What is the career value in learning ColdFusion?

Question

ColdFusion is a language I encounter rather infrequently, however it does turn up from time to time either in job adverts or as .cfm file extensions in URLs.

There are possible job opportunities near to where I plan to live for ColdFusion developers. It might be in my interests to have a look at ColdFusion.

ColdFusion appears, to me, to be a minority language compared to C#, Java or indeed most popular languages.

Don thinks ColdFusion is declining in popularity. Would a ColdFusion position today be more related to the maintenance of legacy code than innovative, creative development, thus less interesting?

Is there any long term career value in learning ColdFusion?

Answer 1

I don't think there's a whole lot of new applications being developed with ColdFusion these days, so I suppose you could say the language is declining in popularity. However, all the existing CF apps are not going to re-written any time soon, so I expect there will continue to be employment opportunities for CF programmers, though few of these are likely to be new projects.

Ultimately, if you can get a few years worthwhile employment out of the language, then there's value to you in learning it.

Answer 2

Also, ColdFusion is not the most difficult of languages to learn - it was originally designed for Web page folks rather than programming gurus. Learning it well enough to get by should not take more than a week or so (that's how long it took me for the the only CF-related project I've ever done), assuming you are familiar with HTML, web page design and basic programming concepts.

Answer 3

I am seeing lot of job postings for .NET developers with coldfusion experience. It may be that they are new projects interfacing with old legacy coldfusion apps or completely rewriting them. So there is a niche market for that.

Answer 4

Personally, I HATE ColdFusion, but in all honesty, it got me more jobs than any other computer skill.

It got me my current job, my last one, and three previous to that. I can only think of two jobs that werent due to ColdFusion, one was VB6 and the other Classic ASP

If a company has CF code, they are going to look for CF coders, you instantly jump to the top 5% or so on a resume search if that is the case.

Answer 5

I learned ColdFusion in the past (version 5 and MX) and its an easy enough language to learn to use, but the catch is that in order to learn it you kind of have to be somewhere that already uses it. Also, it can be a difficult language to learn how to use effectively (i.e. frameworks).

There is still new development being done with it, more so now that it has some fairly tight integration with Flash, but from what I have seen it tends to be a bit more towards internal web applications as opposed to external web sites. Personally I don't think it is declining in usage and Adobe reports that 75 of the Fortune 100 are using it as well. Also, it is worth noting that you can do things to make the file extension not appear on external websites and personally, the biggest thing that I have seen it used for is internal applications.

At the end of the day, I would say if you are interested in leaning it, it couldn't hurt you and might in fact help you. Adobe has a free developers edition that you can get to learn with and there is quite a bit of information out there on the internet to use as references.

Answer 6

Seriously, how many times are questions like these (not necessarily pertaining to ColdFusion) going to be posted on StackOverflow? Seems like every week someone asks this generalized question.

The bottom line is this: if the language is required for a job that YOU are interested in, learn it.

Answer 7

As a long time ColdFusion guy myself, I can easily state that there a lot of new projects being taken on in ColdFusion. I work at a very large enterprise where CF gets a good amount of credit for being faster and cheaper. Meanwhile, it takes a verbal beating; the "It can't scale" types of arguments are quickly put to rest when they see it in action.

Check out RIAForge, which is basically SourceForge for Adobe products. You'll see the majority of apps on there are ColdFusion, and that's just the smaller ones. There are larger projects, too - application frameworks, ORMs, a Spring port and others.

Don't discard CF because it looks like HTML, or because it's so easy. It runs on Java enterprise servers, seamlessly integrates Java, .NET and a variety of databases, works with web services, JSON, PDF, flash, plus, with the open source community, can run embedded scripting languages like PHP and Groovy.

ColdFusion 8 was a fantastic boost to the product, and with version 9 right around the corner, it's actually a great time to be a ColdFusion developer.

Now, I wouldn't say it's right for you, or for everyone, but it's a great platform to work on, and has an insanely great community to be a part of.

Answer 8

I've had a great career doing mostly ColdFusion development so I would suggest learning it!

At work, I've hired two ColdFusion developers since last September all to work on new development on Adobe ColdFusion8.

My feeling on all languages is pretty similar; find something you like, be passionate about learning it, become an expert and you'll find work pretty easily.

Answer 9

There's a higher demand for CF developers than most people think. My current and previous jobs have converted PHP developers to ColdFusion because at times there are so few competent CF developers on the market.

If you're a developer and have experience building web applications already, moving to another language is just learning its syntax. Download & install the Developer version of the ColdFusion server (free), install Eclipse with the free CFEclipse plug-in and try writing some CF code.

If you like it, apply for those jobs.

Answer 10

Questions like these are doing nothing but trying to get reputation points or whatever.

@Don: There is active development on ColdFusion if you had even bothered to look. CF8 was the latest release and there's a development map of the product to CF11.

Answer 11

You can get pretty close to an answer just by using some tools that aggregate job posting data. Here's one that compares ColdFusion with Java, C#, VB.NET and PHP.

http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=coldfusion+or+%22cold+fusion%22%2C+java%2C+c%23%2C+vb.net%2C+php&l=

This is not going to be a perfect representation of how often these languages are being used but it does give a lot of insight into public demand for the skills.

Answer 12

ColdFusion is software. The language is CFML.

This distinction might seem pedantic to some, but it is important.

In addition to Adobe ColdFusion, there are also two other CFML engines which are both viable for use: OpenBlueDragon and Railo, (licensed GPLv3 and LGPLv2 respectively).

These three are all Java based, but also worth noting is New Atlanta's BlueDragon.NET, for anyone wanting to use the CFML language on the .NET platform.

To help guide these engines, and ensure the language remains consistent, there is the CFML Advisory Committee, which is working directly with Adobe, Railo, and openBD to document what the core CFML language is/should be, and what features are considered vendor-specific enhancements.

The key message here is that CFML is a transferable skill, and a growing language, not a dying one.

So, is it worth learning CFML for a career? Definitely! Here's why...

ColdFusion/CFML has the double-edged benefit/curse of being very easy to use, and doesn't force particular development practises - you are free to work however you like.

This means that it is easy for non-developers to get going with it and create usable software that isn't brilliantly programmed, which can sometimes give CF a bad name if this is what experienced programmers are exposed to.

From a career perspective, this can be a benefit: if you're a strong programmer and you learn CFML, in the CFML jobs arena you've instantly got a significant headstart.

CF is not declining, despite some claims - ColdFusion has an active market on internal intranets, which may not be as visible but is definitely there. Similarly, government agencies make up a large part of the CF user-base, especially in the US.

With Adobe currently developing CF9 (private alpha/beta stage), and with CF10 and CF11 both in planning - it's not going away any time soon!

Also Railo's recent teaming up with JBoss (RedHat) is hoped to attract growth of CFML in that direction, by providing Java developers with a solid RAD language for the web.

A couple of key points so far:

• CFML is a transferable skill, and a growing language.
• Adobe have committed to supporting and improving ColdFusion for a long time.
• Even if a company drops CF, this no longer means leaving CFML entirely.

So, now on to why CFML is a valuable and worthwhile career skill...

General ColdFusion and CFML benefits

Great Integration

CFML can integrate very easily with lots of technologies out of the box with little-to-no configuration, and plenty of easy to use projects for adding even more functionality via other languages.

Flex, being an Adobe product, is perfectly partnered with ColdFusion, and much easier to use via CF than with other technologies/languages.

Groovy is a dynamic language growing in popularity, and cfgroovy by Barney B makes it incredibly easy to mix Groovy and CFML, utilising the best of both languages.

Hibernate support will almost certainly be built-in with CF9 and Railo 3.2, and can already be used indirectly.

Java and its libraries are very powerful, and CFML lets you harness that power with great simplicity - a single command (either cfobject tag or createObject function) creates a Java object which you can easily work with inside your CFML. And often you don't even need that single command for using Java methods on normal variables, since (for example) a CFML string is also a Java string, and can already use the Java methods directly on it.

.NET - for best intergration you'll want BlueDragon.NET which runs in the .NET framework, but Adobe ColdFusion also has native .NET integration you can use.

PDF is also very easily used with in CFML via the built-in cfdocument and cfpdf tags.

PHP and Ruby are both popular languages, and there the Scripting for ColdFusion projects makes it easy to use either of these languages within your CFML code.

Web Services have always been ease to create and consume with CFML, and with the popularity of JSON, CF8 adds abilities to easily use and produce this.

Great Frameworks

There is an ever growing list of CFML frameworks covering a huge variety of concepts:

• MVC (ColdBox,CFWheels,Fusebox,Mach-ii,Model-Glue)
• ORM (Reactor,Transfer,Data Faucet)
• AOP/IoC (ColdSpring,LightWire)
• TDD (cfUnit,MXUnit,cfcUnit,RocketUnit)
• BDD (cfSpec)
• and many many more!

Great Community

Although no where near as large as many other languages, the CFML community is nevertheless a fairly strong and friendly one, spread across mailing lists and blogs, and of course the various conferences that are held around the globe.

Great Projects

In addition to the assorted projects already mentioned, there are a lot of interesting projects available for CFML. Just browse through RIAForge's CF category or the CF OS Project List to see the great variety of intriguing uses people have put CFML to.

Getting Started

If you decide you want to experiment with CFML, it's very easy!

Both Railo and OpenBD have quick-start editions that allow you to download, unzip, and start the server within seconds - no complex installation, no conflict with existing servers (Jetty picks a unique port around 8888), just run the script and go.

(see Railo Express and OpenBD Ready2Run)

For ColdFusion you can install it for free - the Developer license restricts you to three IPs, but provides all the features. There is an installer to step through, but it's not too bad. Best for a new developer to grab Coldfusion 9 beta, and also the new ColdFusion Builder IDE.

If you get stuck with anything, there are plenty of places you can get help:

• Of course, here at StackOverflow is one place.
• House of Fusion has an active cf-talk mailing list.
• Adobe have web forums for CF, whilst both Railo & openBD have Google Groups.
• There is commercial support available from Adobe, Railo, and New Atlanta.
• There is also general CFML consulting available from Fuzzy Orange, Intergral, Railo and many others.

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So, if you are seeing job postings for CF in your area, you should definitely go ahead and add this tool to your belt! :)

Answer 13

Coldfusion is power with ease. It gets most anything done faster, cheaper, on time compared to any other language.

The language is no where in decline or dying, it's used by very large organizations who seem to value CF developers highly. Developers can be hard to find, but on the flip side, its probably the easiest language to learn for the web and easily among the top in terms of power and ability.

I do a fair amount of PHP work too and all I have to say is that if I have the choice, I use ColdFusion. I have often put in two bids on a project with the Coldfusion bid being 75% the price of the PHP price because it saves so much time. The cost of a CF license has never been an issue, and now there's plenty of great open source engines.

In the 10+ years I have been with ColdFusion, I have only had more and more work, and focus on it almost exclusively when I have a chance. It is the programming language I think in, and thankfully so, as it's pretty simple.

The wealth of built in features it comes with, standardized from Adobe can't be matched by any other language that I've found so far. You would end up buying a lot of third party libraries to work with PDF's, etc., that all comes built in to CF.

There's a lot of other great points that have been made here. What do you have to lose? Try it out for a few months, you can always move to something else, but I don't think you'll look back.

Answer 14

Another point to remember is that due to the perception the CF is declining, that means that there are "less" CF developers. All the CF apps still have to be maintained though, thus . . . thanks due to supply and demand, I can charge more than most C# developers can for a contract. Also I can justify the cost, due to the fact that I can get the job done faster (and I write C# also, so this comes from personal experience)

Answer 15

hi all, pls read this also to get the clear picture http://blogs.gartner.com/mark%5Fdriver/2009/10/06/i-continue-to-be-impressed-with-coldfusion/

tnx..

Answer 16

It's worth adding that CFML is one of the few easy-to-learn server-side languages that scales well. This means that it can be used on the simplest of websites right up to large enterprise projects. Unlike PHP, for example, it supports multi-threaded applications and server load sharing right out of the box.