My 1,000th ColdFusion Post - What It Means To Me (And Free Prizes)

I like ColdFusion *THIS* much (insert huge expansive hand gesture) !

@Ben,

Kudos to your dedication in sharing your love affair with the grand language of ColdFusion!

I started using CF in 1998. For several years I had been building database apps and I had been building HTML websites that were templated but not dynamic. I had heard of CF for a year or two, but had not had a chance to play. And then I did. And I never looked back. Turning a 250-page website from 250 files to 4 simply by calling the data in a database was simply revolutionary. Now, being able to whip up an employee tracking system at a new job in an afternoon, like I did a few months ago, or creating a blog in 8 minutes, like Joe Rinehart did to demo Model-Glue 2 is just fantastic.

I love that CF is both simple and powerful, with the hooks into all the depth of its J2EE server, like getting full IMAP email support simply by leveraging the javamail library ... without installing or managing anything that's not already on the server, even with Standard edition.

Long may she reign!

I nominate Ben Nadel as the most generous CF blogger in the world.

I have a similar story, however I went to business school. Just after graduation I dove into CF and never looked back. That was 1996. So many things have changed, however I use CF more now then ever.

Ben! This is awesome. Congrats and well done. I've been enjoying your posts (some more than others *wink* *wink*) for over two years. They have been a great resource and have saved me countless hours in research and struggling to understand, and yet have still taught me what I would have learned in those hours.

congrats, man.

Hi Ben -

I was thrown into CF when I started my career. I had no idea what was going on. I found it to be quick to learn and very powerful to use. I advanced my knowledge and skills quickly...some of it with your help! As I have advanced in my professional career, I have convince employers to make the switch to CF. Most recently, I have inherited around eight sites running classic asp and vb script. I am in the process of converting them all to CF!

Congrats on the 1000th post!

@Ben, congrats and keep sharing your experiences with us!

I started very much the same way -- I went to school for Computer Information Systems... I focused on C++ and Java. I did like using them, but never had the fun that I had with PHP and CF -- both being a dynamic typed language whose main purpose is to build web applications. A good friend of mine convinced me to do an internship using CF (I was like, "what's up with all the brackets dude??"). After the first day, I was in love. I still enjoy moonlighting with other languages and frameworks (RoR, cake PHP, and python) but I would never leave CF for someone else :-)

Looking forward to the next 1,000 posts!

Coldfusion was my first programming language, and I jumped around from PHP, ASP, C++, to Java. I finally changed my career so that I would only consider working with Coldfusion. Because it is fun, and the best solution for me.

In my first career I was a police officer for ten years. I found a safer job in programming. What worked best in police work was often not the popular or coolest solution. What worked was the best solution that got me home safe every night and allowed me to do my job well. Coldfusion may not keep me safe, but it provides a great career to support my family and it gets the job done the best way I know how.

Thanks for all you do Ben! We're all looking forward to the next 1000 posts. Congrats!

What I like best about ColdFusion is not that it is powerful, or that it is easy to use, or that it is possible for even beginners to create awesome applications, or that it is easy to teach to others. What I like best about ColdFusion is the kind of community that is created by all of those things combined.

The ColdFusion community is a tightly knit group composed of relatively small egos and big hearts. What I see are people that care about creating awesome applications and teaching others about what they learn. I see people that are more interested in sharing what they learn and contributing to the community then they are in trying to prove what an amazing programmer they are.

ColdFusion's low barrier to entry introduces a whole new demographic of people to the world of web application development. People that may,otherwise, never have learned these skills. This simple fact has created a community that is unique. We have such a wide-range of people, personalities and skill levels.

With ColdFusion, you do not need to be a master programmer to create a quality application. And you don't need to be part of an arrogant clique of 1337 h@x0rZ sitting around measuring their .... er... uh... "code" to prove that they are something special.

Our community is amazing. I am proud to be a part of it.

Ben,

Thanks for the posts. I was just talking about you today with a designer friend of ours (Dee) and mentioned that I loved your blog as you not only understand the surface of CF but also the Java guts of it. Your blog is like going to an internal medicine specialist when you have internal bleeding rather then just seeing the family practitioner who will tell you to take two and go to the hospital if it get worse. Your blog has helped to push me in my development and thus helped to make me a better developer!

Thanks for all of the hard work and congrats on the 1000 CF post!

The way you just "get" ColdFusion was the same for me. It was the first language I really "got". I know php, .NET, JAVA, but nothing comes close to CF.

i like ColdFusion so much that i uninstalled Photoshop and now only use the <cfimage> functions for image editing.

ok, i'm kidding, but i love it!

Congratulations and Thank You Ben for all your posts!

I started out with ColdFusion because when I was walking down the road in my lunch break I saw an ad in a window for a web developer and it was a CF shop. Since then I've built applications in ASP, .Net & PHP and can honestly say that ColdFusion is the best of the lot. Here's to CF9 and beyond :)

<cfset reasonsILoveCF = arrayNew(1)>
<cfset arrayAppend(reasonsILoveCF,"Rapid Application Development")>
<cfset arrayAppend(reasonsILoveCF,"Easy To Learn")>
<cfset arrayAppend(reasonsILoveCF,"Powerful")>
<cfset arrayAppend(reasonsILoveCF,"Usually the right tool for the job")>
<cfset arrayAppend(reasonsILoveCF,"Has Java in its corner")>
<cfset arrayAppend(reasonsILoveCF,"The community rocks!")>

<cfoutput>#reasonsILoveCF.toString()#</cfoutput>

I love CF so much that I used it to help pick out the name of my daughter.

Thank you, ColdFusion, for giving me a 13-year career doing what I love to do. Here's to the next 13!

I have been using CF off and on for about 10 years. I am mainly a flash/flex developer and started using CF when Flash Remoting was first introduced. From there I started creating dynamic HTML based sites using CF. I love it so much my daughters initials are CFM. No joke, their is a posting on my blog about it.

I was a "webmaster" for an mom & pop ISP when I left it behind (after getting a 2nd bounced paycheck). I ended up back in Pittsburgh and scrounging for tech support job. The company I ended up working for moved me from tech support to QA and they sent me to a CF class (hoping I'd become a better QA person for them). The problem is, with such a strong background in HTML, learning CF was a no-brainer and I fell in love with it instantly. My boss (who, was also in that class) saw how fast I was picking it up and moved me into development. It has been downhill... er... uphill... er, a roller coaster since!

That was back in *1999*.

10 years. BOOYAH.

Wow. Dan is a teachers pet. :) I started out in a very similar route. I started an internship, thought I knew everything, and was utterly shocked when I figured out that I knew nothing. I was thrown into html, css, javascript and ColdFusion. That was a year and a half ago.

I am a couple of days away from releasing a full-fledged open-source ColdFusion CMS. The journey has been awesome, and I hope that it can continue on a great path. I don't see how this learning and rapid development could happen with any other language.

If ColdFusion is dead, then programming as it should be is dead.

I started with ColdFusion about 6 years ago as many others have which was just looking for a way to do dynamic web stuff. I came from a network/server management background, but I saw that my employer had a need for eliminating some paper processes. I found ColdFusion and they let me run with it to both our benefits. I found that I loved programming so much that I have since gone back to school and will finish my BS in software engineering this year and found an awesome community that I feel honored to be a part of.

And I literally owe it all to ColdFusion...

Coldfusion is my life.

I got started back in 97/98 with CF 2 a little and CF3. Back then I was a full time student and was talking about how this Coldfusion stuff would link your web site to a database. I was amazed at how many Computer Science Professors had no vision and just could not see the usefulness of something like Coldfusion. After all, Microsoft really hadn't declared the Internet as the 'Next New Paradigm' (Dilbert reference).

I was also a member of Team Allaire in those days, and very active on the forums. Since then I have only worked at one company that did not use Coldfusion. CF is the way!

Now I work for a 'small' company that produces one of the nations largest MLS search solutions available and literally has more real estate listings in our databases than any other provider and we're still growing. All the searching and map-based searching is powered by Coldfusion 8 64Bit Enterprise. CF is good!

That is my Coldfusion story.

I love CF so much that if my company drops it, I'll drop them...er well... when the market recovers.

Must be close to 9 years for me as well. I do side projects in PHP, but the thought of doing all that typing would drive me batty.

What CF means to me...

After art school I became a web designer. You know, back in the days of font tags and table based designs! I didn't have a clue about programming anything. I had tried a few tutorials on PHP, thought maybe flash was the future so attempted to pick up some actionscript - but nothing clicked at all for me. Then I read about CF and picked up a book by a man named Ben Forta and it changed my life. Suddenly things began to make sense and before I knew it I had built a few db driven dynamic site - and all of the sudden I realized that I had learned how to program computers. Since then I've worked with PHP, ASP, Rails, etc. - and made sense, but I always found myself missing CF. So after 7 years I changed employers and now I work in CF everyday!

So like more than a few people have said CF just feels right and it makes my days much more enjoyable!

Ben,

Excellent post! It's good to read this kind of stuff at the beginning of a new year.

ColdFusion has evolved significantly throughout its lifetime, and throughout those years the platform has been the basis and foundation of a solid career for me and many of the people I work with. Even as we speak, despite our current economic climate, we're paging through resumes to bring on three new ColdFusion developers. Our ability to rapidly produce enhancements for our front office system has our services in high demand and life is very, very good.

Everyone knows the technical benefits (and drawbacks) of ColdFusion. But it's very special technology to me. It has enabled me to learn and involve myself in this industry. It has given me opportunity for growth, both technically and professionally. It has taken me from gainfully employed, to comfortably employed, enough to support a family and buy a home. ColdFusion has been the backbone of a career that has taken me from junior developer to a Development Manager of a large organization with a rock solid team.

And despite the arguments I've heard about its inevitable death (since version 5, BTW), it's not going anywhere!

I love ColdFusion to the moon...

and back...

(if you have kids - you'll get this... http://is.gd/gZ70 )

Congrats that is a great achievement and thanks for some great posts that have saved me a lot of time.

The "corporate standard" at my work is JSP. The big wigs that know nothing about application development and maintenance want my team to drop CF and Flex. But I'm so dedicated to CF and Flex that I'll quit if they win. Even with the Michigan economy in the dumps.

Ben,

You do a great job with the blog AND answering questions. Congrats on 1,000. Why do I love ColdFusion? Well after 7 years, it is still there for me, helping me to nurture and grow all of my applications. Sure, we've had a few falling outs, but hey, always welcomed back with open arms. The last couple of years, I have started developing larger and larger apps, and found the Community Support amazing.

Thanks again for All your Efforts.

Long Live COLDFUSION!!

Rob

Ben,

Congrats on you 1,000 post and thanks for all the great info you have giving the community.

I like ColdFusion a lot! It is the first language that when I first started learning it actually made sense to me. It is one of the main reasons I am gainfully employed so I definitely like it a lot.

Ray

I forgot to add my why cf: i love cf because it makes the hard things easy and seems to "think" the same way I do. Or it has trained me to think that way...hmmm....

Like yourself, Ben, I too learned programming through ColdFusion. There's something completely amazing about how there's no intimidation with the language due to it's surface simplicity. And yet in my 8th year of using it I'm still learning things about it's advanced, seething underbelly of sophistication! I think it has a rightful place in the top tier of web development platforms and I'm also certain it's not going away.

Thanks for sharing your story, Ben!

This blog is in a category of its own in the world of technology. One loner dedicated to exploring a platform, mentoring newbies, providing a community for open discussion, and sharing without embarassment his mistakes and hiccups along the way.

Your mind-boggling SEO power is well deserved. When I Google some obscure bit of CF lore, one of your blog posts is usually the first hit. More alarming still: if you Google my name, the blog post where you mentioned me is the 3rd result. (After the weirdo on MySpace and the child molester with the same name.) That, my friend, is crazy awesome!

I love ColdFusion. I'm not much of a programmer, but I find ColdFusion the easiest to code. I don't care what the Rails Fanactics say, it's still the best language for the novice developer.

Thanks for all your wonderful posts and congrats on 1K posts.

Since being shown the door to CFML 4-5 years ago, I recently have spent a great deal of time trying to learn all that I can about the language and its capabilities.

What I love about ColdFusion is its straight forward approach to most issues.

BTW, thanks for your tuts on CFML, very helpful.

1000 posts?! Yikes! I feel like a mope commenting now because although I do read your blog pretty regularly, I think I've only left 1 or 2 comments. And now I'm jumping on the "gift certificate" bandwagon...I suppose at least that shows that I read the whole post, right? :)

Have a great weekend.

-nolan

I love ColdFusion for its wonderful community, exemplified by Ben Nadel.

I love ColdFusion so much that I married it.

(Or at least, one of the human representations of it! - please don't consider me eligible for any prizes, just thought I should mention that)

Congratulations on post #1000, it's no surprise considering you have the most comprehensive and useful blog on the topic!

This may sound corny, but everything I have I owe to CF. I started using CF4 in 1999. Has it been 10 years?

I was a beginning web page designer with a small IT firm. We were still writing desktop apps and installing them on clients machines. When one of our projects was way behind and over budget, someone pitched the idea of putting it on the web to save distribution costs. So, when the word "web" was spoken I and my co-worker were called in.

We leanred CF, wrote the code and deployed the application in just over a month. It was that simple.

Since that time many CF apps have been written and that original application written in 1999, is still running today. I love CF. It is quick it is flexible, it is robust.

I think CF is here to stay. Plus, anybody who says one programming language is better than another is thinking short sided. Every language has it's place. If something works for a particular need, stick with it and add it to an arsnel of tools. Why limit yourself to just one toolset? Still, for rapid development and an outstanding set of features it is hard to beat CF.

ColdFusion is better than sex! ;-)

I've been programming in ColdFusion since September of 2007, so I guess you could still consider me a ColdFusion noob. I have to say that ColdFusion has been one of the easiest languages to learn that I've dealt with so far. It seems like there are so many built-in features, especially in version 8, that you would have to jump through so many hoops in other languages to achieve the same result. I also love the amount of support you receive from the community, your blog as well as countless others have made it easy for me to solve problems that I would have been doomed to figure out reading technical documents and books. ColdFusion is more than a language or a server engine, it's an entire community support group and a great learning environment. That's why I love ColdFusion.

Hi Ben,

I stumbled into ColdFusion 4.5 in an OJT placement after a couple of years in college.

Learnt enough that company I did it with kept me for a few months.... then got a job that lasted 2.5 years...

I've always managed to work with ColdFusion. And that makes me happy. Because it's what I want to work with.

It's a great time to be in ColdFusion, with Adobe, Railo, BD.... lot's of arguments and "reasons" not to use it have blown out the window.... despite the constant annoyance of the "coldfusion is dead" words... by people who usually don't use it.

Won't know how alive and what a great tool it is unless they give it a fair shot.

Anyways, I consider myself lucky... as now with my clients and my own dedicated server, I get to work with all of ColdFusion, Railo and BD. I've gotten to work with my tool of choice for quite a few years and hopefully many more!

Congrats on the 1000th post!
;-)

I started with ColdFusion somewhere in 1998 when our company, of then three people, started braking out of static HTML sites. We built sites using NetObject Fusion, remember that one? I soon ditched the whole GUI-based web development and went coding-only (CF Studio > HomeSite+ > Coda) when we developed our first CMS in 1999.

I attended the 1999 Allaire Developer Conference in Boston (still have the t-shirt) and that show pretty much made sure I was hooked for life.

In 2005 I started a new ColdFusion only web development company after doing research into other programming languages, but none came close.

Ben, congratulations on the 1000 posts! We use your wisdom and tools in our work and I personally enjoy your code and posts very much. Thank you.

I write apps in a variety of languages, and I can honestly say that Coldfusion is one of my favourites. It has the most baked in goodness, and makes it easy to roll out new code.

I started using CF way back in 2006. While on my learning journey (which is far from over) , your posts have come in very handy. Thanks for taking the time to write it all down.

Ben,
Congrats!

1000 CF related posts is incredible!
I can't wait to read the next thousand (and many more)!
As always you keep raising the bar with your generosity and devotion to ColdFusion and the community.

I will give some thought on my "How much I love ColdFusion" post and will try to get that posted later this weekend, I just wanted to give you a shout of Kudos first.

Congratulations on 1,000 posts Ben! Here's to your next 10,000! :)

Great work Ben - that is quite a milestone. Your site has certainly become a valuable resource for CFers.

As far as CF goodness - it is a great tool for getting the job done - easily, quickly and reliably. It has served me well since CF version 3 (Allaire ColdFusion) which I had to import from Aussie as no one was distributing it in NZ at the time.

I think we are going to see this even more benefits in using CF with tighter integration with Flex/Air and no doubt new deployment options (Stax).

Thanks for taking the time and making the effort to share.

<cfcomponent hint="The Why I love CF CFC">
<cffunction name="Why" access="public" returnType="string" output="false" hint="Returns a reason to love CF">

<cfset ReasonsWhy = arrayNew(1)>
<cfset arrayAppend(ReasonsWhy,"CFC's")>
<cfset arrayAppend(ReasonsWhy,"Easy")>
<cfset arrayAppend(ReasonsWhy,"Fast")>
<cfset arrayAppend(ReasonsWhy,"RAD man, I mean really RAD")>
<cfset arrayAppend(ReasonsWhy,"Charts and Graphs")>
<cfset arrayAppend(ReasonsWhy,"Powerful")>
<cfset arrayAppend(ReasonsWhy,"Fun")>
<cfset arrayAppend(ReasonsWhy,"Quick to learn")>
<cfset arrayAppend(ReasonsWhy,"Tags, I love tags")>

<cfset result = ReasonsWhy[RandRange(1,9)]>

<cfreturn result>
</cffunction>
</cfcomponent>

<cfset oWhy = CreateObject("component","model.Why")>
<cfset WhyIloveCF = Why()>
<cfoutput>#WhyIloveCF#</cfoutput>

I love when you find those features that you never comprehended could exist. CFC's were a big WOW to me! and then inheritance blew my mind. On the surface it seems so simple, and then you get the "OMG that's so freaking cool" moments. It makes my day :)

Great job ben, keep up the good work mate

Cheers from Australia :)

Congratulations on the 1000th post. My how time flies :) I guess I'll add my "how ColdFusion and I grew up" story:

I began working with ColdFusion 4.5 back in 2000 when I got bored at my job and asked the contractor who was doing some modifications to our website if he needed some help. I figured I was done with everything I needed to get done for the day at about 10 in the morning so I had an extra 6 hours to kill before heading home. He was getting some free help writing code, so he gave me a small task to do. I had played with Classic ASP before and thought that there must be a catch to this ColdFusion stuff...it was just way too easy to do things (loops, database queries and connections). It always seemed like there was a catch. 9 years on and I'm still trying to see what the catch is. ColdFusion just makes it easy to write code, which is what you need...why try to make it more convoluted when the code writing should be the easy part, freeing you up to be more inventive with what you are actually producing.

Keep up the great work, Ben. I look forward to what you're posting each day...it's almost a disappointment when I get the e-mail with the previous day's posts to find you haven't made a post yet for the day :) Thanks for all of the tips and for keeping it interesting.

I just wanted to take the time on this momentous occasion to thank you. Like many people here, I've been around coldfusion since it still had a space in it's name. I have been a silent but consistent reader of your blog for many years. While I do post the occasional comment, I must admit I've been more of an information leech than a contributor. This is one of the reasons I want to express my gratitude.

Many of us solve interesting problems, or discover something new and exciting about CF now and again, but the few of us that have the desire to share simply don't have dedication to do so. I've tried, the time it takes is too big a sacrifice for me to endure. You are truly special in that you have the desire to help the community and possess the will and endurance to have reached 1000 posts.

Your love for CF has made it easier for the community as a whole to build the applications they want to build. Your efforts have made CF much more enjoyable for all of us, so thank you.

PS. Just so it doesn't seem like I'm trying to brown nose my way to a certificate, please remove me from the running.

Well, this is a fun post/topic :) Since we're all sharing, let's see....

My life as a CF Spider (spinnin' Webs, squashin' bugs) actually began as an HTML spider..

Fall '97 I went to college for architecture, but quickly turned to graphic design, computers & telecommunications and was introduced to Dreamweaver soon after (tho, I admit I picked up on FrontPage 98 first [well, actually something called HotDog - and there was also Netscape Composer, ha], then converted to DW). So, anyhow, I started my current business way back then, building basic HTML sites. In a college internship, in 2000, I was given semi-regular lessons in CFML in 4.5 (I was QUITE impressed w/ the sites they were building). After college, in 2002, I wanted an easier to way to fire off emails, than using a Perl script. I remembered the <cfmail /> tag :), so I began spending a *lot* of time w/ my g/f (now wife) in local Barnes & Nobles and Borders stores researching CF - started reading about cfmail, and just got ABSOLUTELY HOOKED! I purchased the CFMX Wack book when it came out (autographed by Ben [the 'other' Ben, ha] when he stopped in Indy for the Scorpio CFUG tour =P He's a hero and I admit I love CF) and have been studying and working with CF ever since. ColdFusion totally made developing sites more fun! How can you not love something that simplifies your life, makes you $, and has such an awesome community behind it?? So, it started w/ CF 4.5, but it *really began* w/ cfmail. (sounds like I'm describing a relationship - and I am). Now when I introduce someone to CF, cfmail is one of the first tags I cover. You cover a plethora of CF-related topics day in & day out, to which I highly commend you and your passionate dedication to the language we love. I just popped over to your blog to see what you were up to (you're always up to something!), and wow, congrats on your 1000th post! O'Doyle, uh, I mean ColdFusion Rules!!

I named my son Ace, one day he'll be an Adobe ColdFusion Expert =)

congrat Ben. i love your blog style. keep up good work. I know you like JQuery and web 2.0 and you must have seen a lot. but this web site is kind of web 4.0 (just for fun)
http://producten.hema.nl/

@Curt-

To add a little more dynamics you could allow for arrays to be passed into the CFC, and then append the two arrays, and then finish it up with-

<cfset result = ReasonsWhy[RandRange(1,arrayLen(ReasonsWhy))]>

I know that it was just messing around...I just couldn't resist.

KinkySolutions has been a god-send for many tricky CF issues for me over the last couple of years. I've been working with CF since 4.5 (about 8 years now), and I'm still a rabid devotee. From frameworks to CFAJAX to Spry - it is all great.

Also, I've managed to keep it as the enterprise solution for our company's SAAS offerings, so here's for persistance!

Ben, I just hope ColdFusion is being as good to you as you are to it. Thanks for all your help over the recent years, Kinky Solutions.

Congratulations, Ben! That is a serious landmark.

In regards to the 'is CF dead' argument that has been swamping my blog posts and twitter account for the last few weeks, every one has their opinion, but most if not ALL CF developers I work with, have spoken to, or know in ANY way (however vague) all agree that the language is very much alive and kicking.

I'v been a professional CF developer for over four years now, and absolutely love the language. The ease of use, the level of complexity that can be reached using it, the community driven aspect, and just the fact that it's an amazing langauge.

Far from being dead, I personally believe it gets better with every release and with the planned features in CF9, Adobe are effectively opening up the product to other developers, as well as increasing awareness for educational facilities and developers with reduced/free licensing. The reduced cost does not mean desperation to sell a dying product. It simply means it's going to be made available to more people so they too can share the CF love and develop amazing applications along with the rest of us.

And that too is a reason why I love CF.

Viva la RIA-volution! :)

Hi Ben,

keep up the good stuff - it was fun wrestling with your code and creating something new from it that I sue on a day-to-day basis ;-)

Looking 4ward 2 more goodies ;-)

Ben,

Congrats on the milestone.

Jim

CF is dead? That's too bad. It reminds me of the day a few years back when I heard javascript was dead, too... ;)

Well, even though I'm late for the contest (darn!) thought I'd add my comment. I still see almost daily how valuable it is to have a language like CF that is easy for newcomers to learn. I write and sell ecommerce software, and often the people that buy it are CF newbies or people will little programming knowledge. Yet, they can get up and running quickly and often learn to make small changes and tweaks as is commonly needed due to such wide and varying needs of merchants. Of course, a lot of that has to do with my beautifully elegant and well-commented code ;-) But I often get comments from users that have experience with other languages as well and they just love how easy it is to figure out CF code and make changes to it. And as we all know, time *is* money!

I was going to the local college here working on a degree, i think i was a year and half in when the instructor handed me a CF 5 book from one of the sales reps that gave it to him. I was taken VB, Perl, Java, PHP, etc... I went home and read the book. I was so hooked, I completed the book and all the sample exercises in a matter of days and decided to drop out of school and pursued a CF career!

CF=simple
What my experience with CF is just above.
SEE below with a mathematical mind,

1+1=2 (CF's rapid developement,ease of use etc argue this simply )

OR

1+2-2+3-3+1=2
like other techs php,asp,.net,java (requires extra overhead in developement)

no need of '2-2+3-3' in adding 1 with 1.

And CF simply does what is required..

tats the power and beauty of CF...

Although CF IS JAVA, but in applying(java), code will not be as much optimised..

.NET rules above all else!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I hate CF.

@TNT,

We can tell by your maturity level how much you really know about ColdFusion. Maybe you should do a little research beyond the use of the exclamation point before you jump so such conclusions as ".NET rules above all else". As for you hating CF, I'm sure the feeling is mutual. Run along home now, I think I hear your Mommy calling.

He's just a power load that needed to explode.

It looks like you haven`t done any research yourself to know how much more powerful and popular .NET is compared to any other language.

Actually, it`s your mommy calling me, I wonder why. Oh yeah right, because of the night before. Ask her to show you the pictures.

@TNT,

The transformation has begun without you even knowing it. First it's hatred and denial, bashing what you do not know (you're obviously there), but in your quest to bash CF you'll find something that will peak your interest and you'll do your research, you seem like a rational person that will give something the ole college try. Once you try it you'll be hooked, mark my words, you'll be back checking out new posts here and on other sites and before you know it, you'll be back posting valuable comments instead of ones littered with exclamation points.

@TNT,

"Your mother last night" insults? Really? What are we 10? More powerful.....right. Have you ever written a line of CFML in your life?

I know it's waaaaay past time for the prizes on this post, but I just wanted to drop a line and say that it was inspiring to read. I'm lucky enough to be interning with one of the authors of Sybex's Mastering ColdFusion MX and the experience has been incredible. I'm glad Adobe is finally throwing a little support behind the language with a proper SDK. The CFBuilder beta is blowing the doors off of either Dreamweaver or CF_Eclipse so far for me.

As for what I love? When I started out with it, I loved CFML because it was a great first programming language, especially if the beginner knows just enough HTML to be dangerous. Today it's really taking the pain out of learning XML, XPath and XSLT. XMLTransform() just rocks. Thanks for the blog and in advance for the next 1000 articles.

@TNT - haven't you exploded already?

Awe, I'm about 1 year to late. That really sucks. Oh well CF still out whips any language even korba ( I think I spelled it right ) and .NET hands down.

Any language that can query a database with very minimal code is awesome.

Your dumb ass has obviously not worked with .NET.

HA HA HA HA HA! @TNT

You obviously are a immature script kitty.

It's really cute how you back up one of the most difficult languages for programmers to learn.

-- I bet you $100.00 dollars that ColdFusion is easier, and more robust than .NET. Prove my wrong, and I will send you the money VIA paypal.

With all the love for ColdFusion, Ben never answered my email in regards of recommended ColdFusion hosting services.
So here it is for everybody:
Can anybody recommend a reliable ColdFusion hosting company?
Thanks!

@PixelGrinch,

I've been using Hostmysite.com Cold Fusion package for over five years. Any CF issues I've had over the years were taken care of quickly by their support staff.

viviotech.net - they know CF and support it top notch. I'd recommend a VPS. You can start with the added support hours and remove that option later if you like.

@ben: sorry, man, didn't mean to use it as message board, yikes! I saw that post but that was from 2008 and with the way technology goes, I wasn't sure.
I imagine you get a bunch of mail so I gave it a few month without response ;) ...

@jim: thanks! I looked into it it looks promising ...