Passing the torch

February 11, 2011 · 7 Comments

By now, many of you will have seen Adam Lehman's blog post about changes in ColdFusion's product management. A few people have said this spells doom for ColdFusion. Already Adobe's Community Professionals and Community Champions have piled in on this and voiced their support for Adam - and decried all such concerns.

Reality check folks: ColdFusion has had a number of Product Managers over the years and it's never been a cause for concern. Adam has been one of the most passionate champions for the product that we've seen in a long time and his efforts should be praised.

When Adobe bought Macromedia, my role as architect was eliminated and one of the roles I discussed with management was ColdFusion Product Manager. The travel was the killer. I would have loved the job - just as Adam has loved the job, despite the drain on his personal life with all those trips to Bangalore.

Let's be clear here: ColdFusion development went to India years ago and that team has done us all proud! CF8 and CF9 are two of the most significant releases in the history of ColdFusion. Hemant and his team are very passionate about what they do. We've seen massive improvements in the product over the last couple of releases and CF X should be another milestone release (even if it takes a "bit longer" than usual).

The CFML community is a very tight knit and relatively small one. We should be supportive and inclusive. Let's not see infighting reduce the community. Whether you're an ACP / ACC or not, you're passionate about CFML and we all want to see it succeed. Let's all wish Adam (and Alison) success in their new roles and welcome Tridib and his team as the new shepherds of ColdFusion, just as we've welcomed various other product management folks in the past! Let's show them what the CFML community is all about!

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Tags: coldfusion

7 responses so far ↓

1 Jason Fisher // Feb 12, 2011 at 5:32 AM

Amen, Sean, amen. And, as always, thanks for the background "from the inside".
2 Jake Munson // Feb 12, 2011 at 7:25 AM

Personally I am glad to see ColdFusion finally get out from under the shadow of Flash. It has been obvious that for the last few years Flash has stolen resources from ColdFusion. Adam even said as much in his post. I have always wondered why Adobe didn't put ColdFusion and Flash on the same level as brothers, instead of treating ColdFusion like small little stepchild. I am glad to hear that Adobe is finally elevating ColdFusion to a proper product that deserves more resources and love within the company.
3 Mark Fuqua // Feb 12, 2011 at 11:05 AM

Well said. Can't wait for ColdFusion X, though personally I would rather it be called ColdFusion 10...Seems like X had its run with MX.

Your well reasoned, levelheaded responses to these ColdFusion "disasters", both here on the internet and on various forums, are all the more impressive as a member of Railo...you never seem eager to score points at Adobe's expense and that is admirable.
4 Tom Chiverton // Feb 14, 2011 at 4:59 AM

I'm more excited to have it confirmed some CFX details will be announced at SOTR next month !
5 Henry // Feb 14, 2011 at 11:13 AM

@Mark agree, and there's ColdFusion Extension (CFX) tags
6 Sean Corfield // Feb 14, 2011 at 10:14 PM

@Henry, in this day and age, with all the fuss that's going to be made around ColdFusion X, I don't think anyone's going to confuse CF X with CFX :)
7 Peter Boughton // Feb 20, 2011 at 10:22 AM

Actually, I wouldn't be surprised to see a bit of confusion over CFX and CFX - since it can be with CFX that upgrade issues sometimes occur, and switching to CFX is just as likely to cause CFX issues as with previous upgrades. At the very least there'll be occasional CFX ambiguity. (There's plenty of people who don't pay attention to blogging but might still pop onto cf-talk to get help when they have problems, either with CFX or CFX).

Anyway, doesn't really matter - so long as they don't start with a silly X2,X3,X4 for subsequent versions! I find it insulting when software companies imply their users can't count past the end of their hands. :P

And nice to hear that the Adobe keynote might actually be interesting for non-Flash users this time ... only X days and XV hours to go! :)

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