For a while now I've been in a rut. I'm not really sure of the cause, but lately I just haven't had the passion I once had for writing code. The spark seemed to be gone. I really haven't had much of a desire to work on any of my side projects, and getting stuff done for clients sometimes seems like a chore. Maybe it's because we've mainly just been doing tedious bug fixes at work for a while and no new development, or maybe it's because I lost a couple of my side contracts since they're moving away from CF. It may just be a side effect of me getting some non-programming hobbies and focusing my time on something else. Whatever the reason, sitting in front of my computer when I'm not at work is not something that I've wanted to do lately. In fact, I've found myself coming up with excuses NOT to get on the computer. But, that all changed last night.

A couple of days ago I decided to dust off one of my old pet projects and start working on it again. This particular project is a custom Mach-II CMS that I was building for a client. The client knew about it and thought it would be nice to have, but they don't really need it so there's never been a big push to get it finished. It's just something that I worked on in my spare time and if it never got finished it was no big deal. About a year ago, I decided to shelve this project and go with Mura instead (no sense reinventing the wheel, right?). Well, that didn't work out so hot, and I really want this client on a CMS, so last night I fired up Subversion and pulled down my old Mach-II project.

This was the first time I've looked at Mach-II since I stopped working on this project a year ago. Imagine my surprise when within just a few minutes of looking through the code I started getting excited about this project. Almost instantly I was looking forward to doing some development again! I actually had to make myself turn off the computer and go to bed last night. It's been a long time since that has happened, and it's been a long time since I felt like that about writing some code. I don't know what it is, but something about working in Mach-II always excites me. Maybe it's because I'm still fairly new to Mach-II and I'm learning a lot while working with it, but I really enjoy working with Mach-II. So much so, that I even try to contribute to the wiki when I can. As funny as it sounds, what really set off this excitement was realizing that the first thing I need to do on this project is set up autowiring for ColdSpring in all of my listeners.

So, yeah, I'm in full geek mode again. :) Thanks Mach-II, this is going to be fun!

Are there any programming languages or frameworks that you work with that get you excited like this?

And Eric hits the nail right on the head! It doesn't matter if Mach-II inspires you; it matters that you are inspired.

For a small soapbox moment, instead of going off and creating a new open source project run by a solo developer. Look around the CFML ecosystem and see if there are projects that you love and use that need your help. Actually, ALL open source projects need your help. So team up and help your favorite open source project instead of trying to do it all yourself. We can do much more for the CFML community if we band together and then divide and conquer. We cannot do it as individuals!

CFML needs to be:
Got Apps?

Not:
Got (More) Frameworks?

There have been some lively discussions on Twitter today centered around the adoption of open source CFML engines in various types of businesses. I can’t speak to any kind of trends anywhere, but I wanted to share my experience with a project I was involved in last year that used Railo as the CMFL engine.

My brother, Andrew, is the head of the IT department for a firm that sells books and other supplies to school libraries all over the country. When he took over the position, he inherited a web site built on Java using the Struts framework. The original site had been in place for quite some time and the ownership decided it was time to refresh the site. The main issue (besides the outdated design) with the site was that it was so difficult to update. I’m not a Java developer by any stretch of the imagination, but from what I understand, even the simplest update required the site to be recompiled. The actual implementation of the site was fairly brittle as well, so new features were generally not even considered for fear of breaking something that was currently working.

Andrew had previously done some ColdFusion work with me on some of my other projects. He approached his management about contracting with me to help them replace their java web site with one built on CFML. During the initial requirements gathering and planning phases, the decision was made to use Railo as the CFML engine for the site. This was shortly after Railo went open source which appealed to them as they have several systems within the company that are open source. Cost was not a major concern (Railo being free vs the cost of a standard license of Adobe ColdFusion) but it was a consideration as this project did have a fixed budget. When we started the project, Adobe ColdFusion MX7 was the most current release. In several categories at the time, Railo’s performance was quite a bit better than Adobe ColdFusion’s. This has obviously changed in the interim, but that’s the way it was then. Anyway, all those factors and probably a few more I wasn’t privy to led to the decision to use Railo as the CFML engine for the site.

Our experience developing with Railo was very positive. We built the site using Mach-II, Transfer, ColdSpring using a PostgreSQL database backend. We had one little issue with Mach-II when we plugged in the Mach-II Dashboard module into our main config. Peter Farrell and I traced it down and found that it was due to a difference in how Railo parsed XML vs how Adobe ColdFusion did. I worked with the folks at Railo and they got the problem sorted out in one of the next releases.

The site went live the first of August, 2009. Between January 1 and August 1 of 2010, the site experienced a 562% increase in revenue generated when compared to the same time period of 2009 (the YTD time frame leading up to the new site going live). They’ve also seen a dramatic increase in the amount of traffic to the site since the new version went live (although I don’t have exact percentages at my fingertips to share). Just as importantly, in the months sice the new site went live, they have been able to add dozens of new features to the site–both publicly-available features as well as features for administrators and sales people that just would have been too difficult to try to weave into the previous java struts based application.

Finally, while this “success story” has Railo as one of its key components, the bigger issue in my mind is the fact that a formerly java-centric shop has converted to using CFML successfully to run their business and provide a better experience for their customers and employees.

Disclaimer: I’m not on either side of the Railo/OpenBD/Adobe CF argument. I’ve not had a client since that project that’s given me the option to use Railo so all of my work since then has been in Adobe CF but I certainly wouldn’t dismiss Railo straight away if there were an option to use it on a future project. The intent behind this blog post is simply to provide one real-world example of Railo being an entry point into CFML development, not to take either side of the Twitter discussions that have been going on today.

Sounds like an open source success story from all levels. We're glad that Mach-II helped in ways it can. Way to go Dan!