Andrew's ramblings

Is ColdFusion Builder overpriced?

Tags: Coldfusion

Before I answer that I would like to bring to the table that I am one of the most critical when it comes to anything related to ColdFusion. Second to that it has been heavily discussed, and the consensus is that it is.

But is it really overpriced?

Well considering that Adobe have said that if you upgrade/buy Flash Builder 4 we will give you ColdFusion Builder for free, that is not their exact words but they are saying that we will charge you $299.00 (USD) to buy ColdFusion Builder and you can have the standard version of Flash Builder 4.

Marketing has said how can we get more users cross applications, I know lets give ColdFusion Builders users an excuse to begin using Flex.

One of the biggest problems I have with Marketing is that they are never attuned to the development or what is going to be released because they want to make money. Why do I say that?

The current release of ColdFusion Builder. Sure I can install the two products as single applications, and enjoy a fairly average production lifecycle. Or I could download and install one of these, and or Eclipse, and then install the other as a plugin. The problem with this is that marketing has decided what they would like to do, the application (or should I say Applications) on the other hand is not capable of living up to the expectation that marketing has put in place.

What do I mean by that?

Simple! Sometime ago I had the opportunity to maintain some Flex code, and I thought the best thing to do was to install ColdFusion Builder and Flash Builder 4 as plugins into Eclipse. This is all good and dandy, but if you are going to promote integration, on the scale as buying a license for both as Adobe have done. Then the number one thing you need to make sure is that the both products will work hand in hand together, after all if you are going to sell them as a package like this then this becomes extremely important.

The number one feature to both these products, is the line debugger. Debugging is a critical part of any development life cycle. Both products on their own is very good at this, ColdFusion Builder has many issues that need to be addressed, Flash is fairly good but very lacking in what is this and what is that and can take a good developer to loose a lot of hair to know where to look.

But the major problem is the integration that marketing wants to achieve that the product or products can't deliver, and that is full integration.

Now what do I mean by the fact full integration?

I mean that sure you can develop for one or the other, but when you want to develop for both on the same project you run into so many problems it is not funny. The first is that when opening the IDE, both try to take control as to which should be the main holder of the project. This means that debugging either, or running either you are forced to reset the one in which you are debugging or running.

Secondly, when debugging Flash will always win. So if you have a flash project that requires you to debug ColdFusion code, forget it the line debugger will never fire. In fact I even today saw the debugger not fire for a standalone ColdFusion project, and the moment I removed the line break it fired.

In other words, marketing should have been very upfront to what they intended to sell the products as. This would have allowed the programmers to at least get something working, ColdFusion is an initial release so can you blame it no, but Flash Builder is into is 4th release so either way Adobe has some answers to the community on this.

Should the two have been marketed as Adobe have done? No, for the reasons I have outlined. But nobody can blame them for trying to increase developers across languages/developments.

And the number one complaint I have with Flash, I would not be paying the price for it whether it is standalone or upgrade. The reason being is that even though I have only used it for the last few months, the product is very buggy needs a hell of a lot of work. I used Flex Builder in the past and the same thing, nothing has changed on the IDE in terms where it should have. The same problems that Flex Builder suffers is now in ColdFusion builder, and I am shocked that an IDE that cost as much as Flex Builder is non intuitive, the WYSIWYG is buggy, the properties are lacking in what you can do per component. In comparison to other tools, I am afraid I personally would not pay for Flash Builder, it is far too expensive for something that could be achieved in notepad for free.

I have watched Flash Builder grow from its initial dwellings when it and Flash were once called generator. Not sure that is 100% accurate, but the point is that program was an image manipulator, and a few other things that cost somewhere in $10k+ bracket. Since then other alternatives have come along, and Adobe who now own the rights have to adjust to the currnt market. The only problem is that they spent more on the SDK which is free, than the actual IDE and yet the IDE has never changed priced and you are forced to upgrade for what?

Personally I would prefer an open source mxml editor, that leveraged of the Flash SDK because the IDE has had no real enhancements and yet costs an arm and a leg.

So the question to both IDE's is as many have discussed, is it really worth it? The answer is no, when you look at an IDE you want to know you are getting value for money. The Flash Builder IDE is not giving me that feeling, because it is a glorified editor that makes your write strict mxml over WYSIWYG and when it comes to IDES that has to be the most important thing.

In other words, if Flex Builder 2/3 allowed you to use the latest SDK you would see no real enhancements to the latest IDE, which means you are actually paying for the SDK development.

ColdFusion Builder is a lot different, and even though you get a lot it too has the same short comings. You are paying for the fact that you get RDS/Extension support, you are also paying for a very buggy code syntax editor that has many problems introspecting what it should be.

So at the end of the day, would you switch from your current editor? I know people during the development life cycle of ColdFusion builder that continued to use Dreamweaver. I used ColdFusion Builder on a daily basis, developing debugging and getting frustrated. To find that nothing has changed on final release, so why would I personally be forced to buy ColdFusion Builder for $299.00 when I do no Flash development on a personal level?

Especially when most are comfortable with Dreamweaver, CFEclipse or whatever they use. The best thing that the CFEclipse project can do will be to write their own RDS servlet, and let Adobe know that there is more than they can offer.

The RDS in ColdFusion is nothing special and Adobe must know this, because they are going to milk everything out of you before that happens.

So to answer the question, is ColdFusion Builder overpriced? No, ColdFusion Builder on its own can never be overpriced, because you can't buy it on its own.

Tweet