The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

biziclop · 2006-08-22 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
biziclop:
Anonymous:
biziclop:

How many websites do you build a day?

I don't build websites... I maintain and develop one large enterprise app that hosts many client's websites.

So how much does it count that you can build a page doing a simple query and displaying it in unacceptable format in 5 minutes, whereas doing the same in a normal language, with the environment already set up (we talk about maintenance, right?) can take as much as...20 minutes?

So in general, it takes you 4 times longer to code the same thing in a different language then it does in ColdFusion, therefore, I'm 4 times more productive.

No, you're not. You're just four times more arrogant and you are able to get some makshift, hack'n'slash website-like entity running four times faster. Funny, I've never ever been asked to do that. Have you?

On the other hand, I have to find and fix bugs in large pieces of unknown code (over 100k lines), refactor or optimize these apps and so on. (That means well over million lines if you are foolish enough to embed your code into your html files. Remember MVC?)

But I'm not saying do not use ColdFusion. Use it, be happy with it. It's good for me, because this way I'm sure I'll never have to work with your code. Few worse things are there in software maintenance than working with a coder who takes marketing bullshit and trendy TLA's for granted

codenator · 2006-08-22 Reply Admin

Anonymous:

Am I to understand that each O'+(A-Za-z) surname needs to have its own set of 23 occurrences of that line of code?

NOOOOoooooooo!!!!!

Does that mean 23 different insert statements?

Does that mean the name is stored in 23 different tables?

Can't wait to see that database *ahem* design

2006-08-22 Reply Admin

Anonymous:

I knwo alex anonymizes them, but he wouldn't convert it from CF into another language. It just doesn't translate easily. To my knowledge, there HAVE BEEN NO CF WTF's on this site.

Hello, I'm a Mac.

2006-08-22 Reply Admin

Well, you're familiar with the technical details of the system. No one else would ever be able to actually figure that out on their own.

2006-08-22 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
Saarus:
WTF is an impertive language? Is this some language used to direct perverted imps in some infernal machine?

Russ is some 13-year-old scriptkiddie who just read a coldfusion book and warez a copy of coldfusion server and is using/making-up suit buzzwords to sound intelligent

kinda like my captcha: shizzle

For your information, I have over 10 years of experience, and an MS in Computer Science. I know asm, C, C++, Java, Perl, and to a lesser extent many other programming languages. I just prefer working with ColdFusion. Maybe it's all that time I spent hacking C applications, and debugging bad pointer references, that I just prefer a language that makes my job easier and lets me focus on application architecture instead of the nitty gritty details.

2006-08-22 Reply Admin

Simple way to handle the Irish:

Private Function CleanForSQL(val As String) As String

CleanForSQL = Replace(val, "'", "''")

End Function

2006-08-22 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
Simple way to handle the Irish:

Private Function CleanForSQL(val As String) As String

CleanForSQL = Replace(val, "'", "''")

End Function

Visual basic syntax ... good god the goggles they do NOTHIN'

captcha: clueless ... fitting!

2006-08-22 Reply Admin

Jeez - 4 pages of platform war crap all due to this one comment. Yeah, the best way to fix this bug is to move your whole app to another platform. Thanks, Russ.

--YY

2006-08-22 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
Anonymous:

CF is mature, as in geriatric. PHP is mature - we have processed over a billion dollars in tax payments via PHP in the last two/three years. Apparently your definition of "app" is "a web form that submits into a database, and occasionally gets out of it" - no extensive business logic, no reliability, no error checking, no quality,

PHP has a ton of OO frameworks, we happen to have our own custom one, PHP is open source, PHP is actively supported, PHP doesn't cost an arm, leg and testicle to install, php has many free CMS systems

This explains why the IRS is so slow and inefficient.

dont' cofuse bad use of a language, with a bad language you imbecile

Anonymous:

Anonymous:

"BASIC is so simple that it allows people with very little programming knowledge to write bad code. But it also allows people with more programming knowledge focus more on application design, then on actually sitting there and escaping single quotes."

and yet you STILL have to call a function to escape quotes, just like EVERY. OTHER. LANGUAGE. PS: you can write query factories too that do all the for you in PHP, we have one in some of our apps

What does basic have to do with anything. We're talking about ColdFusion. Or is your ADD kicking in again? One more time, CF automatically escapes single quotes in queries. There are no functions that you need to call.

ever heard of an analogy? apparently not... my notion that you're 13 is reinforced again!
Make up your mind - either CF automatically escapes single quotes, or it doesn't... how about make up your mind! I've heard it both ways on here.. oh btw THAT'S NOT NECCESARILY DESIREABLE! but nevermind that - the programming language munging with your data automatically is just spiffy! absolutely spiffy - that means people who know less about things can use the language, and that's just spiffy. not

Anonymous:

Anonymous:

i'm sure we've seen CF wtf's - remember alex anonymizes them - or are you such a ColdFusion zealot that you ignore that fact.

I knwo alex anonymizes them, but he wouldn't convert it from CF into another language. It just doesn't translate easily. To my knowledge, there HAVE BEEN NO CF WTF's on this site.

to your knowledge, and based your assertion that "CF doesn't translate well"

guess what nimrod? i've PORTED CF apps to PHP apps! Translation is trivial!

rev · 2006-08-22 Reply Admin

Anonymous:

To my knowledge, there HAVE BEEN NO CF WTF's on this site.

There haven't been any lisp WTFs either. Clearly it's a suitable language for web development.

2006-08-22 Reply Admin

or everyone should stop using the crap php is, the crap cf is, the crap jsp is, the crap perl is...

and use rails... and let it do /everything/ for you. :-D

captcha: billgates
WTF!

2006-08-22 Reply Admin

All stored procedures should be in the series of DDL scripts that create the database, makes version control a snap. Using them for all queries is not worth the inflexibility and duplication it creates in the rest of the code. With a good object relational mapping layer in the application (ActiveRecord, Hibernate, etc.), most of that code is redundnant. Using stored procedures to occaisonally to perform expensive set based operations in the database is worth it...and finally- I have seen plenty of stored procedures that are vulnerable to SQL injection attacks- particularly those involved in ad hoc queries...

2006-08-22 Reply Admin

biziclop:
Anonymous:
biziclop:
Anonymous:
biziclop:

How many websites do you build a day?

I don't build websites... I maintain and develop one large enterprise app that hosts many client's websites.

So how much does it count that you can build a page doing a simple query and displaying it in unacceptable format in 5 minutes, whereas doing the same in a normal language, with the environment already set up (we talk about maintenance, right?) can take as much as...20 minutes?

So in general, it takes you 4 times longer to code the same thing in a different language then it does in ColdFusion, therefore, I'm 4 times more productive.

No, you're not. You're just four times more arrogant and you are able to get some makshift, hack'n'slash website-like entity running four times faster. Funny, I've never ever been asked to do that. Have you?

On the other hand, I have to find and fix bugs in large pieces of unknown code (over 100k lines), refactor or optimize these apps and so on. (That means well over million lines if you are foolish enough to embed your code into your html files. Remember MVC?)

But I'm not saying do not use ColdFusion. Use it, be happy with it. It's good for me, because this way I'm sure I'll never have to work with your code. Few worse things are there in software maintenance than working with a coder who takes marketing bullshit and trendy TLA's for granted

We do use MVC, and our code is very easy to follow and debug. We also use OOP and separate layers for data and business logic.

I can't say the same about ASP(.NET).

The point is, ColdFusion makes your life easier, I don't know why you have 100k lines in one file, but obviously your app is not well designed. I've never had a need to have a large CF file other then some CFC in our data layer.

smbell · 2006-08-22 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
Anonymous:
5 seconds of searching...

http://thedailywtf.com/forums/thread/47218.aspx

There may be others but I'm lazy.

Personally, I find ColdFusion annoying to even look at. Give me something that vaguely resembles C any day (be it JSP, ASP.NET or PHP). Making markup behave like a programming language is only good for the people that happen to know only HTML, but that is just my opinion.

Of course, any remotely successful language these days *can* be used to make a successful site. And an induhvidial will end up on this site regardless of the language they use.

Ok, so you've found one from over a year ago.

My point is coldfusion is better suited for web development simply because it is a tag based language. It's much easier to write and read when you mix it with html.

Other languages force you to use some weird syntax in order to output html, but coldfusion lives with it very happily. It's much more readable, and in the end, isn't that what counts?

In that case I would like to point to a current CF WTF here

2006-08-22 Reply Admin

Anonymous:

I never said that it automatically prevents SQL injection, but it does automatically escape single quotes.

Although your example is one of the right ways to prevent sql injection, there are many more.

<cfargument name="id" type="numeric">

and
<cfquery>

select *

from table

where id = #val(id)#

</cfquery>

are 2 other ways, and neither of them prevents you from caching the query.

So stop shooting off your mouth when you don't know any better.

Well, you're not exactly stopping *script injection* with your method, so you've got that to worry about. To write secure web applications, you need to validate all input to be sure it's of the proper type and in-range, escape scripting characters (replacing with HTML entities or codes), and use some method of SQL injection prevention (escaping quotes, etc).

And you also really need to escape output before it is rendered into HTML, just in case you or another developer missed validating/escaping input somewhere. Of course you must add logic to prevent double-escaping, or allowing only those HTML codes you want to allow while excliding <SCRIPT> and <OBJECT> tags, for example.

ColdFusion does almost none of that automatically; few "off the shelf" escaping functions that I've seen handle that correctly for every business case. The solution is to write your own, or modify a freely available function.

CAPTCHA: chocobot

codenator · 2006-08-22 Reply Admin

Anonymous:

smbell:

This is why, IMO, all programmers should have to start with assymbly as their first language. They can then graduate up to higher level languages.

If you understand the way the machine works, you understand the code you are writing. For example, take the following Java code.

int x = 2; int x = x++ + 3; System.out.println(x);

If you understand what happens under the covers you won't be surprised when it prints out 5 instead of 6.

Agreed (except for the declaring x twice part).

Hilarious.

Agreed. All good programmers know assembly!! let another flame war begin...

biziclop · 2006-08-22 Reply Admin

rev:
Anonymous:

To my knowledge, there HAVE BEEN NO CF WTF's on this site.

There haven't been any lisp WTFs either. Clearly it's a suitable language for web development.

Haha, what a great fun we miss. Alex, we demand more Lisp wtf's. ML is also welcome.

2006-08-22 Reply Admin

Anonymous:

Ok, so you've found one from over a year ago.

you did say ever your arrogant ass. that MS in CS doesn't mean you're intelligent, it just means you can read. I know plenty of people with their degrees in CS who are absolutely brainless imbeciles who couldn't code a good application to save their life - I inherited a 200k+line php codebases from one!

Anonymous:

My point is coldfusion is better suited for web development simply because it is a tag based language. It's much easier to write and read when you mix it with html.

PHP can be easily mixed in with HTML as well.. why do you think all code-only php pages start and end with < ? and ? > respectively?

You _can_ mix them, I highly recommend you avoid it and if I was teaching a web development class I would mark off points any anyone who did.

Business logic and interface should NEVER be mixed for the sake of maintainability( and sanity).

Infact when I got where I am at our frameworks display code was mixed html/php, I made a fork of the framework with my own lightweight templating system and various other tweaks I wanted.

Occasionally it makes the code harder to understand (when doing complex nested tables), but in general it produces much more clean, easy to maintain, easy to debug, code.

Anonymous:

Other languages force you to use some weird syntax in order to output html, but coldfusion lives with it very happily. It's much more readable, and in the end, isn't that what counts?

um.....

PHP:

<html><head><title>You're stupid</title></head><body>
PHP Says: < ?= $_GET['message'] ? >
</body></html>

you could make that page say anything you want via the get var message - for example foopage.php?message=You're+a+facking+moron

mratzloff · 2006-08-22 Reply Admin

GrandmasterB:
ASP & PHP
I can develop apps 20 times faster in either than in Cold Fusion

'Course, I've never used Cold Fusion.

Anonymous:
hehe anonymous doesn't realize ColdFusion the web application shit is just as functional as the other ColdFusion

ColdFusion is a clusterfuck of shit with no redeeming value what-so-ever
if you want to use java server pages, use java server pages, not java-server-pages-lite (aka Coldfusion)

either way - JSP and CFM are 100% lossage

People who post like this (about any language), please stop. You're making my brain hurt. If you disagree, please know what you're talking about instead of regurgitating flamebait opinions you heard on Usenet six years ago. Otherwise, feel free to deny us the pleasure of reading your witty commentary.

Anonymous:
I know many instances of SQL injections via strings *cough*lazy PHP programmers who don't use mysql_escape_string*cough* - however I am not allowed to show you the code snippets

In PHP (or any language, really), you should be using a database abstraction layer with parameterized queries, not functions like mysql_escape_string(). PHP even has one built in: PDO.

Anyway, I'm not a big fan of ColdFusion. Among the things I dislike:

No concept of interfaces (as in, "class A implements B")
Fairly verbose syntax
At the same time, an extremely limiting syntax (for example, dynamic object creation can be a pain--SetVariable() is deprecated but there is at least one statement you literally cannot do without it)
Can't execute a nested query. Okay, this is a personal one, but sometimes when I was mocking up something, creating a very simple one-time use script, or prototyping something, I would have preferred to create some nested queries so I don't have to write a giant join or go through the (in ColdFusion) arduous task of creating a Struct object and populating it, then iterating over it in a loop. Sure, it's O(N**2), but it's not like it's production code.
An entirely separate syntax (CFScript). It's like suddenly switching over to ActionScript in Python. It makes it seem like CFML isn't a complete solution.

IceFreak2000 · 2006-08-22 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
John Bigboote:
Anonymous:

I dont' remember asking for a gridview. I asked for a simple output with to separate the lines.

<asp:SqlDataSource ID="SqlDataSource1" runat="server" ConnectionString="<%$ ConnectionStrings:SqlExpressConnString %>" ProviderName="<%$ ConnectionStrings:SqlExpressConnString.ProviderName %>" SelectCommand="SELECT [RoleId], [RoleName] FROM [vw_aspnet_Roles]"></asp:SqlDataSource>
 <asp:DataList ID="DataList1" runat="server" DataSourceID="SqlDataSource1">
 <ItemTemplate><%# Eval("RoleId") %> -- <%# Eval("RoleName") %> 
 </ItemTemplate>
 </asp:DataList>

And I'm having doubts as to the execution speed too.

You should really stop doubting things that you clearly don't understand.

The googles... they do nothing!!!

Seriously, that's a lot of special characters jus tto print out a couple of lines from the db.

Damn, you really are an obnoxious troll aren't you? Why exactly are ASP.NET tags any more 'special' than your beloved CFML tags? And if you can't see how powerful ASP.NET is from that code snippet (clue: there are both databinding and evaluation constructs in there), then I pity you.

2006-08-22 Reply Admin

We do use MVC, and our code is very easy to follow and debug. We also use OOP and separate layers for data and business logic.

I can't say the same about ASP(.NET).

why? have you ever actually used it?

biziclop · 2006-08-22 Reply Admin

Anonymous:

Other languages force you to use some weird syntax in order to output html, but coldfusion lives with it very happily. It's much more readable, and in the end, isn't that what counts?

It's called MVC, dude, yet another TLA.

Scrolling through 500 times 20k of html to find 3 lines of buggy code is not what I call readability. This must be my fault, however.

2006-08-22 Reply Admin

mratzloff:
In PHP (or any language, really), you should be using a database abstraction layer with parameterized queries, not functions like mysql_escape_string(). PHP even has one built in: PDO.

you _could_ be using a db abstraction layer with parameterized queries - if you can afford the additional overhead and have any chance of possibly switching db server type. using mysql_escape_string directly is less overhead

2006-08-22 Reply Admin

biziclop:
Anonymous:

Other languages force you to use some weird syntax in order to output html, but coldfusion lives with it very happily. It's much more readable, and in the end, isn't that what counts?

It's called MVC, dude, yet another TLA.

Scrolling through 500 times 20k of html to find 3 lines of buggy code is not what I call readability. This must be my fault, however.

if we're thinking of the same MVC - I HATE IT one of our new programmers came in and designed a new framework using MVC.. and it's a freaking ton of bricks just to get a little application up and running your "hello world" page it in.. it's massive lossage that I refuse to use (hence my fork of our old framework with my customizations)

creating 5 different classes just to display one page and having to do all kinds of funky inserts into a "MVC tree" that spans multiple tables is not my idea of usability

2006-08-22 Reply Admin

Russ:

Also dont' forget, one of the largest sites in the world, myspace, is built on ColdFusion.

Is that why MySpace is so horribly slow, hard to use, and an all around shitty website?

God that website sucks hard. As someone else said, I wouldn't use that site as a promotional tool for ColdFusion.

2006-08-22 Reply Admin

IceFreak2000:
Anonymous:
John Bigboote:
Anonymous:

I dont' remember asking for a gridview. I asked for a simple output with to separate the lines.

<asp:SqlDataSource ID="SqlDataSource1" runat="server" ConnectionString="<%$ ConnectionStrings:SqlExpressConnString %>" ProviderName="<%$ ConnectionStrings:SqlExpressConnString.ProviderName %>" SelectCommand="SELECT [RoleId], [RoleName] FROM [vw_aspnet_Roles]"></asp:SqlDataSource>
 <asp:DataList ID="DataList1" runat="server" DataSourceID="SqlDataSource1">
 <ItemTemplate><%# Eval("RoleId") %> -- <%# Eval("RoleName") %> 
 </ItemTemplate>
 </asp:DataList>

And I'm having doubts as to the execution speed too.

You should really stop doubting things that you clearly don't understand.

The googles... they do nothing!!!

Seriously, that's a lot of special characters jus tto print out a couple of lines from the db.

Damn, you really are an obnoxious troll aren't you? Why exactly are ASP.NET tags any more 'special' than your beloved CFML tags? And if you can't see how powerful ASP.NET is from that code snippet (clue: there are both databinding and evaluation constructs in there), then I pity you.

Ooohh.. databinding and evaluationg constructs... that sounds like a bunch of MS bullshit.

For one thing, my code snippet is 192 characters and yours is 476 characters, or about 2.5 times larger.

My code is a lot easier to read, and it probably runs faster too. I would run some tests, but that would require installing ASP.NET, which would required installing IIS, and I have enough security bugs on my machine just from running windows.

2006-08-22 Reply Admin

John Bigboote:
Anonymous:

so of course the fix was to put:

if (sLogin == "O'Reily") sLogin = "O''Reily";
if (sLogin == "Robert O'Hare") sLogin = "Robert O''Hare";

maybe we could create a funcion to look for "O'" and replace it with "O''"!!!

done!

D'oh!

Don't you mean :

D''oh!

mratzloff · 2006-08-22 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
mratzloff:
In PHP (or any language, really), you should be using a database abstraction layer with parameterized queries, not functions like mysql_escape_string(). PHP even has one built in: PDO.

you _could_ be using a db abstraction layer with parameterized queries - if you can afford the additional overhead and have any chance of possibly switching db server type. using mysql_escape_string directly is less overhead

With some exceptions, any overhead is negligible, especially when you factor in the "cost" of bandwidth, etc.

2006-08-22 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
Russ:

Also dont' forget, one of the largest sites in the world, myspace, is built on ColdFusion.

Is that why MySpace is so horribly slow, hard to use, and an all around shitty website?

God that website sucks hard. As someone else said, I wouldn't use that site as a promotional tool for ColdFusion.

Well of course it sucks hard now... they're trying to convert it to ASP.NET.

smbell · 2006-08-22 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
biziclop:
Anonymous:

Other languages force you to use some weird syntax in order to output html, but coldfusion lives with it very happily. It's much more readable, and in the end, isn't that what counts?

It's called MVC, dude, yet another TLA.

Scrolling through 500 times 20k of html to find 3 lines of buggy code is not what I call readability. This must be my fault, however.

if we're thinking of the same MVC - I HATE IT one of our new programmers came in and designed a new framework using MVC.. and it's a freaking ton of bricks just to get a little application up and running your "hello world" page it in.. it's massive lossage that I refuse to use (hence my fork of our old framework with my customizations)

creating 5 different classes just to display one page and having to do all kinds of funky inserts into a "MVC tree" that spans multiple tables is not my idea of usability

This sounds like MVC gone really bad. IMO the ideal solution is one in which Web Designers can muss with the html and css to get the pixel perfect view, while the backend guys can mess with all the business logic. Being able to bundle pieces into reusable components is also nice.

I like the way JSF is heading. I think my prefered framework is Tapestry, although I don't think it'll be ready for production till version 5 (mainly due to lack of backward compatability). Overall you need to chose the tool that fits the problem.

There is no golden hammer

2006-08-22 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
Anonymous:
Russ:

Also dont' forget, one of the largest sites in the world, myspace, is built on ColdFusion.

Is that why MySpace is so horribly slow, hard to use, and an all around shitty website?

God that website sucks hard. As someone else said, I wouldn't use that site as a promotional tool for ColdFusion.

Well of course it sucks hard now... they're trying to convert it to ASP.NET.

why would they do that if ColdFusion is so fricking great?

obediah · 2006-08-22 Reply Admin

Anonymous:

Lets see... How about a small example. Get a list of users from the database and output firstname, lastname and username. Here is the code in CF
<cfquery name="qryUsers" datasource="#request.mydsn#">
select firstname, lastname, username from users
</cfquery>
<cfoutput query="#qryUsers#">#firstName# #lastName# #userName# </cfoutput>

Now lets see how long and convoluted a similar example in php/asp is going to be.

With perl/Mason and abusing our hardware with OO goodness.

% foreach ( @{Account->query} ) {
<% $_->getFullName %> <% $_->getUsername %> 
% }

getFullName is a just a convenience function to merge first and last names into a string.
I also fixed your break tag for you.

Once you get past the ugliness, perl is just too much fun.

mratzloff · 2006-08-22 Reply Admin

Russ:
Well of course it sucks hard now... they're trying to convert it to ASP.NET.

Stop. Stop stop stop. Stop responding to him.

2006-08-22 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
Anonymous:
Anonymous:
Russ:

Also dont' forget, one of the largest sites in the world, myspace, is built on ColdFusion.

Is that why MySpace is so horribly slow, hard to use, and an all around shitty website?

God that website sucks hard. As someone else said, I wouldn't use that site as a promotional tool for ColdFusion.

Well of course it sucks hard now... they're trying to convert it to ASP.NET.

Well, 1. they're idiots, and 2. they probably don't want to spend the money on the CF licenses for each server to run their crappy code. They're also using a version of CF that's over 2 years old.

why would they do that if ColdFusion is so fricking great?

2006-08-22 Reply Admin

"It has not much use outside the web world"... Or in it

Name one... c#, java, ROR.. Read some good things about turbo gears in last months VSJ... need any more?
I think that these not only come close to, but surpass cold fusion in every possible way.

Captcha: paula

2006-08-22 Reply Admin

Anonymous:

"It has not much use outside the web world"... Or in it

Name one... c#, java, ROR.. Read some good things about turbo gears in last months VSJ... need any more?
I think that these not only come close to, but surpass cold fusion in every possible way.

Captcha: paula

... Oh theres a quote button... mayby there shouldnt be a "reply" button at the top of every post.

biziclop · 2006-08-22 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
biziclop:
Anonymous:

Other languages force you to use some weird syntax in order to output html, but coldfusion lives with it very happily. It's much more readable, and in the end, isn't that what counts?

It's called MVC, dude, yet another TLA.

Scrolling through 500 times 20k of html to find 3 lines of buggy code is not what I call readability. This must be my fault, however.

if we're thinking of the same MVC - I HATE IT one of our new programmers came in and designed a new framework using MVC.. and it's a freaking ton of bricks just to get a little application up and running your "hello world" page it in.. it's massive lossage that I refuse to use (hence my fork of our old framework with my customizations)

creating 5 different classes just to display one page and having to do all kinds of funky inserts into a "MVC tree" that spans multiple tables is not my idea of usability

Hating MVC is an obvious sign you've never ever seen it actually working.

Nobody forces you to use 5 classes per page. No matter how much the initial overhead may seem with a single-page "app" (we've agreed nobody needs those on a regular basis, haven't we?) it diminishes when you have many pages. Code can be broken down to readable pieces that can be traversed with one single click in sensible IDE's, you have automatic refactoring tools and so on.

But really, I'm not tryinh to convince you that you're wrong. Do what you want. Don't be surprised though if you're laughed at by anyone outside the CF "community". (I bet this increases cohesion of your community, so it might as well be beneficial for you.)

2006-08-22 Reply Admin

biziclop:
Anonymous:
biziclop:
Anonymous:

Other languages force you to use some weird syntax in order to output html, but coldfusion lives with it very happily. It's much more readable, and in the end, isn't that what counts?

It's called MVC, dude, yet another TLA.

Scrolling through 500 times 20k of html to find 3 lines of buggy code is not what I call readability. This must be my fault, however.

if we're thinking of the same MVC - I HATE IT one of our new programmers came in and designed a new framework using MVC.. and it's a freaking ton of bricks just to get a little application up and running your "hello world" page it in.. it's massive lossage that I refuse to use (hence my fork of our old framework with my customizations)

creating 5 different classes just to display one page and having to do all kinds of funky inserts into a "MVC tree" that spans multiple tables is not my idea of usability

Hating MVC is an obvious sign you've never ever seen it actually working.

Nobody forces you to use 5 classes per page. No matter how much the initial overhead may seem with a single-page "app" (we've agreed nobody needs those on a regular basis, haven't we?) it diminishes when you have many pages. Code can be broken down to readable pieces that can be traversed with one single click in sensible IDE's, you have automatic refactoring tools and so on.

But really, I'm not tryinh to convince you that you're wrong. Do what you want. Don't be surprised though if you're laughed at by anyone outside the CF "community". (I bet this increases cohesion of your community, so it might as well be beneficial for you.)

I think you're confused. I dont' think the person hating MVC uses CF. We use MVC in CF very happily and our code is very easy to read.

I love MVC, even though it's a pain to initially set up.

savar · 2006-08-22 Reply Admin

GoatCheez:

No, YOU'RE A TOWEL!!!

..all the way to the bank.

nice

2006-08-22 Reply Admin

Do you wanna get high? Don't forget to bring a towel.<script>

</script>

Bus Raker · 2006-08-22 Reply Admin

rev:
Anonymous:

To my knowledge, there HAVE BEEN NO CF WTF's on this site.

There haven't been any lisp WTFs either. Clearly it's a suitable language for web development.

That's really funny .... and I haven't read any good new novels in Latin recently either.

2006-08-22 Reply Admin

John Bigboote:
Anonymous:

Lets see... How about a small example. Get a list of users from the database and output firstname, lastname and username. Here is the code in CF
<cfquery name="qryUsers" datasource="#request.mydsn#">
select firstname, lastname, username from users
</cfquery>
<cfoutput query="#qryUsers#">#firstName# #lastName# #userName# </cfoutput>

Now lets see how long and convoluted a similar example in php/asp is going to be.


 <asp:GridView ID="GridView1" DataSourceID="SqlDataSource1" runat="server" />
 <asp:SqlDataSource ID="SqlDataSource1" runat="server" 
 SelectCommand="SELECT [au_id], [au_lname], [au_fname], [phone], [address], [city], [state], [zip], [contract] FROM [authors]"
 ConnectionString="<%$ ConnectionStrings:Pubs %>" />
 



How about you shut the hell up now?

And of course using the grid view gives you some really nice and quick ways to update/add/delete data with not muh more code than is present!

triso · 2006-08-22 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
...
I dance the captcha (foxtrot).

I wonder if Whiskey and Tango are in there too?

2006-08-22 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
DZ-Jay:

There are certainly other frameworks for developing web applications apart from ASP or PHP, and some of them focus on RAD, some of them even better, faster, and more robust and secure than your precious ColdFusion. But I most definitely wouldn't call ColdFusion a "Real Programming Language".

-dZ.

Name one.

And I didn't say it's a real programming language. I said it's a "Real Web Programming Language". It has not much use outside the web world, but in the web world it's one of the most robust, RAD platforms out there. Seriously. I dare you. Name one other programming language that even comes close to CF in terms of RAD.

Easy. Ruby on Rails

2006-08-22 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
ammoQ:
First, a very important message (some have made similar statements, but IMO not clear enough):

Forget escaping. Use parametrized queries. Always.

Some database systems (e.g. Oracle) will hate you, really really hate you, and let you feel that, if you execute thousands of queries that only differ in the literal values. This hurts in term of performance, especially for very simple queries (like querying a single row by the primary key). Reason: The overhead for doing a hard parse is more relevant if the actual execution is fast.

About Coldfusion: Using a proprietary language or tool (like ColdFusion, VB6, Delphi or Oracle Forms) inevitably leads you to a point where you have no other option than rewriting the whole project from scratch. Unless the project has a limited lifespan because of external circumstances, always use tools/languages that do not depend on the survival or goodwill of a single company. COBOL is really awfull, but you still get compilers for it.

yes, you should always use parameterized queries. Now, it might be true that eventually you'll have to rewrite the project from scratch, but I don't see how ColdFusion is the cause for it any more then having to write the language in ASP.NET or anything else.

Also dont' forget, one of the largest sites in the world, myspace, is built on ColdFusion.

... And filled with tossers

2006-08-22 Reply Admin

Personally, I haven't looked into Ruby yet, and although I've heard good things, I have doubts on whether it has half the functionality offered by ColdFusion.

Consider looking at Ruby on Rails. As far as rapid prototyping goes, it has some very slick looking abilities. I've only tried Rails once, and was impressed with it -- though at the time, I knew zero Ruby andthus had NO clue how to alter it to fit my wants, hehe.

Now, however, I've been coding a small bit in Ruby, and am more confident. Ruby itself is a VERY nice language, and Rails builds on that. I am sure that there are things that CF can do that Ruby on Rails can't... however, that doesn't mean that RoR isn't a good tool. =)

After trying to grok Struts, I'm even more impressed with Rails than I normally would be.

2006-08-22 Reply Admin

True data layer abstraction means that your application could knows nothing at all about the underlying data layer. Putting all your queries into several classes is certainly a way of organizing your data access code, but it is not a true abstraction. If the data layer were truly abstracted, then no changes would need to be made to any application code at all when a table name or structure changes.

Searching and replacing a table name in two files is better than searching and replacing a table name in 30 files. But if limiting the number of files that need to be edited when a table name changes is the definition of abstraction, then why not just dump all data access code into one file?

Unfortunately, no data abstraction library along the lines of Hibernate exists for ColdFusion, nor will such a library likely ever exist. If your application requires only simple database access (i.e. mostly simple SELECT statements with an occasional UPDATE), then ColdFusion will probably do the trick. But anything involving complicated business and transaction logic is probaby better handled with a different platform.

2006-08-22 Reply Admin

Hmm, 220 replies to something like this, I wonder how that could have happened.

... reads comments ...

Oh, I should have guessed. A programmer flame war.

lomaxx · 2006-08-22 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
Hmm, 220 replies to something like this, I wonder how that could have happened.

... *reads comments* ...

Oh, I should have guessed. A programmer flame war.

hehe so true... so much passion about things that don't really matter... geeks will be geeks...

Alexis de Torquemada · 2006-08-22 Reply Admin

Russ:
This explains why the IRS is so slow and inefficient.

The IRS has processed more than a billion tax dollars the last three years. Seems like you know as much about basic arithmetic as you do about web "programming".

Russ:
What does basic have to do with anything. We're talking about ColdFusion. Or is your ADD kicking in again? One more time, CF automatically escapes single quotes in queries.

It's BASIC to you, but yes, ColdFusion escapes single quotes in all queries wherever it's appropriate, no matter what. It obtains the necessary information of where the single quotes are actually intended to be part of a string and where not by measuring the ethereal waves that emanate from the developer's brain (or whatever else it is that resides in his skull). It also wipes the developer's butt after each bathroom session, and sends his better half a flower bouquet on Valentine's Day should he forget to do so.

In fact, CF is so simple and user-friendly that even the greatest fool can use it. And now don't you feel addressed!

Russ:
I knwo alex anonymizes them, but he wouldn't convert it from CF into another language. It just doesn't translate easily. To my knowledge, there HAVE BEEN NO CF WTF's on this site.

Others did find some, but that's probably only because they knew how to use the Search function. Braggarts!

Russ:
The point is, ColdFusion makes your life easier, I don't know why you have 100k lines in one file, but obviously your app is not well designed.

Nowhere did biziclop say that all of the code was in one file. Which clearly disproves Kazan's hypothesis that an MS in CS proves the presence of reading skills.

Russ:
Well, 1. they're idiots, and 2. they probably don't want to spend the money on the CF licenses for each server to run their crappy code. They're also using a version of CF that's over 2 years old.

Near the start of the thread, you tried to promote CF by noting that myspace uses it. Now you're saying that myspace actually switches to ASP.NET and that their code was "crappy" anyway. You're really one hell of a self-parody!

By now, everyone should have figured out that you don't need RAD so much as a LART treatment.

Poor Mr. O'Hare

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