What I Learned at CFUNITED 2006

Jul 12, 2006

By Judith Dinowitz

CFUNITED 2006 left me feeling energized and highly positive about ColdFusion. There were personal events that made this year's conference special to me. At CFUNITED, Michael and I (after many years of publishing Fusion Authority solely on the web) came out with the first issue of our technical journal, The Fusion Authority Quarterly Update (http://www.fusionauthority.com/quarterly). The journal was well-received, and we got many compliments on it from writers and attendees. However, the journal was not the only reason for my positive perspective at CFUNITED. The messages that Adobe was sending at the conference, and the response of the community, were a clear sign to me that ColdFusion is exactly where it needs to be to grow and mature and gain in market share.

Here is what I learned at CFUNITED:

ColdFusion is Alive and Well

Just look at what CFUNITED has turned into! The conference has grown into a five-day extravaganza (including the Tuesday training sessions), with close to 1,000 people. Many of these people traveled far distances to come. CFUNITED itself is proof that ColdFusion is on the rise.

Another (and more personal) sign is the rise in the number of new, unique visitors to House of Fusion that Michael and I have been watching since the second week of May. Our statistics have been rising consistently, with several thousand new people coming to our sites every day. Since January 1, 2006, we have had over half a million unique new site visitors to House of Fusion. Michael was showing these statistics off at the House of Fusion booth (and you can see the June statistics as well as the year-to-date visitor rate at http://www.houseoffusion.com/statistics. Since neither of us can find an event in the second week of May that would drive traffic to our sites, we can only theorize that what's driving this rise of interest in ColdFusion is consumer confidence in the product.
Adobe is Seriously and Quite Publicly Supporting ColdFusion.

There are many signs that Adobe is continuing to invest in the development of ColdFusion:

At the first keynote address of the conference, Adobe announced the return of Tim Buntel as the Senior Marketing Manager for ColdFusion at Adobe. This was welcome news to the audience at CFUNITED, who stood up and cheered!
Tim showed off some of Adobe's innovations in Scorpio (the next version of ColdFusion), including a a sneak peek of what the demo called the <cfpdfform> tag. This tag allows interaction between an Adobe PDF form and ColdFusion. Tim was able to read data out of a PDF form, which means that the thousands of PDF forms that many businesses use to capture data online will be potential sources of data for ColdFusion! There is clearly ongoing development of the ColdFusion product, and not just for Flex integration.
Most of Wednesday's keynote had to do with the release of Flex 2 and of ColdFusion 7.0.2, the new ColdFusion Updater. The Updater has lots of Flex 2 integration, several hotfixes, and updates to the reporting engine. (It's worth getting the Updater for the improvements in reporting alone!) Adobe is pushing ColdFusion as the preferred backend to Flex applications, which means they are not likely to lose interest in the product. While you can do PHP and Java applications with Flex 2, ColdFusion will give you the best performance and the best price point.

As Joe Rinehart, creator of the Model-Glue framework, said to me:

It's clear that ColdFusion is going to be the backend language of choice for Flex development. Combining this with Adobe's newfound dedication to marketing the product, as evidenced by the return of Tim Buntel, it's plain to see that ColdFusion is here to stay.

There are hardcore, talented serious programmers in the community who could have been doing Java programming. Instead, they seem very invested in using ColdFusion.

I'm talking about people like Sean Corfield, Joe Rinehart, Chris Scott and Doug Hughes, who chose to write frameworks like Fusebox, Model-Glue, ColdSpring, and Reactor for the ColdFusion community. I spoke to some of these Framework Makers to find out why.

Joe Rinehart, creator of the Model-Glue framework, said, I've never been big in the Java world. I'm a ColdFusion guy. I've done .NET and I've learned about .JSP and Servlets, but I have no desire to deal with that amount of complication just to deliver browser-based applications. ColdFusion is simple. Model-Glue is simple. Putting the two together lets me worry less about technical minutiae, and focus on what my users need. And that's what it's all about, right?

Chris Scott, one of the founders of ColdSpring, actually does program in Java as well as ColdFusion, and he has ported Model-Glue to Java. He said he actually likes Java. I actually find [Java] very fun to work in, and there are things that I miss when working with ColdFusion. However, do I think it's better for http-based application development? Not at all. What I love so much about ColdFusion is [that] it's expressive. You can actually just program and get things done instead of dealing with all the mundane and difficult issues involved in J2EE development.

Many of them spoke glowingly of the ColdFusion community.

Scott said,
The thing that struck me most of all when I started working in Java was how different the community seems. Where in ColdFusion, people often want to help each other learn new techniques, methodologies or frameworks, in Java that is not always the case. There often seems to be a lot more competition; sometimes people don't want to share their 'secrets' quite so much. I think what is really the most fun about developing ColdFusion frameworks is not only the fact that I'm now giving back to the community that I've gained so much from for so many years, but I've also become even more a part of that community that I ever was before.

The community seems to be a prime reason for Sean Corfield's investment in ColdFusion (though it's presently not part of his job at Adobe). He said,
Back in the day, I was very active in the C++ community and was involved with open source framework development. When I moved into Java development in 1997, I never really got into the community. It didn't seem as coherent or as welcoming as the C++ community had been. When I picked up ColdFusion in 2001, I found a very open, active community and was happy to become part of that. Over time, I got more involved with the ColdFusion community and was very supportive of the efforts around framework development. As far as Fusebox goes, I'd been very critical of Fusebox 3, accepting of Fusebox 4 and quite supportive of Fusebox 4.1. When I was asked to develop Fusebox 5, it seemed like the right time to push the envelope forward.
People at the conference were interested in Flex.

All of the Flex sessions at the conference were heavily attended, a sign that the community sees Adobe's focus on Flex as a good thing. Tobe Goldfinger, one of the conference attendees and my co-manager in the New York ColdFusion User Group (http://www.nycfug.org), expressed her interest in learning Flex. I'm thrilled that Flex is finally live because I've played with the beta and am looking forward to building applications that can be put in production, not just experiments. I'm looking forward to seeing some advanced Flex training at future conferences, both from Adobe and CFUNITED.

Adobe's smart pricing of the product is probably one of the primary reasons for the increased level of interest in the community (who were slow to adopt Flex when it came out in version 1.0). It's actually possible to code Flex applications without spending a penny. Between the free SDK, the Express Version of Flex Data Services 2 (which is free but dependant on ColdFusion Enterprise), and the low price of the Flex Builder IDE, Flex 2 has been brought into the developers' world. Programmers can embrace it and use it, and spread the word so that companies will want to buy the full version of Flex Enterprise Services.

Goldfinger also expressed her happiness at Adobe's pricing. I think them coming out with FDS Express at the unbeatable price of 'FREE' is sure to get a lot of us working with data synchronization and push. I may indeed be the trigger for a $20,000 sale.

Michael Dinowitz, President of House of Fusion agreed. Before Flex 2, I didn't use Flex because I didn't own Flex. Now I'm looking forward to building Flex applications.
There was high interest in BlueDragon.Net.

The BlueDragon sessions were well-attended, with most BlueDragon session attendance in the session on BD.Net. By having Microsoft backing, New Atlanta can take advantage of .NET's capabilities. They claim that .NET outperforms the JVM. I don't know if that's true but I would say that New Atlanta is a company to watch.
The community is very interested in writing quality systems.

I'm basing this on the fact that the sessions on subjects like Model-Glue, ColdSpring, and the frameworks debate were well attended. We are never going to be taken seriously by the Java community unless we learn how to write high-quality systems, and the community seems to know this, if session attendance is any indicator.

Scott felt that the ColdFusion language, community, and platform are maturing at an incredible rate. I can't even believe that Mach II is only three years old. We've grown from being introduced to cfcs to plunging into full OO thinking in such a small amount of time. To hear so many talented people talk about building enterprise software in ColdFusion is amazing. And I really think that Adobe is committed to pushing the platform into that space as well? I guess what I came away with most is incredible excitement for things to come!
The Networking Factor is a big reason to go.

Not everyone goes to CFUNITED for the sessions. Simeon Bateman, who is involved in developing CFEclipse and some of the ColdFusion frameworks, said that he goes to CFUNITED for the chance to work face-to-face with many of his peers in the community. I got a lot of work done [at CFUNITED]. I worked with Joe Rinehart and Paul Kenny on setting up unit testing for the model in Model-Glue. I worked with Dave Ross and Chris Scott on making some other changes in ColdSpring so I could get the stuff I needed done. I worked with Mark Drew on some new features for CFEclipse, as well as gaining a road map plan for CFEclipse so we can start moving forward. I took the time to make advantage of having all the right people in one place.

Post CFUNITED: Taking the Excitement Back with You

The messages of CFUNITED should inspire all of us to move forward with our ColdFusion development with confidence, and to continue to learn not just ColdFusion but related technologies: Object-Oriented techniques, frameworks, Flex, AJAX ... You're a better developer (and a more marketable one) if you continue to push the envelope (as Mr. Corfield put it.) Whether you attended CFUNITED or not, you can bring the inspiration that was at the conference back to the office. Use the lessons of CFUNITED to fuel your own development. And if anyone tries to sell you on the idea that ColdFusion is dying, just point them to this article, smile sweetly, and continue coding.

Judith Dinowitz is Editor-in-Chief of Fusion Authority, the House of Fusion Technical Magazine. She is well-known as the CFEditor, having worked on many articles and books for other publications.

What I Learned at CFUNITED 2006

Latest ColdFusion Talk (CF-Talk)

Latest ColdFusion Jobs (CF-Jobs)

Want a number like 800-ColdFusion?