Abandonware, or 'Allaire Forums Open Sourced' 147
For those who don't know, Forums is a package of Cold Fusion templates which runs on a web server with Cold Fusion installed. You can see an example of it at forums.allaire.com.
I've been using Cold Fusion for a few years now, and my initial reaction was, "Why bother?" Allaire released the initial version of Forums in 1996, supported it for about 20 minutes or so[1], and began the process of abandoning it in favor of developing a lucrative "enterprise computing" package. Around 1998 or so, perhaps even 1997, people started asking for it to be open-sourced. In 1998 Allaire made a few bug fixes and released version 2 of the software, and in November 1999, they announced the software would be open-sourced. And yesterday, they actually did it. Of course, all of their Forums customers decided they were abandoned a few years ago, and found another product.
Now in one sense, Forums has always been "open source". Cold Fusion templates are interpreted, not compiled (and Forums was released before Allaire added even the weak encryption for templates that they now support), so anyone with a few weeks to kill could scrutinize the code and figure out how everything worked. Of course, redistributing modified versions of the code was a no-no, and if you made any modifications to it, even bug-fixes, then you lost all support from Allaire. Just like any compiled software product. In fact, I believe changing the templates was against the old license agreement, though I don't have a copy of the old license readily available.
So basically what they've done is make it freely downloadable. The license agreement is one of those bastardized we-took-our-standard-license-and-changed-a-few-words things that very obviously originated in the mind of a lawyer used to writing proprietary software licenses. I suppose it's open, but it sure isn't friendly about being open, know what I mean? It giveth with one hand, and taketh away with the other.
In any case, this is a classical example of the "abandoning a product while trying to keep our customers from feeling abandoned" open-source motivation. I'm dubious about its success, in this case or in the other cases where this is the motivation behind opening up a set of code. If Allaire had actually done this maybe three years ago, Forums would probably be a robust and stable product by now, and it would probably be driving a fair number of sales of the Cold Fusion application server. Instead, Allaire collected ($400 * #number_of_sales#) and pissed off (0.95 * #number_of_forums_customers#) by selling them a product with zero support.
Are people really going to flock to it now, spend a few hours parsing the license and trying to figure out if they can do anything useful with the code, and spontaneously develop a thriving user-group to support this thing? If Allaire can't even support it, why do they expect others to?
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it'll be a huge success, it'll turn into a beautiful open-source product and every Cold Fusion site worldwide will want their own set of discussion groups. Or maybe it'll just turn into another ghost site, lights on, but nobody home.
The open source/free software community is likely to see a lot more of these sorts of projects in the future. When your car gets old and feeble, and you don't feel like fixing it up anymore, you can donate it to Goodwill or to your local school for their auto shop course. Or you just take the plates off and drive it down to the waterfront, roll down the windows, leave the keys in it, and walk away.
When you don't feel like supporting your old software anymore, you dub it "open source", send out a press release touting your bold move, and dump it in the software burial grounds. It's a little better than previous burial methods (which involving interring the software in Yucca Mountain, permanent disposal), but maybe not very much.
Now Emmett is a little more optimistic. He notes that if even one person does something useful with the code, it's a net gain. And I suppose he's right. But the community is going to have to learn how to deal with "open source" code that is actually just a cynical move to dump some unsupported product and talk about how you're supporting the open source world.
Emmett: I agree with you, but there's always the point that someone will probably find a good use for it, even if it's to test it once and throw it away. OOP means that talented developers are talented in the reuse of code. I mean, if only one person picks it apart, takes 200 lines of code, and uses it to build some better, more efficient system of some sort, and GPL all of it, isn't that worth it? I think so, and I think it's the 'one person, somewhere' belief that keeps everything going. If they were serious about doing something, they would have used the GPL and been done with it.
The key here is that Allaire isn't thinking 'one person, somewhere,'
they're thinking, 'good PR,' while they'll turn this into a PR
extravaganza and say they're thinking 'one person, somewhere.' I think we're on the same page when I say we're both thinking 'too little, too late.' Don't confuse clever marketing and free advertising for innovation.
[1] A slight exaggeration. I believe Allaire actually supported the product for at least a week after they rolled it out.
Re:Looks like openspot.org is abandoned (Score:1)
Re:That's a fallacy (Score:1)
Re:Argh!! (Score:1)
So to comment on my using cfinclude's. The interfaces to the "functions" are described in the headers of those files -- as long as that is the SOP at the company for which I used to work, everything goes smoothly. I don't agree that calling CustomTags looks better codewise only because my approach is a vertical extension of the same thing (and I get more flexibility).
For example:
CustomTag:
<CF_Foo param="bar">
My "Function":
The second method involves a little bit more typing but it allows a person to organize his/her function libraries within single files and it doesn't restrict your placement of them (a similar sort of thing could be done with CustomTags by using files as objects of sorts, single instance of course, where you make method calls by passing [as a parameter] the name of the method that you want to call).
That having been said, there are three other options, one of which I haven't brought up before: COM, CORBA, and CFX. I know that you're familiar with the COM and CORBA (both of which could be used as proxies to ANY kind of legacy system, btw
Yes, to a certain degree you are right, it is a problem with the IS depts, but the tool does make the problem worse by not defining a clear defined way to make functions and no - of course they are not code cranking automatons, and frankly I'm not even sure what your point is here...
So come up with a clearly defined way to make functions amongst your team, if the team is subject to high turnover rates (as I suspect most web-programming teams are), just sketch it out on a notepad and file it away
Now, the automaton thing, that was melodramatic flair on my part to make a point which I guess you didn't get (but I really laughed when I read this part of your comment
So now on to my final two responses. You say that you want to replicate a legacy system's behavior with a ColdFusion program
Thank you for your time.
Re:Ah, Cold Fusion...(off topic) (Score:1)
Re:Documentation needs. (Score:1)
So, what you're saying, if I'm not mistaken, is that PHP-- a free software package-- should include the same quality of documentation as CF, a $500-$5000 program? Nonsense.
I'm NOT a programmer. Yet I learned a functiional amount of PHP in a few days from two books that I would have purchased anyway (Webmaster in a Nutshell and MySQL). Can't afford those? Pick up O'Reilly's Pocket Guide to PHP for about $10 & (along with the online docs) you'll be up to speed in no time.
Granted, the third party books on PHP have generally gotten less then stellar reviews. But when a language is this simple, what's it really matter?
Re:Ah, Cold Fusion... (Score:1)
open licence maybe.. who has the copyright (Score:1)
but don't they have to sign the copyright over to another party (like the FSF)?
Or they can at a later date (when someone's made the damm thing work properly) reclaim it?
or am i hopelessly confused here?
Innovation (Score:1)
But... But... That goes against everything that Micros~1 has taught us!
I really need to stop biting trolls... (Score:1)
First, you exaggerate. Yes, Slashdot has problems every once in a while, as it moves to a new server. Every program I've seen has problems like this when you move the program. Note that I'm talking about moving as opposed to a simple reinstall. I'm talking about yanking a hard drive and slapping it into another machine, which is probably at least analogous to what the Slashdot guys did if not the exact thing. And with sites like this, that is necessary if you want to keep the archives intact.
Second, you don't cite a single example of how Slashdot doesn't "work." We all know examples, yes, such as when moving to a new server. But you never give any examples. You only throw an argument out there without supporting it. No matter what the argument is, that's a flame.
Third, you talk about "Slashdot's inability to scale to high loads." I'm assuming you're talking about the distributed Denial-of-Service attack Slashdot has been undergoing recently. I would hardly fault Slashdot for crumbling under such an attack; every site out there crumbles just as badly. That's how powerful these attacks really are.
Fourth, you don't know what you're arguing about; You talk about "Slashdot's unmaintainable PEARL code." You have obviously never even read the code. How do I know this? You don't even seem to know what Perl is, otherwise you would have at the absolute least spelled and capitalized it right. Even had you read the code, with no knowledge of Perl you would be in no position to decide whether or not it was unmaintainable. Spouting arguments with obviously no knowledge of what you're talking about is another characteristic of flames.
While we're at it, you talk about a product's "stability and performance" (I can only assume you meant the Forums software) but never cite numbers. Last I checked, Forums was less stable than Slashdot. It should also be known that Slashdot was proprietary, or essentially proprietary thanks to releases that didn't keep up with updates, for a long time, so it hasn't had the benefits of being Open-Source for all that long.
And finally, you're offtopic. The discussion here is about Forums, not Slash. If you want to talk about Slash, use the Slashdot-centric forums where they talk about this, or better yet go to Slashcode.org and talk about it there.
So please, spare us the flames, and don't get pissed off when they're modded down.
This is not a Bad Thing (Score:4)
- Take a class in it, which will teach you syntax and not much else
- Figure it out yourself from the techniques you already know and the documentation you have
- (this is the big one) Learning how someone else did it
Way back when I was a wee tyke, when I was first getting the hang of Pascal, I would have given my left kidney to access the wealth of open source code today. Not because it's a free product, but because I could have learned things like fast hash functions and various optimizations without having to munge through the concepts myself. Something may be gained from the experience, I suppose, but the pain is considerably more than the gain.If software companies want to abandon software by making it open source, then scores of programmers in their crysalis stage are going to benefit. The customers were screwed already from the companies poor support policies, so they don't even enter into the equation.
With an eye to the future, I'd say that anything that will help people become programmers is a worthwhile endeavor. Isn't that what the geek community is about?
Re:Cold Fusion is better than PHP, at least right (Score:2)
Sure, you can make 'functions' by creating custom tags, but I find that most people who just pick up ColdFusion and start coding don't even know that you CAN create custom tags - so as a result, they create no functions, and maintainability quickly can become a nightmare (unless someone who actually KNOWS how to program can direct the other coders, and slap them on the hand when they don't code any damn functions)
just a personal rant about CF...I also wish there was a way to put more then one 'custom tag' in a file, so that I could group my functions, but instead - each and every function needs to be in a seperate file... and that sucks.
Re:Cold Fusion? How appropriate... (Score:1)
Aggreed.
I actually find the Tag based code paradigm to be very good. It makes this easier to manipulate on the output level than it can be using a traditional stream based system.
The cool thing about such languages is that, if developed correctly, they can both be ideal for the web, AND be powerful enough to handle complex stuff.
Re:Cold Fusion is better than PHP, at least right (Score:1)
Putting them into tags rather than functions has positives and negatives.
Actually, I think Allaire sees the future. A lot of scripting languages are moving towards being wrapped in XML, so many langugages might look like Cold Fusion.
I actually think that there are some flaws with Cold Fusion. The fact you can't create functions or objects can be a bit of a pain. But for what Cold Fusion sets out to do, both the built in functions and tag library seems to do the job. I only really use Custom Tags for recursive features, or to Black Box my stuff.
FuseBox (Score:1)
In my opinion anything open source, or even close to it is a good thing because it seems that anything that is usefull that is open source seems to become better and more usefull. So what if Forums dosen't get reused or updated in any way shape or form, at least it IS out there for people to see and maybe play with to learn something new so they can bash out something that is usefull. So no matter what it is and for whatever reason, open source of anything is usable.
Re:OFFTOPIC: Perl question (Score:1)
You shouldn't have too many problems.
The -T is key, it forces you to "launder" any outside data ( such as form inputs ) through a regular expression before you use it to affect other things outside the script. See chapter 6 of the Camel Book. I'm not really a security nut, but from my experience, perl does have some nice features to prevent you from pulling any obvious forehead slappers.
PHP, any day (Score:1)
I deployed PHP in more than 5 flavours of Unix and in NT. It runs flawlessly in all of them.
If you can't say PHP is fast, easy to deploy and gets the job done in a hurry, you probably haven't used it enough.
And just for the record, I stated up front that I have never used CF. But I saw a lot of CF code here and there, and from a programming language point of view it is even worst than ASP.
Now if they would just do that to Cold Fusion (Score:5)
Then I installed RedHat 6.2 on his Sparc 2.
He has changed his mind.
Now that he has seen what it can do on his home machine, he is more than impressed. PHP runs rings are ound Cold Fusion when it comes to features and timeliness of updates. I am *still* waiting for our 4.5.1 bug fix release for Solaris. I will probably have to call them and scream until I am blue in the face to get it, even though we have a paid subscription for the software.
Linux and PHP are just a better choice all around.
Re:Cold Fusion? How appropriate... (Score:1)
Really? After working with Miva for about a year and a half, I became enamored with PHP after having discovered it. It was really like a breath of fresh air!
MivaScript has some very serious problems. First off, it has no serious database support. I can't access anything using SQL except for ODBC datasources. No support for Oracle. No support for Sybase. No support for mSQL. On top of that, you can only query the db. You can't insert or update values when using SQL in MivaScript. The xbase3 support in MivaScript is just miserable. Miva's xbase3 implementation doesn't even support multiple tables in a single database!
The other big problem I've got with MivaScript is the way it mixes the document and the program. Over several passes over one document, it is possible to get an utterly different page each time.
MivaScript also isn't as flexible as Coldfusion or PHP. You can't create external functions for MivaScript. You can't compile in new functionality (like PHP's support for the GD libraries) for MivaScript. Still, I do admit that the learning curve for MivaScript is very gentle. I learned the entire language in about a night. As long as you aren't doing anything too large, MivaScript is a nice quick solution that'll allow you to hack something together in an hour or two.
However, if you're doing anything like the big kids do, you really don't want to do it in Miva.
The coolest thing they offer (I think) is Miva Mia, which for testing before deployment beats the daylights out of Microsoft POS.. Oops..PWS. Miva Mia is by far the easiest to setup, no frills personal web server for Win32.
I don't mean to sound really harsh about Miva. After all, it's where I cut my teeth on server side scripting. Just don't be too resistant to giving these other technologies a fair shake!
Money (Score:1)
Re:Now if they would just do that to Cold Fusion (Score:1)
Re:Cold Fusion is better than PHP, at least right (Score:1)
I've created custom tags in CFML, mostly using CFMODULE. They work.
As far as Perl goes--well, the learning perl book from O'reilly was a poor book to read, IMO. I did find one to learn for Win32 systems. But I don't think Perl is as good as ASP, PHP, Miva, or CF in terms of handling HTML--I think it's better for traditional programers who like dealing with that stuff.
Connectivity? (Score:1)
Re:Cold Fusion is better than PHP, at least right (Score:2)
The company I work for has created a program in ColdFusion to allow certain unnamed companies to exchange Purchase Orders, Quotes, and get back end access to part inventory & part information (including drawings & models), and for that, you need functions, or you have a terribly unmaintainable code base - our app has over 166 seperate 'custom tags' because when you design a web application instead of a web page, you need to start worrying about functional decomposition, coupling, code reuse, et al. And for this, ColdFusion can be really annoying. Espaically since it has SUCH a web page metaphore embedded in it, it's REALLY hard to get team members to call functions instead of just rewriting everything on each page.
ColdFusion I have finally determined is NOT a tool that should be used for business processes, complex issues, or really anything that is covered under the idea of an 'Application', instead of just making a database avalible on the web.
just my 2c
Allaire in 96, iFactory in 98, Crack.Com in 99, .. (Score:3)
Back during 1996 I took a job as a web developer. The product the website was written in was ColdFusion 1.0 with some specific areas in 1.5. Coming from a programming background in C/C++ and pascal I found the shit to ColdFusion rather a pain.
Complete lack of programming structure, and the so called DBM/DBML files with their bad attempt at integration into HTML tag structures. With this language there was much that could be done and I decided to finish the site and clean things up. Part of this clean up with the installation and bug fixes for the Forums product.
The attempt was being made to use Forums to provide technical support, when they worked, for our customers. I remember recieving copies of updates and bugfixes on a semi regular basis, most of which broke something new and different each time.
After dealing with this for a short while we (ok I) decided to yank them down and re-write them because I was getting tired of users (customers) calling in and complaining about not understanding how to use forums.
I still wonder just where they got their initial design for the forums software. It would have been nice if they could have just ripped the perfectly usable and understandable system from Renegade or Maximus BBS systems. Atleast those I could very easily convice the users on how to use since it resembled the 3270 and 5250 green screens they were used to.
Also performance was horrid. On the Pentium 133, 128MB RAM (and if I remeber it cost us a few grand) with 2 4GB SCSI drives running Windows NT 3.51 (yes, real performance software I know) we could only get 1 page view every 3 - 5 seconds if someone was using the forums. After re-writing and converting/upgrading to ColdFusion 2.0 (which ran as a service instead of multi MB CGI) performance started increasing. Performance wasn't acceptable until leaving ColdFusion and another site re-write in InternetFacotry's SMX (running CommerceBuilder for the www server).
Now there is a good case for an abandond product as well. CommerceBuilder provided speed and integrated programming language, and much of what Apache and PHP on linux now provide. Too bad it too went the way of the scrap heap back in 1998.
Now merchant builder was a fun product to run, complete store with source and it was fast. It ran in code inside the server and was pretty. After the webserver war of netscape and microsoft started they became one of the casualties. Sure they ported their SMX to a IIS ISAPI module and moved merchant builder to it, which is all good, but they stoped supporting Commerce Builder.
Then Crack.Com in 99. They run out of money and "do-the-right-thing"(tm). They opensource their game with a $100,000 musical score and work on it, on their own dime, after the company ran out of money to finish it. Most famous for Abuse and getting many of us started using Linux (Mostly because slackware 2.x included Abuse and Doom), it is kind of sad to see this company go.
This pretty much shows the three basic ideas for a product when support is no longer available. Allaire drops it on the opensource people well after it could have been usefull and after alienating those long standing customers. Internet Factory in just completely dropping off the face of the planet and telling the customers to microsoft for their fix. And finally Crack.Com which gave their game away to the public domain.
I just hope Allaire in releasing this code realizes what they are doing and the PR appearnce they get from this. Not the kind bunch of every day geeks (a la Crack.Com), but the arrogance of holier-than-thou-I-got-rich-quick-and-you-didn't-m y-product-sucks-your-on-your-own-you-fix -the-problems attitude I have come to know and loath from Allaire once again.
PS. Yes I admit it, I still write applications in ColdFusion, if and only if I get hourly pay and 50% on top of that for headache medicine in order to deal with the language's lack of programming structures. (Yes I know it is starting to get some structure with the 4.x branch, but it still is no where close to speed, performance, and stability as Apache/PHP and dare I say it IIS/ASP.)
Re:Cold Fusion? How appropriate... (Score:2)
Linux: The Dumping Ground of Failed Products (Score:1)
Let's review which products are being or have been ported to Linux recently:
WordPerfect - after being demolished by Microsoft Office on Windows and MacOS then blowing a wad of cash on Java tech, they turned to the last available platform: Linux. And where has it gotten them?
InterBase and Sybase - two perennial losers in the database market decide to port to Linux before Oracle can. Result? Linux zealots still prefer to use MySQL for some reason.
Photogenics - long considered the best Amiga graphics program (which is something akin to being the best bullfighter in Alaska) whose primary platfrom is dead, except for a handful of zealots. So they port to the platftorm with the largest number of rabid OS advocates. Yet the program remains undepowered and crufty.
Borland JBuilder and Delphi - two cheap knockoffs of Microsoft's pioneering Visual Basic which are based on dead (Pascal) or brain-dead (Java) languages are no longer viable in competition with Visual Studio. So they get sent to Linux, where they will likely flounder on the corner of some teenage "hacker"'s hard drive.
Thank you Allaire for adding your name to this fine list of products. I hope that you will soon see results as good as Corel (going out of business), PowerSoft (washed up has-been, even in MS-land), Inprise (never recovered from the failure of DOS) and Paul Nolan (Amiga zealot par excellence, for whatever that's worth).
thank you
Re:Cold Fusion is better than PHP, at least right (Score:1)
Re:Cold Fusion? How appropriate... (Score:1)
To munge a phrase, Cold Fusion makes easy things easy and hard things much, much more difficult than they need to be.
Re:Documentation needs. (Score:1)
And some people feel that it's the developer of the software's job to provide the materials used in learning. Not everyone wants to go through soruce code in order to learn a new tool, for most it's a huge waste of time.
However you do your learning, its still your way of doing it.
Even if it's through "getting started" type books proivded by the software company (or whomever is doing the docs for the software)? ;P
Don't be lazy and want everything.
Seriously, why not? what's the logic here, that computers and programming languages *should* be hard to use, and should be a trial to learn?
especially because its entire design is propreitary and meant to make a lot of money as a 'web programming langauge' for its authors
Is this RMS under a pseudonym? A lot of people are in the programming/computer business specifically to make money, what's the problem with that, morally and philisophically?
Proprietary doesn't automatically mean crap. There's a higher level of crapulence in proprietary software, but just because you've had bad experiences (or have heard about them here, and are just playing with the pack) with closed source apps doesn't mean they'll all "junk" as you say. I had a linux FS crap out on me 2 weeks ago, should I now be assuming that every OpenSource project is going to shit on my harddrive and crash? No, I'd be an idiot to do so, as you are when you assume all closed source software is Bad(tm)
Open Sourcing old software (Score:1)
I for one AM looking for a good chat forum, and though not for Cold Fusion, if the license of this software allows for it, I'd like to see how well this works and port the code over to my site (and share it with the community as well of course).
Maybe more of you nay-sayers should consider this: People who want to try working with code can look at the code to a fully working product and take it upon themselves to add features or otherwise bring it up to date. Personally, I think that would make for a great learning experience.
So now that you have your cake, stop compaining and EAT IT TOO.
Digital Wokan
I wanted to spend 8 years defending the US constitution.
How are proprietary languages a Good Thing? (Score:1)
Does ColdFusion have a large enough user base and enough of a community built up around it to merit a workalike implementation, in the face of myriad other solutions?
This argument doesn't merely apply to ColdFusion, but to any proprietary language. I feel perfectly comfortable in using open standards such as C, C++, etc. You can count on them being around. Even projects based on pseudo-proprietary standards -- those that are not accepted industry standards, but are dictated by the language's project team, such as Perl and PHP, should stand the test of time fine. I don't see the entire Perl or PHP teams abandoning these projects, but if they did, you can rest assured that the community would carry the torch.
What of things like ColdFusion? I know next to nothing about the functionality of the language itself, and I admit that. I am not willing to bank my success on the success of another business. They go under, and then I'm stuck rewriting a bunch of code, or seeing it die like so many rats on a sinking ship.
If a new type of vehicle propulsion system were invented, and it was totally proprietary, but superior to internal combustion in every way, do you think society would adopt it, and adopt a dependency on the proprietors of the system? Even in the face of alternatives such as hydrogen, solar power, nuclear power, etc etc etc?
I've rambled long enough on this topic, I just felt that it was odd that nobody else had brought this point into the discussion.
Re:PHP vs. Cold Fusion (Score:2)
Re:Cold Fusion is better than PHP, at least right (Score:1)
Of course, if what you're after is "Become a Perl Guru in 21 Minutes" in the manner of the huge hordes of crummy VB books you might be disappointed, but I think we have enough software-by-cookbook already.
Steff
Re:dns does propogate (Score:1)
2. I am trying to correct your mistaken belief that DNS servers don't push zone changes.
A BIND 8 slave will
Also, DNS NOTIFY is part of the DNS spec, so other servers are free to implement it.
Re:PHP, any day (Score:1)
You have no idea what you're talking about.
It's not "worst" than ASP.
I cannot believe all the comments by people who have never used CF.
Re:Bring Out Your Dead (Score:1)
I don't think the point to open sourcing is to prove anyone's generosity. That's potlatch you're thinking of. I'd say criticizing anyone for open sourcing his software is pretty far out of line.
If I write some software, I sure wouldn't want people (who DIDN'T write it)nagging me about which terms I make the source available to them. No one has a right to my code. I wrote it.
The open source movement is exactly like any other economic model - it's only ever going to work as long as the participants regard it as being in their own interest to participate. Generosity has nothing to do with it. And open source is winning because it works for everyone, not because people are suddenly getting nicer.
Just off hand, I can think an excellent application for open source dying software - education. For example, a quick glance at the terms suggests to me that you could use the code as an example in a book about programming.
Re:OSS != better (Score:1)
--
blue
Re:Bring Out Your Dead (Score:1)
Nothing else you posted supports this. True, some of it is more for the good publicity than anything else, but you can't say that nobody will gain anything from this release. And while the "community" (Whatever that is) may not benefit greatly from it, people who are current users of the software certainly will.
However, I would agree that retro-actively creating open source projects with such a restrictive license is not the most best way to do things for the potential hacker, but it's better than nothing.
Adam
UBB (Score:1)
But perhaps someone can use it.
--
Re:Cold Fusion is better than PHP, at least right (Score:2)
Most of those extentions do not exist for Solaris.
I do not intend to have to move to an unstable platform to get a few features.
Besides, PHP give me much of the functionality of Perl without having to add in the security problems of Perl.
As for the language syntax, if you have a Perl and C background, it is a no-brainer. I knwo that it is alot to ask to insist that people have a programming background to write applications. I guess that is what seperates the professional programmers from the web wannabies and Visual Basic coders.
Re:Bring Out Your Dead (Score:1)
Quake.
--
blue
Re:Cold Fusion is better than PHP, at least right (Score:1)
The inverse problem (Score:1)
Re:Cold Fusion is better than PHP, at least right (Score:1)
While the Cold Fusion documentation may be adequate for explaining what the tags do, it does a pretty poor job of telling you how to best use the product. A particularly serious shortcoming is lack of explanation as to how to structure an application. The result, as noted by another poster, is Cold Fusion's well-earned reputation for being hard to maintain.
Re:Cold Fusion (Score:3)
I found it REALLY useful.
PLEASE FIX THIS EXTREMELY UNFAIR MODERATION (Score:1)
I may not entirely agree with the post I am responding to, and I certainly prefer php over cold fusion (though I've only used either for limited work), but to moderate this down as OFFTOPIC is absurd.
The poster's comments, whether or not you agree with them, were certainly on topic and apropos.
I hope I have the opportunity to nail your sorry ass in meta-moderation, and that any future moderation priveleges are denied you.
Re:This is not a Bad Thing (Score:1)
I agree, we use Cold Fusion at work and it took me forever to figure out how to do anything complex. Anyone who created somthing useful that you would have liked to use and check the "guts" of the program always seemed to have encrypted the damnable thing. If it wasn't for GPL'd tags, I would never have figure out how to do alot of cool stuff.
Re:That's a fallacy (Score:1)
kmj
The only reason I keep my ms-dos partition is so I can mount it like the b*tch it is.
Re:That's a fallacy (Score:1)
[Maniacal laughter in the distance...]
FWIW my first language was Modula-2, then I dabbled a bit in Lisp and then went directly to C++. I can code in C, though it's painful (I have to remember which C++ features I can't use). I guess that makes me a monster...
[Maniacal laughter coming closer...]
Kaa
Maybe you're out of touch? (Score:1)
Re:That's a fallacy (Score:1)
Well that's because you're a moron (Score:1)
There's only one way to find out (Score:1)
The biggest difference between PHP and Cold Fusion is that the latter has a marketing department. Anyone can say that PHP/ASP/Cold Fusion slices and dices, but you'll get more mileage out of a proof of concept. Look at your current constraints; e.g., must run with IIS and SQL Server on this W2K box. See if PHP fits. If so, spend a day or two rewriting some of your CF pages.
One caveat I'd mention right now is that you'll get the best performance out of mod_php or the ISAPI module. If you have to use the CGI executable, PHP is at an immediate disadvantage. You also may get a slight boost from using persistent database connections.
BTW, here's a list of High-Profile sites running PHP [php.net]. Do you get more hits than Volvo [volvo.com]?
Re:Abandonware? (Score:1)
Sun's always been a tad Microsofty for my taste... anybody ever read
Re:Cold Fusion is better than PHP, at least right (Score:3)
I should also point out that while I know how to program (to an extent, anyway) I am no programmer; I don't do it for a living and never have. I have a passing familiarity with C, I know no Perl, and PHP was a dead cinch to pick up. Have you actually given it a try, or are you relying on something someone else told you? I should think anyone with even a little programming background (and since it appears you do this for a living I would hope that includes you) would find it easy.
Just Selling Their Interpreter? (Score:3)
So, they get to be "good guys" for giving away source to something you can't run without buying their product anyways, right?
Roy
Why the negativity? (Score:3)
Re:That's a fallacy (Score:1)
Re:Cold Fusion is better than PHP, at least right (Score:2)
But seriously, the first day of that I programmed with php on my new job I was given a task for a simple admin to a web page. After looking at some example code and such, I was done within an hour. Now that's ease of use. Of course, I have a pretty solid programming background with experience in c/c++, pascal, a little asm... Just stuff I learned in college when I got my BS in Computer Science.
For someone WITHOUT a programming background it might be different, I'm not to sure since that's not me, and I simply can't relate. I suppose CF's hold your hand approach to documentation might be a little bit easier, but when I was reading CF docs for porting a few windows CF apps over to linux, I got annoyed by all that extra crap they put in the docs. They were too bad I guess, but I still prefer my php docs anyday. Oh yeah... and #php on efnet is by FAR one of the most helpful resources to those REALLY hard to figure out problems :)
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That's a fallacy (Score:2)
Just a little bit of background. I had a Bachelor of Arts in MIS. I graduated from college in 1992. I learned COBOL, systems analysis, SQL, and database concepts. Yet, I had trouble finding work for 4-5 years, and worked in non-programing service jobs.
I had skill, but no opening. I tried to learn C++, but found it too abstract and rather difficult.
Then in 1995, I started learning HTML. A friend of mine started a company. I learned Cold Fusion. Since that time, I've become a solid developer, working as both a implemented (creating the markup) and coder. While others who have no programming experience whatsoever may do poor things with Cold Fusion, I was able to put my training to good use.
Just because something is easier doesn't make it any less "professional". I know people with more programming experience than myself who poorly document their code, use bad HTML, and don't think about proper design and source control. Clients ask my company for solutions. I provide them.
Languages and Applications should strive to be easier to use. That was the whole point of 4GLs and AIs and other developments. I'd rather spend 8 hours a day coding than 12.
Do I admire the people with more experience and skill. Yes. But does that mean that other people with talent are "wannabees". No. Our clients are happy with the work we've done. And in the end, that's all that matters.
I see nothing wrong with this (Score:2)
This is an enormous improvement over taking obsolete stuff and hiding it forever, or even worse, destroying it! That used to be the coorporate mindset, and is extremely painful for the engineers who worked so hard on the software to see their work abandoned.
Stop complaining about a good thing. Perhaps much more valuable "obsolete" stuff might be released if we show good will (Sun's NeWS was a recent example discussed here).
If you can't maintain it, you should set it free. (Score:2)
--Mike--
PHP vs. Cold Fusion (Score:3)
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Documentation needs. (Score:1)
When I get Allaire docs, I receive at least two good books. A reference manual, which has all the docs sorted by function/tag. And a training manual, which explains the basics.
Both, I believe, are important.
On the PHP web site, I reviewed the PHP code. However, it was not very good for casual reading--a case of a web page actually being harder than a book.
The acid test for me was to find out how to do the basics--which in my mind is to connect to a database. Coming from an application where all you need to do is write straightforward SQL within a tag with no other stuff, I found it hard to find information about how to access my database.
The ODBC section had functions, but since it was listed in manual format it was a bit difficult to see an example as you would write it.
Once I purchased a few PHP books, it became easy. But that's the key thing I am concerned about.
Allaire may cost me more money, but that training manual was well worth it, and it is easier to install and configure. Granted, PHP may actually be a powerful platform, but from what I've seen when I looked at the core provider--it focused more on functions and less on explaining things. What IS a sephamore, for instance?
That's where I have found certain areas lacking. Sometimes the reference manuals for languages are a little too "insider". And yes, there are other alternative sources out there--but it should fall upon the people who create the software, not a third party.
Documentation is important--not just the reference manual either. I am critical of an Allaire project called Spectra because the docs for that aren't as well written as the CF Docs. Sometimes, that makes all the difference.
Re:Linux: The Dumping Ground of Failed Products (Score:1)
Re:PHP vs. Cold Fusion (Score:1)
While I can't find any comparison of PHP vs. CF (ASP vs. CF can be found though), I can tell you that ColdFusion does cache queries, which is something I ran into today while working on our forum code (NOT the Allaire Forum code mind you). =)
Pablo Nevares, "the freshmaker".
Re:Cold Fusion is better than PHP, at least right (Score:2)
Re:Ah, Cold Fusion... (Score:1)
Re:Cold Fusion is better than PHP, at least right (Score:1)
Re:Cold Fusion is better than PHP, at least right (Score:1)
Re:Cold Fusion is better than PHP, at least right (Score:1)
PHP is easy to get started with and from there you can quickly bootstrap your way up to the more complex stuff.
Re:How are proprietary languages a Good Thing? (Score:1)
In Toronto alone, the Cold Fusion User Group [cfugtoronto.org] has over 800 members, and a regular turnout of 100 - 150 people to meetings.
So, I'd say yes.
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Having your cake and eating it too... (Score:1)
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English (Score:1)
CF is worse than ASP in at least two ways: it is not free and it is not so well supported. Also, ASP has some heritage, being a bastardized VB.
But I really don't care. Allaire can do whatever it wants with its proprietary language. I mantain that the open source technologies out there are better and can get the job done. And many clients of my company seem to agree. That is enough for me.
Re:That's a fallacy (Score:1)
Think of it as: organ donor (Score:2)
Reusing code? (Score:1)
I haven't read the Allaire license, but my guess if that somewhere in there it says you can't take their code and GPL it...
Re:Time to replace Slash, guys (Score:2)
And neither was Slashcode. I actually was hired by Rob way back when to slap together Slashcode for him. I still get hired for consulting. He gave me $1000 and a new Dell at the time. Had I known it would get this big I'd have asked for a chunk of the advertising revenue.
Re:How about Homesite? (Score:1)
Unless they're pre-emptively XML'ing things of course.
Abandonware Wonderful! (Score:3)
I've found myself hex editing code or writing complicated wrappers in order to support extremely minor environment changes (upgrading patchlevels of another product) that could have been changed in seconds had I the source code to rework. I can't count how many abandoned but perfectly good packages were thrown out due for Y2K because the company was unwilling to test it and we had no facilities too.
I've advised that companies who buy expensive software contracts or packaages build in an option to purchase that software source should the developer choose to abandon it.
Re:Cold Fusion is better than PHP, at least right (Score:3)
It's not a tutorial, it's not an introduction, it's not a style guide or a talking paper clip. It tells you exactly as much as you need to know if you understand the basic idea of what server-side scripting is but never heard of PHP.
And if you've ever programmed in C, you'll find that you rarely have to look at the syntax portion of the manual at all. One read through should do the trick, once you've finished ooh-ing and aah-ing at all the high-level things you're allowed to do...
Re:That's a fallacy (Score:2)
I had skill, but no opening. I tried to learn C++, but found it too abstract and rather difficult.
You have to learn C, and do it by the K&R book. After that you would be able to make conscious choice, to keep using C for everything, study C++, or to learn some other language, but without knowledge of C the programmer is deaf and blind in any kind of language choice or understanding. And, seaprate issue, I have no idea, what kind of monster will a programmer turn into if he will learn C++ without prior knowledge of C, but I don't want to use anything he will write.
Still available somewhere? (Score:2)
So do you know if there are any older versions of Intellidraw available anywhere, for sale even?
Incorrect URL in story (Score:5)
Re:Looks like openspot.org is abandoned (Score:2)
Re:Who needs this useless garbage? (Score:2)
Face it, while alliar may dole out buggy software, without projects like it, some of the community just wouldn't have the drive to say, "I think I want to try and make a better version of that." I am a firm beleiver of open source and wish that I could program in any lang so that I could contribute something. But without the closed source, there is no Open Source.
Didn't the same thing happen with Interbase? (Score:2)
This is actually good (Score:2)
Now, maybe this won't mean anything, maybe it'll mean that the community of Forums will be able to still turn to people with knowledge when their program breaks, maybe it'll mean that they'll inspire a new competitor. But it means that this program, unlike so many other commercial projects, will still live, even after it meets "commercial" death.
Now if only Microsoft would open source Win 3.1; it's much cooler than win 95.
Re:Ah, Cold Fusion... (Score:2)
I've been programming in CF and ASP for two years, and PHP for 1. They all have their pros and cons.
The more flexibility you have as a developer, the better off you are. I prefer CF because it's fast and easy to deploy. You can write 25 lines of ASP for every 1 line of CF.
It's astounding to see all the CF bashing here. My take on the bashing is this: 3/4 of the people here bashing CF have never used it.
If you use it regularly, you know it's fast, it's easy to deploy, and it gets the job done in a hurry. Can't say the same for ASP or PHP.
May I present Phorum..... (Score:2)
Re:How about Homesite? (Score:2)
Just because ppl can program 'real' languages does not mean they can program for the web.
code reuse (Score:2)
Depending on the license they released it under, I doubt you would want to reuse any of it. Not to mention that it's pretty old and there are lots of GPL'd equivilents (that don't use cold fusion). A quick search on freshmeat [freshmeat.net] turns up 17 different web based forums and I'd bet that's only a small amount of the ones availiable.
Am I missing something? does this Allaire system have some special feature?
Complain, Complain... (Score:3)
However, we should be happy that it's a step in the right direction. I have seen literally hundreds of posts on Slashdot expressing the desire for companies to open up products that are aging, instead of just shelving them. Here, Allaire has done this (sort of), and they're being criticized for the manner in which it was handled.
I agree that Allaire deserves some criticism for their half-hearted approach, but we should remember that they didn't have to do anything: they could have just abandoned this product. Someone there is facing in the right direction, so let's not be so hasty to beat them down for thier blunders.
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Cold Fusion (Score:3)
What I would really need to convince the PHBs is:
a. a comparison on how they hold up under heavy loads
b. a comparison of features
c. a comparison of how interoperable they are with other languages/toolkits
PHP looks better, but without any proof that it can hold up under the loads that cold fusion can (or beat CF) I can't get any movement.....
thanks.
Re:Cold Fusion is better than PHP, at least right (Score:2)
__
Re:Cold Fusion? How appropriate... (Score:2)
I can tell you that after working so long with Miva, PHP begins to look bizarre and with strange syntax. It would be difficult to switch between to extensive work with both at the same time.
A big decider is what programming work you have done before. CF and Miva are easier to learn if you had little programming experience, whereas PHP looks so much like C that it is quick to pick up for experienced programmers.
The coding style for CF and Miva may not be what your'e used to, but that does not make them less functional.
Cold Fusion is better than PHP, at least right now (Score:3)
Abandonware? (Score:5)
Most businesses still cannot (and will continue to for some time) grasp the basic idea of giving something away. In their world, if you give something away, you earn no money in return. This is true. They also presume support will continue to derive the same income, as the number of users hasn't increased much over a period of N. Hence, the logical conclusion is that without that source of revenue, they need to cut back expenditures to survive. Not very optimal - they lose profits. The flipside that they don't realize is that by open sourcing something, you can decrease your maintenance costs and increase your user base (if properly executed).
Companies don't see the long-term benefit. And, to be honest, open source is risky - there is no guarantee of high market penetration, as always.. and companies do NOT like risk, especially an unknown one - and there is unsufficient data right now to make a long-term commitment for many companies.
I know everyone is now shouting "FUD! FUD!" but this is how companies think, so you'd better warm up to the idea. Open source developers for the most part aren't getting rich - Microsoft developers are. That's a pretty powerful statement. So, if you want companies to open source a live product, instead of one that is no longer generating revenue (at which point it doesn't matter much what happens to the software, so the decision to go open source is easier) maybe we should concentrate on producing some hard numbers on companies that have taken the plunge.. and what happened 5 years later.
Better URLs (Score:3)
Re:Didn't the same thing happen with Interbase? (Score:4)
--JRZ