Does ColdFusion Make You More Productive?

Here's another take on the upgrade in ColdFusion pricing. The author compares CF, PHP, and .NET, and makes the claim the ColdFusion is worth the money because you're more productive in it than in comparable languages. But is that true?

It's certainly the party line, and the primary rationalization as to why people need to spend money when there are free open-source / commercial products available.

I certainly don't think that ColdFusion is worse than any other language, but I also don't know that a CF developer is necessarily more productive. There are times when I "feel" more productive, and others have certainly made the same claim, but a "feeling" is rather pretty subjective, don't you think?

And I'm certain that a good PHP, Python, or Ruby developer would tell you that his language of choice is equally as productive, and does all, if not more, than ColdFusion.

Obviously, each has its strong points, but as illustrated in the previous Mac vs. Windows article, each one is also designed to do pretty much the same thing, namely: build dynamic web pages.

Which brings us full circle. Adobe wants businesses to pay for ColdFusion, and even more for the Enterprise Edition, and their raison d’être lies primarily in claims of increased productivity. But those claims are hoisted by Adobe's marketing machine, and even the case studies and white papers are by-and-large anecdotal accounts about how ColdFusion made some project possible in X amount of time.

But no mention of how much time an alternative would have taken.

Ultimately, Adobe is banking on faith. Faith that ColdFusion will make you and your organization more productive.

But when it comes to spending money, I've noticed that a large number of companies seem to lack faith, and want proof.

How about you?

Comments

[James Marshall]

I've recently moved to CF from PHP (new job, not by choice). I like CF, and love the online community, but I think I was more productive when I was learning PHP than now. That could just be because CF is so different to other languages I've used (ASP,PHP,Perl). It's taking a while to adjust as CF is missing some of the built in functions that used to make me so productive in PHP. At the end of the day a comparison is moot (especially if you're not the one specifying technologies) - just use what you need to get the job done. If CF makes you more productive then use it!

[Michael Long]

Unfortunately, the comparison isn't moot. Your assertion is that one can be equally productive in the language of their choice. But if you're on the outside looking in, and need to CHOOSE a language, then that same assertion hurts CF, as choosing CF means that you need to BUY CF. If both are equally productive, then why spend the money?