Wednesday, August 20, 2003
CF & Java developers have no common ground
Joe Cheng pointed out in the comments of Java jock Jihad, "there is just not a lot of common ground for CF and Java developers to stand on". Aaron Johnson has similar things to say, "Why should they care?". Maybe they're right.
These days I spend less of my time developing and more of it talking to developers and project leaders. Java-jocks who are hot to trot on the latest pattern are not likely to bother with CF when they can be exploring the intracies of OO design. But dev-team productivity is less a function of the number of lines of code nor the elegance of a design pattern -- it's got more to do with simplicity and the capacity for team members to understand what they are doing.
CF should not be so readily dismissed. CF provides simplicity. It broadens the pool of developers that can participate in a given project -- in much the same way as JSP has been touted to do. It is itself an abstraction from the complexity of Java.
If CF offers no common ground, why do Java developers insist on developing JSP tag libraries?? Why bother to build libraries that offer abstractions to more complex interfaces?? I'd suggest that even the most die hard Java purist would find be hard pressed to find many Sun Certified code bases that offer the unified feature set of CF. And even harder still, a code base that allows their less experienced colleagues to participate so productively in the development of Java based web applications.
I'm not advocating that Java-jocks give-up hallowed ground and exclusively use CFMX. I'm merely suggesting people take the time to understand what's out there; you never know you might like what you find. Certainly CFMX is worthy of as much attention as any other Java project.
For the record, I love Java -- I think its great. But I prefer to build web apps predominantly in CFMX -- to me at least, it just makes sense.
Posted by modius at 11:22 AM | Permalink
Trackback: http://blog.daemon.com.au/cgi-bin/dmblog/mt-tb.cgi/157
It seems to me that a large part of the benefit of CFMX/Java is as a 'tag team' -> you can take the best of both worlds. Take your neatly abstracted Java components and your expressive tag library and use them together. This is the sort of thing that the move for Srcipting Languages in Java is all about. Even Sun is starting to admit that Java is not the AnswerToEverything(tm).
And it is of course what parts of JSTL are about, so there is some competition for CFMX out there. The business case gets trickier, I guess.
Posted by: Toby Hede on August 20, 2003 01:05 PM
>> CF should not be so readily dismissed. CF provides simplicity. It broadens the pool of developers that can participate in a given project -- in much the same way as JSP has been touted to do. It is itself an abstraction from the complexity of Java. <<
Absolutely true... CF does lower the bar on developer skill substantially. However, as Toby points out, JSP custom taglibs and JSTL (not JSP itself) are aimed at the same target.
Also, my quote "there is just not a lot of common ground for CF and Java developers to stand on" sounds a little like I'm saying that CF and Java developers are apples and oranges, and never the twain shall meet. I would like to say instead, I think (in general) all CF developers should aspire to be Java (or C#, or whatever) developers as well. I'm not so convinced that Java developers need to learn CFMX, since most of the advantages of CF are lost on them.
For the record, CF is the first programming language I ever used full-time, and I've made far more money (for both myself and companies I've worked for) with the sites I've built in CF than in all other languages combined. However, I personally now prefer to build webapps in Java (or recently, Ruby). After a few years of experience with general-purpose programming languages, going back to a language as specialized as CF--even for its intended purpose--feels like coding in handcuffs.
(I don't build _web_ apps professionally anymore, so don't take my opinion too seriously.)
Posted by: Joe Cheng on August 21, 2003 05:54 AM
It seems to me that a large part of the benefit of CFMX/Java is as a 'tag team' -> you can take the best of both worlds. Take your neatly abstracted Java components and your expressive tag library and use them together. This is the sort of thing that the move for Srcipting Languages in Java is all about. Even Sun is starting to admit that Java is not the AnswerToEverything(tm).
And it is of course what parts of JSTL are about, so there is some competition for CFMX out there. The business case gets trickier, I guess.
Posted by: Toby Hede on August 20, 2003 01:05 PM
>> CF should not be so readily dismissed. CF provides simplicity. It broadens the pool of developers that can participate in a given project -- in much the same way as JSP has been touted to do. It is itself an abstraction from the complexity of Java. <<
Absolutely true... CF does lower the bar on developer skill substantially. However, as Toby points out, JSP custom taglibs and JSTL (not JSP itself) are aimed at the same target.
Also, my quote "there is just not a lot of common ground for CF and Java developers to stand on" sounds a little like I'm saying that CF and Java developers are apples and oranges, and never the twain shall meet. I would like to say instead, I think (in general) all CF developers should aspire to be Java (or C#, or whatever) developers as well. I'm not so convinced that Java developers need to learn CFMX, since most of the advantages of CF are lost on them.
For the record, CF is the first programming language I ever used full-time, and I've made far more money (for both myself and companies I've worked for) with the sites I've built in CF than in all other languages combined. However, I personally now prefer to build webapps in Java (or recently, Ruby). After a few years of experience with general-purpose programming languages, going back to a language as specialized as CF--even for its intended purpose--feels like coding in handcuffs.
(I don't build _web_ apps professionally anymore, so don't take my opinion too seriously.)
Posted by: Joe Cheng on August 21, 2003 05:54 AM