I am generally technology agnostic, and pick the best tool for the job. When anyone tries to convince you of why to use this or that, it’s usually a personal preference.

What I have found is, Coldfusion is a productivity multiplier. It allows one developer to do the work of many people.

For me, Coldfusion is power with ease.

Like a few other technologies, Coldfusion has become like a swiss army knife for me.

I find myself going back to over and over, and often wonder if I’m getting lazy.

I don’t think I am.. here’s why:

From the start of any project; In design, prototyping, implementation, testing, launch and ongoing maintenance, ColdFusion has the quickest overall experience to get a deliverable out the door. It gets more done with less time and effort.

1) ColdFusion is the easiest and quickest to learn to get meaningful results.

Programming is a world where it’s easy to confuse activity with results. Configuring and setting up libraries, frameworks, etc., are in a lot of ways busy work, when they can largely be avoided with Coldfusion.

The time required to get up and running to the point of “Thinking” in ColdFusion is a matter of a few weeks. I dare say it’s as simple as Basic in the ease of use and the ability to understand what’s going on.

I have not found a quicker and more complete language to develop web applications in. If there is I’d love to work with it instead.

When superstar developers are not available to hire, you have to start with a beginner and teach them how to think and solve problems.

ColdFusion provides many advantages for new programmers to become value generating contributors, as well as seasoned developers to make large amounts of functionality very quickly. Yes, they aren’t as easy to find, but would you hire the cheapest PHP or ASP coder and be surprised with disappointing results?

2) ColdFusion provides the largest cost-savings when doing any type of web development.

The largest costs in most any projects are:

1) Labour 2) Equipment / Connectivity 3) Software

I have done plenty of PHP/ASP/Java (and still do when needed), but I see myself coming back to CF when I want to get something done fast, well and maybe even cheaper..

Coldfusion is the best bang for the buck.

I have seen that I save 60-75% in time by using ColdFusion on any project, doing it from scratch. Maybe it’s the projects I’ve worked on.

Being done, early, and often leaves me incredible amounts of time to test, and focus on the user experience to the point of it “just working” and leaving my clients gobsmacked.

There are few feelings for me better than empowering people with technology. Since Coldfusion allows me time to spend on that with most projects where budgets are tight, being able to deliver more value than for which I am paid leaves the hopper full of new work to be done.

I have never understood why PHP/ASP appear to be cheaper when they use 2 to 3 times more in programming time. They have their strengths as well and should be used where they provide distinct advantages. I do believe for 70 or 80% of projects, CF is probably the the best, if you can do it or know someone, or get someone trained.

3) ColdFusion is the quickest language to build web applications with.

I simply haven’t been able to find any language that has this much, ready to go, out of the box. I get weeks worth of work done in days.

As a result of costing less due to less code needing to be written, Coldfusion projects generally are under budget, and can handle scope creep easier.

Coldfusion is actively developed and compared to it’s competitors, probably has as many if not more new features added to it yearly. Since it was one of the first languages developed for web applications, I don’t feel it will fall out of favour any time soon. When Fortune 100 companies are using it, I think it’ll be around for most of my lifetime.

4) ColdFusion offers unmatched integration

With PHP and ASP, you often run into the issue of needing to purchase or configure many third party libraries to solve your problems beyond basic html pages and forms.

In ColdFusion, is unique in that it builds in many, many libraries that I would either have to buy, or install and figure out, included in the price of the server. These libraries work, simply, and consistently with a few lines of code in most cases.

AJAX, Flash forms, Javascript validation, Session management, Image manipulation, PDF generation, emailing capacities, reporting tools are just a few.

Have a look at the functions in the ColdFusion documentation to see how many features you’d use and find out how many of those are built into PHP/ASP. Chances are you’d be paying for a lot of time and libraries to get the same features in your web app because they take time and money to A) find b) integrate/implement and c) test.

The next generation technologies of Flex and Air are natively supported in ColdFusion, since they are all Adobe technologies, in such a way that PHP or ASP or Ruby can’t match. How convenient!

Since Coldfusion compiles to (and is) Java, deploying it in an enterprise environment, or having access to the Java libraries is a huge bonus. I’ve heard that Java scales okay..

The ability to do SOAP, .NET, WAP, COM, and most else that you could dream up out of the box or with little effort is invaluable when fiddling around with an idea or building a proof-of-concept to get approval.

5) Coldfusion has the lowest cost of ownership and implementation

The ColdFusion license is free if you use a third party software like Railo, etc., or $1200 from Adobe.

With ColdFusion generally needing 25 to 35% of the code to do the same thing as programmed in PHP/ASP, etc., that means you should be able to put at least double the demands on your existing equipment, if not more. Others may have different experiences, but that’s what I have generally found.

There is a great chart in the Adobe ColdFusion Evangelism Kit that outlines a cost comparison in great detail. If I can find a link I’ll update it here.

6) ColdFusion is the cheapest codebase to maintain and update.

Less code = Less Bugs = Less to fix = Less time fixing/testing

= More time to build value in new features.

Maybe ColdFusion does too much for non-CF folks to be imagine possible in one box. If so, it’s too bad. It is a pain to find Coldfusion developers sometimes, but not that impossible.

Hope that helps someone.

If not, I’m happy having my life made easier by ColdFusion and leaving people wondering how I do it.