Page 2 - does anyone actually prefer coldfusion ?

I've never used ColdFusion but I've used perl/PHP/Python etc. Why would you sugest I try it? From what I've picked up there's no real advantage over PHP except that its easier to learn?

Just a query,

Take care,
Mark.

My works previous site was in Coldfusion, we have had it re-developed in PHP. I think CF is a clumsy system and may be good for newbies, but i would never call it a programming language.

I learnt programming concepts and the basics of Perl and C. Using those to learn languages like PHP is easy, since they all conform to the standards of structured programming. CF doesnt conform to anything. If you learn CF it will not assist you in learning other languages nor will it teach you anything about general programming concepts.

I used CF for 6 months (I'm mainly a PHP developer). I won't pretend to know anywhere near as much as those of you who use it on a preferred, regular basis, but here were my observations:

Good things:

• cfchart - very easy to use
• XML support - likewise
• very, very easy to learn
  speed was comparable with PHP (which is good)
• the Lists construct

Things I really didn't like at all:

• dire regular expression support (in fact I wrote a custom tag which is up at hotscripts which emulates PHP's preg_match() function
• while simple tasks were simple to implement, more complex tasks took unnecessary amounts of code (socket-based services in one prime example)
• tag-based programming; sorry, I just don't like this approach in procedural languages (it is more suited to declaratvie languages)
• poor XHTML support (ever used the CFORMS tags?)
• being unable to dynamically construct arrays with form elements (although the list construct could be used in this instance and converted later)
• support! I could hardly find any decent support resources on the Net. I really didn't like the forums at Macromedia (the design and the "selective" help received there).

As for fusebox, I believe this is an oversized, far too weighty, framework. The amount of code in Fusebox is substantial, and that's before you even started writing your own!

CF really doesn't lend itself to the MVC methodology.

Anyway, as always, it's horses for courses and those who have opted the CF route are almost certainly correct with their decision for their needs. I'm afraid though it just doesn't suit my needs to well.

My point exactly. CFML has no roots - except maybe as an adjunct to HTML. If you've had any prior programming experience (C, C++, Perl, Java) PHP is a breeze - if all you've ever done is basic HTML, CFML might be OK for you.

I prefer Cold Fusion over PHP just because it is easier, and faster (With less lines of code) to develop with Cold Fusion.

The cons to Cold Fusion are:
You have to pay for it
finding sites with any kind of worthwhile support is futile
You have to pay for it
Macromedia's support is worse than anyhting I've ever seen, especially when - You have to pay for it.

My website gotspy.com is done totally in PHP and MySQL. It took me about twice as long to write it in PHP than it would have in Cold Fusion.

Granted, I don't do dramatic things on my sites, but at least I can post form data without having to deal with sockets. This has been my single most frustrating thing with PHP.

I'm trying now to check a user input for a date, in cold fusion I type isdate(variable) in PHP, I don't know how...

The flip side,
When I have a question with PHP, I can post it here on Devshed and get a good answer in very short period of time.

I know I'm still learning with PHP, but so far, I haven't needed anything beyond basic queries, variables and error checking.

Not to perpetuate the pissing match between CFML & PHP developers here, but the whole "CFML takes less code than PHP" argument is just simply dead wrong:
http://forums.devshed.com/showthrea...6441#post276441



When in PHP do you have to deal with sockets to handle form data? I'm really confused by this statement... can you elaborate? Maybe I could help you out with your site - seriously!



Date function - PHP.net manual:
http://us3.php.net/manual/en/function.date.php


Well, w/ cfgeek's help, I'm sure we'll be able to get this new CFML forum going strong, too!


If thats all you're using PHP for, and you're more comfortable with CFML, then by all means, keep using CFML. Its more important that you work within a framework that you're comfortable and productive in than anything else... CFML is different than PHP, but it is still a very good language for what it was designed for.

Indeed, comparing PHP and ColdFusion really depends on the context from which you wish to compare them. When viewed purely as a language for developing web applications, ColdFusion might be the better choice. But when taking into account a number of other factors (which I feel shouldn't be excluded), I think PHP is the better candidate.

1. Cost: PHP is free.

2. Flexibility: You can do a lot more than just code web applications with PHP. You can do really interesting socket programming (the PEAR libraries have some cool classes based on the this concept), program GUI applications, use it instead of shell or Perl scripting, and so on.

3. Familiarity: Learning PHP will make learning other programming languages considerably easier, especially Perl or C. PHP shares a lot in common with both, whereas CF is sort of a "dead end" language - learning it won't make you familiar with many other languages (although the new Java foundation with MX is interesting).

4. Support: There is a huge online community behind PHP that frankly dwarfs anything I've seen on MM's website or other CF community sites. Plus, there's the PEAR code archive (also a nice standard to develop code with) and tons of free code just floating out there for the taking.

I tried using the Java Advanced Imaging package to do some image manipulation on MX, and while it worked for the most part, I ran into a bunch of problems that would have required an intimate understanding of the Java classes in order to fix. With PHP and GD, image manipulation (and text, too, with FreeType) is pretty trivial. Besides, you can compile PHP with Java support and use it there too!

This thread could go on forever, but whether to use CF or PHP really depends on your specific case and the project. I'm a fan of PHP because I think, ultimately, it can make you a more marketable developer since it leads to familiarity with other programming languages. If anyone sees of a job posting that requires only experience with CF and nothing else, please let me know - but I haven't seen any in the past couple years!

You can program GUI interfaces with php??

I was guessing that you could do something like that, but never saw anything in the files to back that up. Is there an example somewhere?


Dr Groove:
When I send data to my CC processor, I'd rather send it automatically through a POST to the processor. I could cut out a page of the order processing screen (And get the people's money faster) if I could get some data from my DB, calculate my cost and sent it via POST to the processor. As it stands now, I have to have them look it over one last time and then click submit. I hate to do it that way, it's kind of a waste.

I've asked the question a couple of times, and I've seen the code to do POSTing, but I don't need all the functionality that is programmed in. When I tried to pick it apart, I get totally confused and the tests that I run, never work out.

If you could help me with that I would *VERY* much appreciate it!

Since I am only doing webpages (Again, you can do more than that with PHP??? COOL!) I feel more comfortable with Cold Fusion, but as my knowledge of PHP grows, I am finding that like with any "language" once you learn the nuances, you can move smoothly between the two.

I'm still not clear on exactly what you're refering to by POST. If you could elaborate (and perhaps include code snippets) I can try to help.

I know PHP has some toolkits to work with GTK so that you write desktop applications. Googling for "PHP-GTK" ought to provide you with info.

Yep - http://gtk.php.net/
If you want something PHP, its either on PHP.net, Zend.com or Devshed.com. - and, if you can't locate it there, cliffyman's got the right idea, bring it to Google



I'd need to see the code. Post it here as an attachment, or if you're concerned about security, I think you can send it to me as a PM. I'll take a look at it, see if I can help you iron it out.




Again, if you're more familiar w/ CFML, use CFML. PHP isn't 'better' than CFML - the level of quality of any given 'thing' must ultimately be determined by the individual person... that goes for just about anything, be it programming languages, houses, cars, other people, political concepts, etc etc. The bottom line: Its All Good[tm]

Again thanks for the help, maybe I should shift this from the Cold Fusion forum to the PHP forum.

http://forums.devshed.com/showthrea...&threadid=64952

cool... good point. i posted an answer there

Hi all, this thread seems to be a little one sided, i mean jeez there are other things than ColdFusion and PHP , anyone ever heard of Zope? I've only just started using it but it seems to be both intuative and powerful, a definate must see for all you CFML lovers as its own scripting languages are tagbased, but you can also us Python (or Perl). It just seems to me that Zope has all of PHP's power but CFML's tagieness.. just an opion, intrested? http://www.zope.org/

have fun ppl,
Mark