Adobe Pushes Coldfusion Users to Convert to Flex

I just received my final evaluation forms from MAX 2008. With the exception of one person who “Fell asleep during presentation. It was offensive.”, the comments were mostly positive. There was, however, an interesting undercurrent…

The talk – Event-Driven Programming in ColdFusion – shows how to apply the same style of programming that is common in Flex to your server-side CFML code. Consequently, it uses several examples from Flex to set the scene. The intent of the talk is two-fold: 1. to show folks who are new to Flex how to start practicing that style of programming, by way of preparation for Flex; 2. to show folks who are alreday using Flex how to leverage the same style in CFML, making it less jarring to switch back and forth between client and server code.

Several comments complained about the Flex content in the talk. They complained that there was “Too much Flex” and that they had come to see a CF talk, not a Flex talk, and that Adobe was pushing Flex too much.

It’s certainly true that Adobe is pushing Flex very hard and is encouraging CFers to learn Flex. There were several talks about connecting Flex and ColdFusion – and some of the “futures” we were shown also focused on the smooth integration between Flex and ColdFusion even as far as the tooling goes (Bolt was shown creating a Flex-enabled service layer from a database schema).

When I’ve asked attendees at BACFUG about topics, they’ve often asked for more Flex-related topics so I’m a bit puzzled by the negative comments about Flex content in my talk at MAX.

If you started finding more Flex content at your ColdFusion conferences in 2009, how would you feel about that? In 2008, cf.Objective() had three main tracks, one of which was Flex/AIR/AJAX, and two “minor” tracks. CFUNITED 2008 had 13 sessions that covered Flex, either directly or peripherally.

In 2009, cf.Objective() has four main tracks and one of those is mainly Flex/AIR (with a little AJAX) so the Flex content is going up slightly. Is that a good thing or a bad thing for you?

As a hypothetical question, how do you feel about CFUNITED? Should it stay with about 20% of its sessions covering Flex? Should it decrease that and stay mainstream CFML? Should it increase that and offer more Flex content for CFers? Perhaps even enough Flex content to attract Flex developers too (and then expose them to CFML)?

I’m curious how CFers at large feel about Flex and Adobe’s promotion of it?

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Topics: Ajax, ColdFusion, Database, Programming