Page 2 - ATTN Experienced (coldfusion) web developers

Well, I'm what I would consider to be an advanced CF developer, and I'd say that this statement is not correct. Maybe a coding challenge is in order?

This would be true...except that you don't need to wrap EVERY call to a CF variable or function in <cfoutput>, as you are trying to show. In reality, an entire CF template can be written with only one set of <cfoutput> tags, which would result in much less code than the similar PHP output that you have shown.

I appreciate PHP as a great language, but the reality is that CF is much easier to code in and requires much less code in the end. Snippets and functions can help, but the wonderful abstraction that CFML provides is very hard to beat.

all i can say, is i have a great extent of experiance using CFML and while it is maybe more simple, it is still as effective for many things as php imho. Coldfusion is definatly a language for designers, its simple, user friendly, and easy to understand, but not nearly as dynamic as php. in the long run id rather use php but cfml is not a bad alternative (i recently coded a LARGE web based inventory management system using cfml with a backend of oracle 9i for a fortune 500 company that exports to excel, is reportable, searchable, and updateable with a minimal amount of code. it works fairly well and they are happy, the php code may have been a bit more consolidated and compacted but not to any large extent.) coldfusion also does not need to be wrapped by tags for everything it does on every line. 2 tags on one page and an if statement and u got yourself a nice search for a table in a database. also as for the comment of windowz based systems running cfml, pure lack of knowledge. we are currently running CFML on a sun enterprise 10000 w/ an iplanet webserver as well as other smaller sun boxes such as a sun 3000 w/ apache. it is unix/linux friendly. anyway just my thoughts.

blah well there we go, no need for me to post this reply to drgroove's stupid comment about CF using <CFOUTPUT> #var# </CFOUTPUT> as opposed to php's <? echo $var ?>
but there is one flaw in your argument kiteless, nesting <CFOUTPUT>'s causes problems, but even with that in mind it's still far shorter than php's echo for everything method

as for drgroove ignoring that post, - opinions are like arseholes, everyone has one, and some people are their opinion, drgroove, you fit that perfectly

php/CF features, the only benefit i can see with php is its image functionality, but then using CF with something like director would compensate for that, there are also methods inside Java and C++ for creating images, and since CF unlike php has the ability to utilise Java and C++ to further extend its abilities, i really dont see php as anything other than the popular kid that failed all his tests at school.

Well I don't want to get into a big argument here, but I have no idea what you mean by CF not being "nearly as dynamic". I've been using CF for over 5 years and as far as I know, you can make virtually any CF variable name, or variable assignment, dynamic. Do you have an example of what you are trying to say?

you shouldn't ever need to nest CFOUTPUTs, except when outputting a query and using the GROUP attribute, when you have to nest CFOUTPUTs.

And yes, it is very easy to use something like the Java Image API classes from CF to create thumbnails and manipulate images.

ttfn,

Brian