Another day, another debate about the long-term viability of CFML rages across the Twittersphere.
A few months before it was attacks on PHP as a two clawed hammer or Rails as being too cool to perform in the real world*.
These themes all have one common element … Irrelevance to the core need of most software platforms … to be able to build software.
Yes ColdFusion is increasingly marginal (no offence CFers but the numbers speak for themselves) and has a number of inherent weaknesses but then so does any language or framework. PHP is ugly and Rails is just too damn cool for its own good but all of these platforms are in regular use and put food on the table for a huge number of developers, project managers, sysadmins, etc.
These languages couldn’t do that if they weren’t still viable. Much more important than the perceptions some may have of a given stack or tool chain is that you, the developer using said stack, can use it to get your job done and can be sure of more work down the line.
Software development isn’t about the tools … It’s about the results.
Almost as bad as wading into these pointless debates on which language is on the rise vs. decline are the developers who cling to their chosen stack with religious fervour. Diversification is good!
Look at the tools you actually use day to day, and look at their component parts. Your IDE might be Java or Python, your web server is C, C++, or JavaScript, your CI suite may well be Ruby. You don’t feel the need to get precious about these aspects of your work do you? So why can it not be that case that you should know and be prepared to work in more than one language? It’s not treachery, it’s common sense.
And this isn’t a new message. Seven Languages in Seven Weeks has been out for 2 years now, and before that frameworks and languages galore had sprung up around the web development space many competing for exactly the same users. What does that tell you? That almost every language has an ecosystem, a community and tools to allow you, the developer to make cool shit.
The whole point of this web dev malarkey is that we have choice** and that we should use that choice to equip ourselves as best we can for the future. Screaming at someone online because they’ve just slammed your chosen technology shows passion … But also an attachment to that tech that is, frankly, unhealthy.
There will always be progress and if your platform of choice doesn’t keep up then you can simply switch to one that has … Or risk obsolescence in the face of your devotion to what is, when all’s said and done, a f##king hammer.
</rant>
* This may not have been debated just yet but give it 6 months and keep an eye on the Rails Mailing list!
** Unless you’re developing on the Microsoft Stack but even then I suppose you have the choice to not develop on the Microsoft stack Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
