Wow, I’m surprised by the poll results… I guess they must be skewed a bit by the fact that people who read cf related blogs have probably been working with it a bit longer. If you were able to poll a cross-section of all people working with CF, the distribution would likely be rather different.
I started to use Cold Fusion when it came free with O’reilly WebSite Pro before it used ISAPI all CGI-BIN with template=****.dbm Back in 6/96 oh they were the day!
And of course I was still a user after 11/98 with Version 4 when it became ColdFusion
June or July of 1998; right after I told my new boss I had some light experience with Cold Fusion. Truth was I had never heard of it That was a long weekend!
It’s been my bread and butter as well for most of the time since!
I started like 6 or 7 years ago with CF6. However this looks strange – does it actually mean 58% of the developers use it from when it first came out and 3% only started using it the last year?
I haven’t done CF regularly for about 3 years now (finally was able to change my career path into Java), but I started in the Summer of 98.
One of the trends which might be a concern is that in this small sample, it seems like there aren’t many new developers picking up CF. It’s mostly people who have been doing it for awhile.
A colleague ran across CF 1.5 in 1998(?) at a trade show while we were evaluating products to help us publish performance data on an intranet site.
For the next five years, my use of CF was mostly limited to CFQUERY and some HTML tables. But in 2003, after the WCOM bust, and several months without a paycheck, my CF experience gave me a job when I really needed it.
And it’s been putting a paycheck in the bank ever since.
One note, I’ve got some new developers at my office as well as older developers, but I’m the only one that was able to vote because this appears to be only accepting unique IP addresses.
That means only one out of 5 developers in my office can vote unless they all go home to do it which I think we know how wonderful developer memory is.
I’m about 6 years in myself, but can’t believe this really reflects the overall community. There have to be a lot more less-than-5-year folks or we’re in trouble. Gotta agree with ‘ike’ above, probably reflects the bloggers/blog readers more than cf users at large.
I’ll be interested to see what it says when you’ve had 2,500 or 25,000 responses. Did you post this in the adobe Cf ‘getting started’ group, and other places cf noobs might be lurking?
There are a lot of CF developers that, for one reason or another, are not that active in the community. Most of those (at least in my experience) are, however, devs that have been at it for more than 5-6 years.
I am trying to get more people interested, but it is difficult, especially with that initial price tag and the lack of hosting.
I have been coding CF since 1999. I have worked with some other stuff or the years (most notably Java), but CF is what has gotten me the vast majority of my pay increases and keeps me most active. Granted the number of hits on a job board are almost always going to be far fewer than say Java or .NET, but those developers are almost much more plentiful too. These are the programming languages that are easier to outsource as well. I’m not knocking those languages, they are very good in their own right, but I’m glad I have 10+ years now in CF development.
I’m just starting my 12th year as a CF developer. It’s been my bread and butter all these years and I still love it.
I don’t see long enough to miss CFStudio in the list.
I started back in 2000 with CF4. “Why do all these tags start with ‘cf’?”
52% + 8 years so far. Cool!
I just got around to clearing some old tech books out of the basement – Java 1.0 and ColdFusion 5 were among them
Cheers,
David
with my vote for “8+” i see 55% now there
I think the nice thing about this is that it shows a 12% growth in CF development in the past two years, from the people who have responded thus far.
I think I installed ColdFusion from floppy disks.
Wow, I’m surprised by the poll results… I guess they must be skewed a bit by the fact that people who read cf related blogs have probably been working with it a bit longer. If you were able to poll a cross-section of all people working with CF, the distribution would likely be rather different.
I’ve twittered the URL too and posted in the adobe forums to try and reach a wider cross section for that very reason.
Would be interesting to see the split among the 8+ years votes. Personally, I have been doing CF since 12/96 constantly.
I started to use Cold Fusion when it came free with O’reilly WebSite Pro before it used ISAPI all CGI-BIN with template=****.dbm Back in 6/96 oh they were the day!
And of course I was still a user after 11/98 with Version 4 when it became ColdFusion
Started back in ‘99. Jeez, has it been 10 years already?!
June or July of 1998; right after I told my new boss I had some light experience with Cold Fusion. Truth was I had never heard of it
That was a long weekend!
It’s been my bread and butter as well for most of the time since!
Good old times of ColdFusion express
I started in early 1998 with CF 3. What a long strange trip its been.
I started like 6 or 7 years ago with CF6. However this looks strange – does it actually mean 58% of the developers use it from when it first came out and 3% only started using it the last year?
Back in 97 I was at a start up and they said we need a classifieds section to the site, here is the CF manual.
12 years. Damn.
I haven’t done CF regularly for about 3 years now (finally was able to change my career path into Java), but I started in the Summer of 98.
One of the trends which might be a concern is that in this small sample, it seems like there aren’t many new developers picking up CF. It’s mostly people who have been doing it for awhile.
A colleague ran across CF 1.5 in 1998(?) at a trade show while we were evaluating products to help us publish performance data on an intranet site.
For the next five years, my use of CF was mostly limited to CFQUERY and some HTML tables. But in 2003, after the WCOM bust, and several months without a paycheck, my CF experience gave me a job when I really needed it.
And it’s been putting a paycheck in the bank ever since.
8+! When moving to CFMX6 years ago, I remember that I had to replace a few *dbset* tags in some of my legacy apps.
One note, I’ve got some new developers at my office as well as older developers, but I’m the only one that was able to vote because this appears to be only accepting unique IP addresses.
That means only one out of 5 developers in my office can vote unless they all go home to do it which I think we know how wonderful developer memory is.
Mike.
Yes, I remember the .dbm extensions and the tags all started with DB instead of CF. You’re making me feel pretty old.
I vote but I can see the Results. I’m using IE7 and Firefox 3.
I’m about 6 years in myself, but can’t believe this really reflects the overall community. There have to be a lot more less-than-5-year folks or we’re in trouble. Gotta agree with ‘ike’ above, probably reflects the bloggers/blog readers more than cf users at large.
I’ll be interested to see what it says when you’ve had 2,500 or 25,000 responses. Did you post this in the adobe Cf ‘getting started’ group, and other places cf noobs might be lurking?
@Mike Kelp – eeeks, hadn’t noticed that, relaxed the config so you should be fine now from the same IP.
There are a lot of CF developers that, for one reason or another, are not that active in the community. Most of those (at least in my experience) are, however, devs that have been at it for more than 5-6 years.
I am trying to get more people interested, but it is difficult, especially with that initial price tag and the lack of hosting.
I have been coding CF since 1999. I have worked with some other stuff or the years (most notably Java), but CF is what has gotten me the vast majority of my pay increases and keeps me most active. Granted the number of hits on a job board are almost always going to be far fewer than say Java or .NET, but those developers are almost much more plentiful too. These are the programming languages that are easier to outsource as well. I’m not knocking those languages, they are very good in their own right, but I’m glad I have 10+ years now in CF development.