More About the April Meeting

A small handful of CFers were the first to embrace using CFCs in an OO style, and open source their ColdFusion apps. Ray Camden is perhaps the best known of them in the CF Community. He has been a leader in this movement with the success of his BlogCFC app, Canvas Wiki, and his Galleon ColdFusion Forums app, among others, all available now on RIAForge.org. Over the years, other CFers have helped contribute to Ray's apps, to make them even more feature rich and bug free, which is a concept we all can learn from. Call it a "model" or "setting the tone," open sourcing ColdFusion apps is a topic that remains a mystery to a lot of CFers. It is going to be very challenging to learn, "...a huge mindshift for most CFers," according to Sean Corfield. Therefore the time has come for KCDevCore to get this movement started. Open Sourcing in one ingredient to boosting CF's position amongst the technologies in use worldwide on the web. Look what its done for PHP.

These are the questions that Ray will be covering in a brief one hour presentation:

• What does it mean to Open Source one's apps?
• How can I get my app onto RIAForge, and why would I want to?
• How can I contribute?
• What's in it for me?

KCDevCore: Continuing the Mission

When you hear someone talk about RIAs(Rich Internet Applications) to me a RIA is an app built with Flex or AIR and ColdFusion. Is that what a RIA is to you? If not, KCDevCore's mission will be to change your mind. I challenge you to become a member and start attending our meetings.

ColdFusion is a significant ingredient to Adobe's RIA toolbox, and with ColdFusion 8, there is no doubt that Adobe is enhancing ColdFusion for the long run. Yet ColdFusion isn't the language of choice, I have learned, by Flash Developers looking for a backend technology. Instead, they choose PHP, purely by reputation - PHP's favorable reputation and ColdFusion's unfavorable reputation. When asked why not ColdFusion it becomes clear that "It crashes all the time," is still out there stuck in the minds of coders and customers who got burned by ColdFusion back in its Allaire/Macromedia days. In 2008, KCDevCore's mission is to help change ColdFusion's reputation. I'll tell ya how in a minute.

There is a lot of talk about companies moving away from ColdFusion. Think of the numbers of legacy, procedural apps that are just old and full of band-aid, spaghetti code. Companies currently using ColdFusion will be faced with the decision of rebuilding. The perception is that companies are deciding to not stick with ColdFusion. But don't get discouraged. According to Adobe, fourth quarter sales of ColdFusion are the strongest they've ever been in ColdFusion's history. Clearly, some are moving away, but the only way for sales to be what they are, there has to be new ColdFusion customers. KCDevCore is here to help support them.

ColdFusion only has some 400,000 developers according to an Adobe analyst, quoted in a recent InfoWorld article, and .NET has about 5 million developers according to a recent Flash Magazine article. So how can Adobe really compete with that? Here's how:

• A very small fraction of those 5 million developers are coding for Silverlight, but will slowly increase in time.
• Silverlight has nowhere near the maturity, stability, or capability of Flash Player 9, which is an Internet Standard.
• Microsoft has its reputation to deal with. Vista has caused OS sales to drop, and customers are downgrading to XP more often than not. Microsoft is throwing tons of money at Silverlight, and plans on broadcasting the Olympic games online to showcase its HD capabilities. Still, people will hesitate at loading it on their machine, because its Microsoft and because the Flash Player is already loaded.
• If Yahoo merges with Microsoft, it will tie up Microsoft for at least one year, up to three. Adobe has already gotten comfortable with its Macromedia merger.
• Adobe has the bulk of the designers who are already designing for the Web and Flash, but with the addition of a new product code-named Thermo, will be designing for RIA's too. Microsoft is paying Flash designers and developers to try out Silverlight. Do you think they'll switch?
• Adobe has an ally in Apple, and while Microsoft would like to believe that Mac users would developer for Silverlight, do you think they will?
• Adobe's ColdFusion has more potential to gain new ground than ever before, by riding on the back of Flex, and also by bringing its Ruby-like similarities to light. ColdFusion has a far more readable syntax, according to Sean Corfield, who is one of the most popular ColdFusion community leaders in the world. Ruby is a new langauge, but growing quickly. Ruby's success is good for ColdFusion, because it keeps the .NET crowd in check, but also because ColdFusion is the closest alternative to Ruby; they are both dynamically typed languages for starters.

Now is the time to put away the procedural ways of the ColdFusion of yesterday, and start building for tomorrow. I challenge you to make it your goal in 2008, to make the transition to using CFCs with OO. And if you want to use Flex or AIR with ActionScript and MXML, you really have no choice but to learn OO. ColdFusion is a terric way to learn the concepts you will need for Flex. It will make learning Flex all the more easier for you. Every newbie ColdFusion developer today is learning to use CFCs at the start. Even Lynda.com's Essential ColdFusion 8 starts with CFCs. KCDevCore is here to help everyone who attends our monthly meetings with learning CFCs with OO, Flex and AIR with MXML and Actionscript 3.0.

So how can KCDevCore help change ColdFusion's reputation? I believe the answer to that is a combination of the following:

• Educate veteran ColdFusion coders to use CFCs with OO.
• Educate all ColdFusion coders on "open source" and encourage everyone to contribute to CF open source projects at RIAForge.org.
• Learn about, utlize, help teach others, and talk about ColdFusion's Ruby-like similarities. Sean Corfield can ultimately help us with this, but it is a more advanced feature.
• When selling RIAs, include ColdFusion with Flex 3 or AIR as a package deal. With CF8's .NET features, it can even be sold as a middleware. CF8's Remoting is 10 times faster than using .NET WebServices with Flex.
• Educate everyone on Flex and AIR, how to code with MXML and Actionscript 3.0

I don't believe that people choose Ruby or PHP, because they are more complex, with the most cryptic syntax they can find. Very few of us really need the "true" OO language experts boast about. When you encounter those who claim the myths of yesterday, what ColdFusion was - you can now rebut with, "I guess you haven't tried Adobe's ColdFusion yet." This is a powerful statement, because clearly they haven't, but maybe they actually might, since its free. When they do, KCDevCore is here to help them too.

I hope to see you at the next KCDevCore meeting.

New Meeting Format

The first step toward changing ColdFusion's reputation is to get all of our experienced, veteran ColdFusion coders up-to-speed on using CFCs with OO. At the beginning of every KCDevCore meeting in 2008, we're going to take approximately 30 to 45 minutes to go over the basics of using CFCs, so that in time all of our members who have attended even a few KCDevCore meeetings, will have had the chance to learn about CFCs. I'll ask for volunteers at each meeting to do this, so we can all get some experience sharing our knowledge with others - it really is the best way to learn too. We are all on the path of learning in one way or another, so get over your shyness(I did) or put away that competitive spirit if you think your peers are out to take your job away from you(there's plenty to go around, and KCDevCore can even help you find a job), and let's all join together as a team and support each other. That is what KCDevCore is all about.

Next we will have a presentation of some kind - a featured speaker. Then the last part of the meeting will be like a round table discussion, where people can share code to get others feedback. So bring your code with you on a flash drive, CD, or DVD. We're always looking for new ways to organize our meetings to keep them interesting and beneficial. If you have ideas, please email me: manager[at]KCDevCore.org.