Last night I was thinking about the Bolt announcement and how disappointed I was in the whole thing. For the most part they announced they were building CFEclipse. Yes they announced some ORM and code generation tools but the majority of ‘features’ they announced are available today in CFEclipse.

Maybe I’m spoiled by using open-source and Google “beta” software for so long but I was really expecting something to download and tinker with from Adobe, even if it was alpha quality. They have had years to build this (IMO it should have been in the oven before Flex Builder) and I know they are probably baking in some fancy stuff for CF9 but it still seems like they could release something and work on the advanced features as they go along.

I think my expectations with new software (which leans strongly towards open source) lately is to see something with basic functionality and know it’s going to be improved in the future with frequent updates. When I first installed Ubuntu over two years ago it was functional but hardly bug free. 2 years later it has become very polished but still has the occasional bug and that’s OK. I know it’s very likely that those will be fixed in the next round of updates and features will be added and improved upon.

Maybe my wife is right and I’m just impatient… I’m still looking forward to getting beta access to Bolt and I hope the product is going to be worth the wait!

CF IDE Announced

So I go to a meeting and of course all the cool stuff is announced…

CF IDE! Bolt!

The good:

• Object Relational Mapping auto-configuration
• Application Code Generation
• Server management

These other features are already in CFEclipse or available via a plugin:

• Easily extensible through the Eclipse framework
• CFML, HTML, Javascript, and CSS Syntax Highlighting
• Code assist for tags, functions, variables, and components
• Code folding
• Snippet creation and management
• Outline viewing
• RDS Explorer for files and databases
• Line-level Debugging

The bad:

• Not released until next year (coincide with the CF9 release?)
• No price info
• No info on platforms supported. I really hope they can bake in 100% Linux support!!

They have a beta signup here: http://www.adobe.com/go/bolt which unfortunately only allows you to select one OS for your development platform?  Hello? I develop on PC at work and Linux at home…

Adobe Labs page here: http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Bolt

So we’ll have to wait and see …  (and I hope the photo above in no way influences my beta application…)

The CFEclipse world has been quiet lately.  The mailing list has been slow, bug reports are rare, and it seems people are making due with the latest ‘beta’ release which for the most part works well with the latest Eclipse 3.4.  I poke around on the CFEclipse wiki doing occasional updates but wonder if anyone reads them.

So what’s next?  Adobe has done a few CF IDE surveys in the past but so far we’ve seen little from it…

• In August 2006 Damon Cooper asked developers about an IDE.
• In January 2008 Jason Delmore posted the CF IDE survey.

There have been rumors for awhile that Adobe would announce something at IDE related at MAX.  I can’t remember when I first heard that – maybe during Ben’s AIR tour?  But as we all know MAX is coming up in a few weeks so we won’t have long to wait.   A few more teases have come out in the last week or so:

Tim Buntel has a blog post about Flex Builder announcements at MAX:

Well, what we’re showing at MAX should put any of those concerns to rest. Very exciting news for CF developers and CF developers who have wanted to get into Flex, but who have stayed away due to the learning curve or other issues.

Ben Forta has a note about the big announcements being during the day 2 keynote:

Well, we’re doing things a little differently this year, and much of the really exciting product news is going to be part of the Day 2 keynote…  And so consider this a friendly public service announcement – don’t miss the Day 2 keynote, really!

So will we ColdFusion developers finally get some IDE love?  Will it be based on Eclipse or something else?  Will it be free?  I’ll be watching feeds, Twitter, etc and hope to see some good news from the keynotes!

Saw this interesting article on Slashdot – Open Source Killing Commercial Developer Tools. Will Adobe ever release an updated IDE for ColdFusion?  And if they do – would anyone buy it?

The tools market is dead. Open source killed it. The only commercial tools that can survive today are the ones that leapfrog open source tools.

According to my IDE survey the majority of the 400 respondents indicated they would pay up to $500.

• 111 – Free
• 144 – $100
• 126 – $100-500

But one wonders how much better it would have to be before people switched from the free CFEclipse.  And as I’ve said before – now with 4 CFML engines available – a ‘universal’ CFML IDE become even more important.

The Slashdot article leads to a post at DZone where the author discusses his new IDE which looks interesting as well.

UNA Collaborative Edition is a real-time collaborative development environment for software engineers. It lets two or more developers edit the same code, at the same time. It’s similar to pair programming, but better because both developers can contribute productively, whether they’re located across the hall from each other or on different continents.

I was checking out this CFUnited post on what people are looking forward to seeing at CFUnited.  This comment from Marc Escher caught my eye:

Question: A recent hot topic?

Marc: One that doesn’t get much press but which is on the minds of many is whether Adobe’s going to come out with a CF IDE. It’s been hinted at in blogs but in typical fashion is carried out with the same degree of teasing that 8th grade girls use. It’s frustrating for some of us who would choose to contribute to CFEclipse if we thought that product had a long life. I believe Adobe’s hurting the CF community by not either a) committing to building an IDE or b) stopping the chatter entirely and getting behind CFEclipse. After working with FlexBuilder and seeing the productivity gains you get from it with Flex, you can’t help but feel that we’re crippled, productivity-wise, by lack of an enterprise-class IDE for CF.

I’m curious if others who might consider contributing to the CFEclipse project are hesitant to do so for this reason??

I do wish Adobe would “s–t or get off the pot” as my Mom is prone to say, about whether they are or are not developing a CF IDE.

I finally found a bit of time to sit down and pull out some results from the CFML IDE survey:

393 Results (4/9 – 4/28)

1. Which of these describes your role best as a CFML user?
- Application Developer (172)
- Web Developer (129)
- Application Architect (60)
- Other included “superdude” and “all around scrub”

2. Which IDE(s) do you currently use for CFML development?
- CFEclipse (319)
- Dreamweaver (133)
- Eclipse (118)
- Homesite/CFStudio (91)
- Flexbuilder (82)
- Other – Aptana, Notepad++

3. What is your platform of choice for development?
- Windows (320)
- Mac (101)
- Linux (57)

4. Which features in your IDE do you most commonly/frequently use during development?
- Syntax highlighting of code (351)
- File Explorer (237)
- Help for CFTags/Functions (220)
- HTML editing (217)
- Source code control (205)
- CSS editing (160)
- Javascript editing (94)

5. How important are the following features for you in a CFML IDE?
Must Have:
- Syntax high-lighting of code (288)
- HTML editing (237)
- CSS editing (210)
- Javascript editing (199)
- Help for CFTags/Functions (193)
- Source code control (185)

Very Important:
- Integrated debugger (124)
- Framework Support (121)
- Intelisense on CFCs (114)

Useful:
- Integrated CFC explorer (161)
- Integrated log viewer (146)
- Integrated CRUD wizard (126)

Nice To Have:
- Integrated RDS data explorer (104)
- Customizable code coloring (83)
- Simplified Flex/Air development (71)

Unnecessary:
- Integrated CRUD wizard (71)
- Integrated RDS data explorer (50)
- Simplified Flex/Air development (31)

6. What in your opinion would be the right price range for CFML IDE?
- Under $100 (138)
- $100-500 (124)
- Free (109)

7. What features would you like to see added as one click install to an CFML IDE?
- Source control (294)
- XML tools (240)
- Documentation generation tools (220)
- Diff / compare tools (216)
- Unit testing tools (203)
- Other: “The ability to harness the magical powers of the internet.”

Still disappointed in the low number of results.  According to this recent article in Infoworld…

Adobe officials cited analyst estimates of 400,000 developers using ColdFusion

So 400 results seems a tad low.  So either people just ignored the survey, or there is a huge number of ColdFusion developers that don’t know about my blog :)  I’d love to know what kind of results Adobe got on their IDE survey.

The recent web development survey has wrapped up with some interesting results.  Eclipse barely edges out Dreamweaver – 25% vs. 21%.  Pretty graphs!

The ‘Open’ CFML Survey has been up for about a week. As promised here is the first round of results:

Results are available in both PDF and Excel:

• PDF: cfml-ide-report-041708
• Excel: cfml-ide-report-041708

Both these are just a dump of the data – no pretty graphs. I’m going to try and go through some of this data and summarize it a bit in a more readable format (hopefully I can get to this over the weekend)

I did dump the HTML output (with pretty graphs) into a PDF as well.

• PDF (with graphs): cfml-ide-report-041708a

This is a bit nicer to look at but you can’t drill down into the ‘other’ replies, etc.