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What should I do? PHP vs Coldfusion

Posted : Nov 20, 2006 7:06 PM
General

I know a limited slow amount of PHP, enough to bs through modifying code but not enough to develop my own applications from scratch. I really, really want to learn something that will make crafting my own applications a possibility. I want to start teaching myself a programming language from the ground up. I tried taking some ASP.NET classes, but it was too slow passed and it just bored me working primarily with HTML for so long when I came to learn ASP.NET 2006 2007. I'm one of those self-taught people, some douche in a bow tie telling me what to do doesn't cut it, I need some real world experience... I don't really think many people start out programming by learning in a class environment...

As of now, I really want to learn PHP from the ground up and start developing online applications using the Smarty "Templating Engine". I want to learn PHP because of all the open source code floating around, and I already know a bit, and all my experience with dynamic sites has been using PHP... I just don't want to learn something that won't matter in 3-4 years.

I see a lot of people using Coldfusion and it seems like it is going to be the thing to know. Are there a lot of hosts that support cold fusion? Would it be better in the long run to learn coldfusion, or would a transition later on from PHP to Coldfusion be easy?

Sooooo... PHP or Coldfusion or ASP even?

I installed Coldfusions whatever you call it on my computer and am about to start playing with it.. Now how about php vs asp vs coldfusion ?

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Chris, I have worked in both languages and I can firmly say without any hesitation that ColdFusion is a far more *fun* language to work in, and side by side, I would put any ColdFusion app up against PHP. There are some haters on ColdFusion that have been around for many years and most of their arguments are based on what ColdFusion *used* to be, which was a semi-powerful, rapid web application platform.

However, ColdFusion today is absolutely bad ass. It is a solid language with a good set of best practices in the community, and is now a layer that sits on top of Java. That means that you can natively instantiate any Java component and use it as if you were working in Java. This opens you up to a tremendously powerful set of tools. The ColdFusion community is also very tight and very helpful to each other.

If you need any further arguments, the DFW CFUG meets the second Tuesday of every month, and you know some local developers. :)
 
posted 1096 days ago
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Can't speak much to PHP, other than the PHP code I have seen has been asstastic. So, I choose ColdFusion!
 
posted 1096 days ago
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Oh also, there are some cheap CF hosts. Check out http://www.viux.com. I think they have hosting plans starting around 5 bucks a month.
 
posted 1096 days ago
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K, Coldfusion it is. Though I know you guys are biased. PHP is an older language and newer is always better.... I watched a demo of Ruby on Rails and it looks pretty cool, seems like it is more of a novelty though... Can;t wait to mess with Coldfusion/start learning, but IIS has always kicked my ass
 
posted 1096 days ago
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For what it is worth, ColdFusion is 11 years old. I am not sure about PHP, but I can't imagine it has much age on it. The thing that made PHP such a household name is that it is open source and practically comes with Linux. It is certainly not due to greater power.
 
posted 1096 days ago
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I see.. I didn't realize Cold Fusion wasn't originally developed by Macromedia, I just remember when I first saw it show up on Macromedia's and thought that was the first of it. I can start playing with it if I can ever figure out how to get IIS working again (something happened during my ASP.NET class that screwed up IIS and I was never able to get it to work again)
 
posted 1096 days ago
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And God made Apache...and it was good.
 
posted 1096 days ago
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And Chris realised he was an idiot, and Coldfusion MX7 wasn't an interface like Visual Studio... or was it?

I'm removing IIS so I can view this getting started guide.. I get ColdFusion noob of the week award.
 
posted 1096 days ago
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Visual Studio sounds like an IDE of some kind. ColdFusion MX7 is an application server. If you ever feel like switching to Linux/Apache, Dave has a great step-by-step on how to set up a sweet ColdFusion development environment.
 
posted 1096 days ago
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DaveS said:
 
I cant say much for php, but I am a full time ColdFusion developer and I love working in the language. There are two things that set it apart for me. First, I dont need any start or end tags to separate the CF from the HTML, just mix it right in. I have used to actually dynamically write javascript code... that is incredibly powerful... The second thing is that I am able to access java directly.. At one point i needed to return an XML list of folders in a certain directory. Under CF 6.1 this is not possible. So i wrote a java function using the java code here to parse through the directory list and return the XML as a string that i can parse through myself... Not the most elegant solution but it just illustrates the power of the language. Its handling of variables is great #varname# will output the contents of a var, or a query record if you need it to, just wrap it in and you are done... Sorry to rant on like this, but I figured some actual examples might be able to explain it better.
 
posted 631 days ago
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Not to mention this blogging network proudly runs on ColdFusion 8. :)
 
posted 631 days ago
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