Andrew's ramblings

ColdFusion builder V2.0 and my thoughts on its success for the future.

Tags: Coldfusion, ColdFusion 8, ColdFusion 9, ColdFusion Builder

It is no secret that Adobe has been hard a t work trying to get ColdFusion Builder 1.0, in as many hands as possible. By bundling it with Flash Builder and the Enterprise version of ColdFusion 9.0, to even giving away a lot of copies to push the product out there into the market.

But I feel that Adobe hasn't done enough in the right places, to make those that already have either purchased the product or given a free copy, have any confidence in the product to date.

I can't vouch for the rest of Adobe's products, because I really only use Flash Builder, ColdFusion Builder and ColdFusion. but what I can say for these products is that they are given little attention after the product is shipped. But these products all seem to have the same problem, once it is released, a patch will be released and that is Adobe saying we appreciate your continued usage and here is something that we hope will please you.

The reality is that it is never enough, the marketing side of these products seems to be that if you complain about it enough or it gets enough votes, it will be fixed in the next release. I have emails of reported bugs that had been ear marked as fixed in ColdFusion 9 and ColdFusion Builder that are not fixed in any way shape or form.

Now if I am going to be spending another $199.00 (USD) on a product, I am going to need to know a few things.

* It must have 64bit support

* It must be able to debug using the debugger

* it must be able to start and stop the ColdFusion server, not be picky about when it will or will not start/stop the server.

* There must be a total commitment by Adobe to provide a more streamlined update process, not just a once off fix for some things

These might seem like small insignificant requests, but lets look at the last one for a bit.

Other company products that I use continue to release fixes well after you have bought the product, I have lost count of the number of fixes that Microsoft have pushed out on their products. And if you ask me Adobe are out to milk every cent they can get their hands on with the current model they have in place, I mean why else would you not adopt a more regular fix/update process?

The next important support for me is 64bit support, while the rest of the world is moving 64bit, Adobe seem to be very well behind the 8 ball on this one, for me this will be the deciding factor if I purchase the next release or not.

The next two for me are the debugger and the Server integration for stopping and starting the server, both work when they want too, and never when you need it too. I have seen cases where scope variables go missing, and yet if you dump that scope out it is there, just that it goes missing in the debugger. I have also seen the debugger get slower and slower every time a break point is fired to the point it has stretched from instantaneous to up to  5 mins to fire a break point.

With the server integration, I have seen it just restart itself for no reason at all, and times when you can never start it. I have seen times when the server is started, and in the console, you get weird messages that are either cryptic to say the least, or you get these weird html type error strings.

Now I know that not many people would use the line debugger in ColdFusion builder, and it is a shame that this is not promoted by the fan boys as much as it should be, maybe if they gave up promoting jQuery over say cfajaxproxy then maybe, just maybe these people might get to see some real power from the IDE. But then I guess they might be let down by the problems it has, like firing break points when it feels like firing them, or saying it can't due to some specific take not written to handle the debugger, I have noticed that in 99% of cases when using cffile, of you try to add a line break on the next CFML line it will not only tell you it can't reach here, but it will not fire if you break at a good point further up.

It just simply exits that code altogether.

Now it might sound like I am bitching for the sake of it, but the reality of this is that I personally would like to see Adobe be a lot more proactive with these bugs, and begin to start addressing them in the current release and not a future major version release.

I think if everyone was to stopping buying/upgrading to the next release on these principles would make Adobe begin to realise that we can vote with our money, and take our business elsewhere like say CFEclipse who does update regularly and maybe with as many developers on the team, could compete with ColdFusion Builder.

So even though I have actual feature requests for the product, I would rather begin to see support of current releases more than Adobe is giving them. And I encourage other people to look at what Adobe are not doing, before you look at what they are doing, take your money and look at other alternatives before you purchase, and/or email Adam Leahman and point blank say to him, that you want Adobe to more proactive with bug fixes, and releases and you are not prepared to wait for a major release for these things to be fixed.

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ColdFusion builder V2.0 and my thoughts on its success for the future.: It is no secret that Adobe has been hard... http://bit.ly/g6RrTR Jan 16, 2011

ColdFusion builder V2.0 and my thoughts on its success for the future. - http://cfbloggers.org/?c=46968 Jan 16, 2011