| By Hal Helms |
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| January 30, 2004 07:27 AM EST |
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11,275 |
When they hear that I run a class entitled "Java for ColdFusion Programmers," many developers ask me: "Why the class in Java? Is ColdFusion dying?"
It's a fair question. After all, technology in general and languages in particular have a lifespan. It's also true that ColdFusion is being squeezed by two behemoths: Java on the one side and .NET on the other. That's clearly an unenviable position. Yet Macromedia is working very hard to ensure that ColdFusion does not become a casualty. Can ColdFusion withstand the pressure and continue to thrive? It's an important question because only thriving languages generate high salaries, interesting projects and perks for their developers.
Answers to questions like that usually get argued-passionately-by people on all points of a spectrum. In this case, the spectrum has two extremes represented by the statements "CF is dead" and "CF will live forever." Given the extremes, many developers may feel that a middle course is safest and probably the most accurate. To this, I can only borrow the words of the American newspaperman, H.L. Mencken, who once wrote: "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple. . .and wrong."
I think there's a problem with the question and the debate it generates. It's not just that discussions of this sort tend to generate a great deal of heat without shedding much light. I'm not speaking only of the seemingly natural way that passion turns into anger in such debates, but of the fact that the answer is simply unknowable. And it is exactly that unknowability that should concern us.
By asking a better question, we're far more likely to come up with a better answer. Perhaps a better question than "Is ColdFusion dying?" is "How do I manage the risk that the language with which I make my livelihood will, at some point, decline?" One engenders passion; the other reflection.
The answer, I believe, is simple: prepare now for that point-whenever it may be-that you need to know a new language. Macromedia has made a big deal of the fact that CFMX is built on Java. Go to macromedia.com/desdev and you'll see articles about object-oriented programming, object modeling and design patterns. CFMX represents a fundamental shift in Macromedia's vision for ColdFusion and it's a vision that's tightly tied up with Java. Macromedia has also been careful to tell ColdFusion programmers that they will not have to learn Java. Yet it is undeniable that Java is the 800-lb. gorilla of programming. Ignoring it is something we do at our peril, it seems to me.
Both .NET and Java are built on object orientation. ColdFusion is not. While the introduction of CFCs is most welcome, ColdFusion does not have the power of a true OO language such as C# or Java. (Of course, neither does it have the complexity of either of these languages.) CFCs, though, can be a very valuable way of easing into the object world. In fact, I've just finished a book, Discovering CFCs, and an e-workbook, "Studies in Discovering CFCs", that deal with CFCs and objects (available for order at www.techspedition.com). Even if you do nothing with Java, my first advice to you is to study CFCs and begin to learn OO concepts and apply them to CFCs as much as possible.
My advice: "Learn OO and Java."
My next advice is to devise a plan for learning OO programming and Java. I can't promise you that this will be painless. Every OO teacher and trainer knows how hard the shift in thinking can be for programmers coming from procedural languages. Still, procedural programmers do become OO programmers-else we would have none today!
With commitment and hard work, "Java terrors" can be tamed. My experience of teaching others OO is that developers go through the following stages:
skepticism: who needs objects?
confusion: these new terms and unfamiliar syntax make me dizzy.
dawning: ah, now it starts to make some sense.
enthusiasm: OO rocks!
The trick, of course, is to make it through the first and second stages.
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