Below are the results for the 2014 State of the CF Union survey. See how you compare with other CFML developers. Discover what most developers use for tools, languages, database and development methods.
Can you help? If you are on a ColdFusion list, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google group please share the survey so that we can get a more complete picture of the current State of the CF Union. Thanks!
1. What version of ColdFusion do you use? (Check all that apply)
Other
Smith Project
None
2. Comment:
Railo rulez
Moved everything to Railo
CF9 professionally, OBD/GAE personally.
hi! And good morning!
Do not need the UI user side tags.
AMO COLDFUSION
Excelent!
none
Planning to use CFML 10 soon
Usualy OpenBD
?
What you want a random comment here?
I'm going for Railo/OpenBD exclusively this year.
Railo is so great. Virtually trouble free and a great community.
Switched from CF7 to OpenBD when OpenBD was first released. Been using it exclusively since.
Switching all production servers away from cf 8 to railo
CF 9 is primary with a few sites moving to 10 on client's hardware. CF 6 is a handful of old sites that we never quite manage to retire.
Breaking up the major versions of OpenBD and Railo might have been helpful (for framework folks). Come to think of if, asking about framework usage itself would have been nice too.
I like the OpenBD group, and am very familiar with how to get it running. For production, it's what I'm most comfortable with.
Most work is done with OpenBD
Migrated to Railo
We are stuck on CF8 due to the expense of the upgrade and CF licenses. We are currently experimenting with Railo to eliminate this cost.
Currently switching to ASP.NET
No plans to purchase upgrades to Adobe CF until/unless support expires; may well move everything to Railo instead as we see little benefit to the new bells and whistles
All new development is under CF10. CF8 sites are generally in active maintenance, and CF7 sites are mostly online but without frequent modifications.
Change question 1 to CFML engine instead of ColdFusion
Currently phasing out the 8 servers as we deal with either killing the last legacy apps or tweaking them to run on 9
what am I commenting on!
We do not deploy act 10 to production because of the higher cost.
CF9 for my day job. Railo for some “extra curricular” sites I do for family / friends.
My company is looking at starting a Railo server in the near future as well.
Migrating from ACF to Railo
upgrading from CF8 to CF10
Helloooooo Grails!!!!
We are in the middle of migrating from CF7 to CF10.
CF10 — very buggy!
I've upgraded to Adobe ColdFusion 10 at previous job roles, but here I am stuck on ColdFusion 8.
Bluedragon.net and openbd legacy moving completely to railo
Different flavours of Railo
We manage and host sites for lots of companies on many versions of ColdFusion
I use Railo at home. At work, we are 75% done moving from CF8 to CF10
Railo is cool!
Love me the railo
Testing on ACF10, looking at Railo
Railo is taking over because they are adding features CF Developers can use and are actually fixing bugs, while Adobe is working on fluff like integrating a mobile development platform, and ignoring bug fixes.
In process of switch to railo
CF9 servers are legacy ballast and will be replaced with Railo servers.
I only still use CF10 as some clients require it.
Comment is a poor field name.
It's a no-brainer to go with one of the open source CFML engines. Adobe's licensing fees are outrageous, not to mention the performance is not comparable.
company just getting off CF7 and 8 to 9..used 10 at home and now going to do some Railo work.
Fusebox with legacy code and FW/1 for new projects
I don't see a reason for using either when there are better open source alternatives out there. For example: PHP, Ruby, Python and so on.
Mainly Railo. CF really only in dev these days to keep up.
Someday I think I'll abandon ColdFusion altogether.
Waiting to see Adobe's commitment to CF before upgrading to CF 10
Slowly phasing CF out
This will probably be my last use of Adobe Cold Fusion. We're moving to Railo.
We moved to Railo due to migration to Cloud.
Currently transitioning everything to 10
The majority are CF10, with some stragglers at 7 & 8 that are to be migrated to 10.
3. What type of ColdFusion are you running? (Check all that apply)
4. What CF Server OS are you using? (Check all that apply)
Other
Linux
Linux Centos
Linux (GAE)
Solaris
centos what else!
Linux
window and mac on local dev machines
Linux
Linux
Linux
AWS Ubuntu 12.04 Instance, Jelastics PaaS, Cloudbees PaaS, Heroku PaaS
OpenBD on CloudBees (java as a service)
Linus Debian
Linux
CentOS
linux
RedHat Linux
Actually Linux rather than Unix – (Red Hat / CentOS)
Solaris!
Linux (Is Unix still a thing?)
Centos
Linux Debian
Linux
Linux
CentOS Linux
Centos Linux (note: Linux is *not* Unix, and Mac *is* Unix)
linux
Linux
Linux
5. What OS do you run on your laptop/PC? (Check all that apply)
Other
Does parallels count?
Mainly Windows
6. What browsers/client platforms do you support in your apps? (Check all that apply)
Other
Professionally: IE8+, iOS mobile, Chrome. Personally: All of the above.
All browsers to the best of our ability
you name it
everything
Windows Phone
Responsive 🙂
Nothing specific
Any HTML compliant browser
7. Databases you use? (Check all that apply)
Other
XML
AS400, Amazon DynamoDB
Amazon DynamoDB
Neo4j
Apache Derby, HSQLDB
Couchbase
using access for desktop development, only.
Apache Derby
Couchbase
Couchbase
Derby
Apache Solr
Derby
Derby
Just starting to look into NoSQL
Redis
8. What code frameworks do you use? (Check all that apply)
Other
framework made in company
Professionally: None.
adobe dreamweaver
My Own + Homesite (great !!! customization)
don't need no bloody framework
Homegrown
FarCry
CMS – Xindi
CMS – Xindi
Home grown
I use my own framework
Coldspring
Homebrew
a very old implementation of Fusebox
I use another framework
preside
Home grown framework
CacheBox, LogBox, MockBox, TestBox, WireBox
WordPress
CodeCharge by Yes Software
Modified Fusebox
CMS – ContentBox
Coldspring, MXUnit
9. What AJAX libraries do you use? (Check all that apply)
Other
Prototype / Scriptaculous
Spry
highslide
Dart
Spry
MooTools
Older sites use Prototype
prototype (legacy app)
These are JAVASCRIPT libraries, not “AJAX libraries”
ExtJS4
jQueryUI
Should be Sencha Ext JS, not Ext.js
10. What CSS frameworks do you use? (Check all that apply)
Other
Blueprint CSS
Yahoo
themeforest templates
tuktuk
SASSquash
pureIO
SAAS
Yui
I use my own
jQueryUI
skeleton
skel
Skeleton
Custom-tweaked twelve-column grid
Skeleton
YAML
And Skeleton
jqueryUI
Skeleton
skeleton
Skeleton
SASS
Web Experience Toolkit
Commonspot's ADF
11. What CFC dependance injection frameworks do you use? (Check all that apply)
Other
Bootstrap
Homebrew
Business Extender home brew
AOP/1
12. Which persistence frameworks do you use? (Check all that apply)
Other
Railo ORM
They all can't handle big data requirements
Railo ORM
Railo ORM, ColdBox
Home grown
In house
Il
Home grown
custom
Railo's built in one
Railo ORM, Hibernate (native)
(Railo ORM in fact)
ORMs are the Vietnam of Computer Science!
Custom
Squidhead
Custom/home grown sadly. Should be using hibernate.
MagicBean home brew
FarCry Core FourQ (ORM)
Railo ORM
in-house developed ORM. Don't ask 😉
13. What testing and mocking frameworks do you use? (Check all that apply)
14. What CF features do you use for code reuse? (Check all that apply)
Other
CFC based custom tags
Shared common repo between apps and ColdBox injection
I make a strong use of OOP
cfmodule
includes and cts from old crappy code. replacing as we can
Dedicated service platform for things necessary for more applications (user management, data mining across applications, …)
CFMODULE
custom built-in functions and tags in Railo, both CFML-based and Java-based
15. What do you use for source code control? (Check all that apply)
Other
TortoiseSVN
gitblit
Dropbox
Cornerstone
Professionally: None.
PSPad
Homegrown
FTPVC
BitBucket, gitHub
Springloops
Dropbox for one crazy client
smartsvn
I wish we did
Git Sucks
subversion with Torioise SVN client
SourceTree
backblaze
16. What tools/IDEs do you use? (Check all that apply)
Other
vim
Notepad2
BUT WE NEED A DECENT IDE!
I use Eclise just because the lack of a good one. Unfortunately we see programmers suggestion to migrate to another language that have better IDE's
EditPad
jEdit
Dart editor
Nano
geany, scintilla
I still use the old CF Studio IDE because it's reliable and works well with CFML code.
Zend Studio
Vim
vim
ActiveState Komodo with Komodo-CFML
I've used other IDEs but that was over 5 years ago.
Crash Builder!
None
Chef
Vim
Give me CFBuilder or give me death!
LightTable
vim
Vim
ColdFusion Builder
Code Mirror
jEdit, Metapad, vim
1st Page 2000
Coldfusion Studio 4.5a
17. What Browser Dev Tools do you use? (Check all that apply)
Other
Webdeveloper extension
Charles Proxy
Fiddler
fiddler
Opera Dragonfly
opera
18. How many years have you used ColdFusion?
19. How many years have you used OO?
20. Other languages/environments you use? (Check all that apply)
Other
C#
Talend
Objective C
Dart
SQL, XML
Objective C
LESS
C#
C#, MonoScript
Delphi
C
AutoIT, LiveCode, and more… your list is horribly incomplete.
Golang
jRuby
C#
Delphi
bash, C (not C++), regex, sql, others
Punch cards – just kidding…
sql
21. How many CF developers at your organization?
CF developers Organizations
0-1 103
2-5 189
6-10 68
11-20 44
21-30 33
40 5
50 9
60 1
100 4
150-300 4
22. How many total employees at your organization?
23. How often do you attend Adobe User Group meetings?
24. Which conferences do you attend? (Check all that apply)
Other
There are almost no conference near to my city, in Brazil
No money for, and Living in France (Europe)
takeoff conf sotr
CFUnited in past. May attend O'Reilly Fluent 2014
I have attended many of these in the past; don't do conferences much these days.
Ms build, adobe max
rwd summit (online)
NodeJS, MongoDB World
Apache Flex con – OpenCF Summit (defunct)
Breaking Development, Fluent
Company will not provide funds
Local general web groups
Lambda Jam (AU)
Into the box
Whatever my employer sends me to. Can't afford to go by myself.
have not been to a CF conference in 2013
O'Reilly FluentConf
Adobe Government Summit
Haven't been able to, but plan to visit in the future.
Atlassian Summit, ChefConf, DevOpsDays
devoxx
Clojure/West, Clojure/conj, Lambda Jam, MongoDB Days
SpringOne
Into The Box
Been to CFUnited and MAXX in the past
ScotlandJS, Scottish Ruby Conference, jQueryUK, SmashingConf
Web Directions, AWS summits, PuppetConf
FutureJS
Online conferences
Adobe MAX doesn't support CF, and they haven't committed to a CF conference
Can't afford conferences these days – hoping to make CFObjective
OpenCF Summit
Used to attend CF United
Bring back CFUnited!
25. What are your current ColdFusion challenges? (Check all that apply)
Other
Stopped looking to backfill a postion because there were no mid level CF developers out there
learning unit testing
no linter
Clustering Remote Instances
In india whenever new app is being developed people prefer java, .net or php but not coldfusion
*NO GOOD CF IDE*
all CF built-in features are not accessible.
I love CF, but perception is that it is dead so we must switch to PHP
too much FUD in the community
Migrating to Railo
JSON Encoding Issues
Need to migrate to Railo; Lack of tests
package manager
OpenBD team seems to have abandoned the project
license cost!!!!!
Upgrade from JVM 1.6 to 1.7 looks to be a mess, even for CF10
not enough time for Railo migration & cloud migration
Adobe lacks focus on the platform and is investing effort in features that few developers will ever use
regular updates and bug fixes from Adobe
Impression that Adobe is less responsive than Railo
horrible bugs in CF10 implementation, security holes, most job positions looking for LAMP/Drupal/PHP developers, lack of local CF conferences and usergroups and I'm in the DC metro area (nor more CFUNITED either 🙁 )
Poorly finished features with bugs in Adobe ColdFusion
Having mentors – have to research/learn on my own
Lack of adobe engagement in platform
Continuous Integration tools
Hard to find job in my experience category, companies want greenhorns or veterans, not mid-level.
Lack of vision by Adobe. Railo thankfully leads the way!
patching CF8 servers
What about Railo challenges?
Moving away from CFML so it's not a challenge
My company is switching to .net due to difficulty in hiring cf devs
leaky scopes
ColdFusion's lack of Null, JSONSerialization/Deserialization, ORM complexity (compared to ActiveRecord/GORM)
Not a challenge per se, but CFML just isn't relevant any more
No package management (Gems, Composer,pip etc)
Still too hard to get started with a skeleton app – frameworks fine, but want ready-to-use apps/demos built in framework like FW1
the cost
Adobe spending time on half-assed solutions for “Enterprise Customers” i.e. <cfclient>
I don't do ColdFusion. I do CFML.
lack of marketing/PR for CF
Really it's perception that CF is dying, or antiquated, often fueled by our own community.
not having the funds to upgrade to newer version
Manange directed move away from using CF for new apps in favor of new technologies.
CF was once King, nowdays I can do just about anything in .net/VisualStudio as quickly as in CF and not have to pay excessive amounts for CF Enterprise licenses. Adobe treats CF Standard as if it were just a development license, not a production environment.
26. Any additional comments?
Long Live CFML!
I think CF, all engines included, is an awesome language and I hope support for it continues. I just wonder what happens though if the main guys leading Ralio & OpenBD leave/retire. Seems like there is only a few integral people on each team.
lol dongs
I need more information to write and improving coding levels.
I might have entered my information above if you told me what you were going to do with it.
I like CF. Please make it popular.
Love CF. Do something in France !!!
none
ColdFusion sucks ass and I hate it.
Thanks Michael!
Thank you!
nope
ColdFusion is a great product, it just needs to attention and focus within Adobe. Bring the product management team back on shore and focus on CF. The saddest thing is when you go to Adobe's site and can't even find the product within 3 clicks on the homepage.
None
Don't want to have to learn PHP!! Love the speed to develop an app or feature in ColdFusion. Love open source OpenBD – I can deploy with H2 or SQL Express for free – even on a flash drive. Thanks
We need a package manager!!!
In general happy with CF. Just have a lot to do. Trying to release a big open source version of our app.
Would like to see more CF support for mobile integration.
Bring back CF United!
This year we will sadly begin our move away from ColdFusion to PHP. Per our boss – too few developers and no trust in Adobe to continue with CF. Heck, they don't even have it in their main site menu anymore! I will still be coding in ColdFusion on a personal basis, but not as a job.
Not Enough Time – Deferred
Thanks for compiling the survey 🙂
What's happened to Ben forta et al engaging with the community. Releases need to be much more frequent and get some actual web developers involved in the cf team. Oh and they should leverage what they can do like pdf and PDF forms.
Could do with more open source provisioning, testing and deployment tools as per other langs .
I think this survey as put together quite well. I found it easy to navigate, the questions easy to understand, the responses adequate given today's market. I'm still making a decent living off of CF, but I don't know how long that's going to last. I'm already looking into moving my expertise to JavaScript libraries like Angular and open source projects like Drupal.
We do more with ColdFusion than most people.
Thanks!
Great survey!
Only one CFUG for a country of over 80 million, so it's not even worth mentioning.
Good luck with the survey. Long live CF
After using other modern technologies, I will avoid CF as much as possible. And new versions are getting worse and worse. The advantage CF used to have is long long long gone. It's now faster to write apps in Python, PHP, NodeJS, Grails, etc. because those techs are opensource and have vibrant communities. Railo was a valiant effort, but failed to make an impact.
ColdFusion is great language in the world, I hope sources move to Asia, because there are still virgin of market. Don't still stay in US and Europe.
My organization is a long time ColdFusion shop that is actively evaluating out next development platform. Languages frameworks under consideration are Python/Django, Groovy/Grails, Ruby/Rails ant .NET. There are several factors contributing to this including poor ColdFusion support from Adobe (support has gone downhill significantly over the past 5 years) as well as the perception by upper management that ColdFusion is dying (our CFUG has gone defunct, ColdFusion is no longer featured on Adobe's home page, there is no more developer content at Max, and finding experienced CF developers or people willing to learn CF is difficult because it isn't seen as a marketable skill).
Thanks for putting this together again!
Coldfusion rocks !
Would use Railo but management aren't sold on it. Same goes for the various frameworks.
Hi, I'm the organizer of CFCamp in Munich. For this year we'll have a CFCamp in October.
For Question #20, we have DEVELOPERS. People that call themselves CF developers *SUCK*, are 5 taggers, and Adobe's “Enterprise Users”. Biggest problem is release timeframe Adobe has for ColdFusion. Seriously, they are moving at glacier pace in comparison to Railo. Railo is also providing language enhancements that developers want/need and is moving CFML forward. Will never buy another copy of ColdFusion Builder. Just look at how many releases there have been of IntelliJ (11, 11.1, 12, 12.1, 13) over the same period that CFB v2 has been out (Update 1). How about Adobe use a REAL bug tracker for ColdFusion and is more transparent with the status of bug fixes?
Thanks for doing this! I love ColdFusion and will be interested to see the results of the survey!
A major security breach due to a CF hole has caused managment to start rethinking our use of CF. As a lover of CF, I find this very disheartening and I now find it much more difficult to defend our use of CF.
Thank you for putting this survey together.
I've been learning Python some and Ruby on Rails. I'm looking for the next “hot” language. It seems Adobe is divesting from ColdFusion. There are not many ColdFusion jobs at all. And, as a hiring manager, it's really hard to find a ColdFusion developer to hire.
Potentially interesting questions for next survey: (Q) Was there once an active CF User Group at your organization? (Q) Is there still an active CF User Group at your organization? My answers: yes, no.
The future of Coldfusion is a big concern.
In the UK there are very few CF jobs advertised
Really wish CFUnited would come back as a Conference!
I LOVE CF. Let's make sure it stays around for a l-o-n-g time!!
Our use of CF has dropped over the past three years. Three years ago approximately 90% of our work was in CF. Today only about 10% of our work is CF and that is mainly supporting legacy products. That number will decrease as we migrate those items off CF and into another environment.
Long Live ColdFusion!
And to continue learning how to make your ColdFusion apps more modern and alive, I encourage you to download our free ColdFusion Alive Best Practices Checklist.
Because… perhaps you are responsible for a mission-critical or revenue-generating CF application that you don’t trust 100%, where implementing new features is a painful ad-hoc process with slow turnaround even for simple requests.
What if you have no contingency plan for a sudden developer departure or a server outage? Perhaps every time a new freelancer works on your site, something breaks. Or your application availability, security, and reliability are poor.
And if you are depending on ColdFusion for your job, then you can’t afford to let your CF development methods die on the vine.
You’re making a high-stakes bet that everything is going to be OK using the same old app creation ways in that one language — forever.
All it would take is for your fellow CF developer to quit or for your CIO to decide to leave the (falsely) perceived sinking ship of CFML and you could lose everything—your project, your hard-won CF skills, and possibly even your job.
Luckily, there are a number of simple, logical steps you can take now to protect yourself from these obvious risks.
No Brainer ColdFusion Best Practices to Ensure You Thrive No Matter What Happens Next
ColdFusion Alive Best Practices Checklist
Modern ColdFusion development best practices that reduce stress, inefficiency, project lifecycle costs while simultaneously increasing project velocity and innovation.
√ Easily create a consistent server architecture across development, testing, and production
√ A modern test environment to prevent bugs from spreading
√ Automated continuous integration tools that work well with CF
√ A portable development environment baked into your codebase… for free!
Learn about these and many more strategies in our free ColdFusion Alive Best Practices Checklist.
