ColdFusion's Heartbeat

I jogged down the stairs, one arm over my head, as I pulled my coat on a sleeve at a time. Fishing the car keys out of my pocket with one hand, I leaned over my computer to tap in my E-mail password with the other. "Wow, 41 unread messages in the CF-Talk folder," I thought. "There must be a hot new topic on the list today." With a click I watched the new thread flow in.

"Why i fear ColdFusion is on its last legs"

"Oh Geez," I sighed, "Please not with this again!" There wasn't time to read all that right then. I'd have to catch up on this one later in the day when my absorption rate was higher.

As much as I wanted to reply to a couple of the posts, I didn't let myself. I have a few simple rules I follow on the Talk list:

1. Stay away from flame wars
2. Avoid threads started by Don Li
3. Don't be part of any discussion with a very high likelihood of being moved to CF-Community

I did read every post carefully though. Mike Kear started the melee with a generic title, and a bone to pick with Adobe marketing. Most of the fun was spent listening to Dave Watts and Sean Corfield argue. That's my other rule: Read any post by Dave or Sean. Even if you haven't been paying attention to a thread, there's still a decent chance they'll say something interesting. I really should have a rule about not arguing with either of them, but nobody's perfect.

Much of the thread centered around Adobe's involvement of marketing ColdFusion, and frankly I'm kind of surprised someone with an E-mail address ending in @adobe.com didn't chime in somewhere. I don't think I know or care whether or not Adobe could/should do more to promote CF. What found most intriguing though, is best summed up by these following quotes:

"If you want change - then its time to step up and do something about it. Get involved in your local UGM, start presenting to people, go to local techups, or non-CF conventions or twitter meets. There are SO many avenues out there for instigating change its ridiculous. "

Mark Mandel

"You know who's in a position to DO SOMETHING? It's you, not Adobe. You're not satisfied with how Adobe markets their product? Market your services with that product! You're not satisfied with their presence in user groups and conferences? Get in those user groups and conferences yourself! It's developers, not salesmen, who are ultimately responsible for the success or failure of a programming product. "

Dave Watts

"This is why I get frustrated with some CFers who bemoan the lack of corporate marketing: all of the "competing technologies" have no corporate marketing - it's all about developer community. ... The point is that PHP, Ruby/Rails, etc - all the 'hot' techs that are free and open source - those are promoted by their communities."

Sean Corfield

Feel free to take a moment and re-read those again. They're kind of sobering-- a call-out really to everyone who truly cares about ColdFusion to do their part. But most of all, those quotes really resonate with why I do what I do. I participate in CF-Talk, ColdBox, my Coder's Revolution blog, KCDEVCORE, and if I ever get my lazy butt out of gear, I've promised Charlie Arehart a cfmeetup preso. I feel a little guilty though, seeing as how this is my first blog post this month. I actually have a running list of all the things I want to blog about when I get the time and it depresses me how long some of those items have been on my list.

Is it enough? Do I owe the community more? I wish I had a silver bullet to engage and energize every ColdFusion programmer out there but the only thing I can directly control is my own involvement. It's a tall order, but the collective organism that is every involved person is what will continue to keep ColdFusion going.

I don't think ColdFusion is on its last legs. Jeremy Allaire may have breathed life into Cold Fusion, but we are its heartbeat now. As long as we keep pumping I think its legs will carry it for a long long time.