost USD 600+ vs Linux practically FREE), but since things has changed in the landscape due to MS actually has a special pricing plan for solution provider. They know they want a piece of the shared hosting market as it's a platform battle they cannot afford to lose. Else whatever .net will become .nut, at least in the SME sectors.

[Blue Ire]

CF is very useful in one out of every 100 projects. If you are looking for something to learn, Perl developers have all but disappeared as far as I can tell.