With my eyes open lately to other technologies (mostly Java due to my interests in Android, and recently Rails) I’ve had an opportunity to chat with developers who don’t work in ColdFusion. These guys seem shocked that I’m working in ColdFusion professionally, which I find baffling.  Just this evening, one of my newest developer friends gleefully forwarded this link:

I Always Said ColdFusion Sucked

It bums me out reading stuff like this, for a number of reasons. I really feel like Adobe could have done a lot more to increase the acceptance level of ColdFusion. I’ve invested around 12 years developing on the platform and I’m pleased with how things have evolved up to CF9.  But with the price tags on both the server technology AND the IDE, it’s hard to recruit developers to the platform which has made for some very challenging hiring issues for me for the past 6 years.

The response to these challenges by the ColdFusion community sometimes concerns me. I recall an article by TechCrunch that called ColdFusion “outmoded technology” that caused an uprising of venomous comments that seemed to simultaneously invigorate other CF developers while turning off developers dedicated to other technologies.  These threads were usually graced by the former ColdFusion Product Manager who would hurl insults indiscriminately, even targeting long-time CF developers expressing what they considered to be legitimate concerns. The lesson: don’t challenge Adobe or the community, just take what you get and like it — a far cry from what I experienced at JavaOne a few weeks ago.

Can ColdFusion evolve and grow successfully if challenges are disregarded?  Can developers evolve and grow successfully if they are dedicated to a platform that marches to the beat of its own drum?  Am I a ColdFusion leper for asking these questions?