For the love of God, it REALLY gets old. I jet on over to the Smith Project Digg posting to Digg it up and read more about it. As I look through the comments, it just refreshes my memory as to how LITTLE people actually know about ColdFusion and how misconceptions about the app server & language continue to plague its acceptance.
Here's a juicy tidbit from a misinformed:
“Who's using CF these days? The only major site I've noticed running it lately has been MySpace, and it doesn't seem to be working too well for them. Anyone know of any major sites that are using it?”
Adobe recently posted a HUGE list of top companies and sites using ColdFusion here:
World's Top Companies Use ColdFusion MX
It just floors me how people jump to conclusions without doing absolutely ANY homework. Couple that with the religious-zealoutry of some of the PHP & Rails coder and it just completely degrades an otherwise cool posting about Smith. Pathetic…
I think everyone knows that I am a BIG fan of BlueDragon and New Atlanta (especially the Adobe folks from what I understand). Apart from them having an amazing CFML application server, they also go out of their way to market the engine and meet users. Just recently, I met up with Josh Adams of New Atlanta. He had come down to the South Florida CFUG to do a preso on BD 7.0. Unfortunately, I couldn't attend but Josh made it a point to meet with me the next day just so that I could offer my perspective on BD, ColdFusion, and the state of CF development. That's the type of stuff that I think is sorely lacking from the Adobe side. Adobe has Ben Forta, which is an absolutely awesome evangelist for CF, but 1 person can't be everywhere and considering Adobe's size and financial resources, there should be many more “Ben Fortas” on the road evangelizing about CF.
Now, for all of the trolls that will come on over and start griping about my post, let me be clear that this is not an attack on ColdFusion but it is most certainly a message to Adobe to step up and do better in getting the word out about ColdFusion. It may not make me any friends at Adobe (which is not my intention) but if it helps in any way to get ColdFusion more exposure and kill these misconceptions, I'll take the hit.
I think having Tim Buntel back will definitely make a big impact and hopefully, Adobe will back him up with some marketing dollars as well.
