$*^%! Developers Don't Care About The Total Cost Of Ownership
Posted by Mike Brunt at 9:15 AM
17 comments - Categories:
Terry Ryan, just posted an open letter to the development community about ColdFusion. I felt compelled to comment on it and wanted to repost that here...
"Thanks Terry for putting together this "letter" and I would like to add a couple of things. There is no doubt in my mind that the total cost of ownership (TCO) for ColdFusion applications is substantially less than most if not all other languages; the issue is that most developers do not care at all about that aspect. This is an issue because most of the criticism about ColdFusion comes from developers. Those who do assess TCO are the business managers and that is why, 15 years on, companies still buy ColdFusion and yes it is not free and yes it was not killed off by Microsoft, as was Netscape and many others. The reason, because it is a great language/framework or whatever term is used to describe it. My second point and another criticism often leveled at ColdFusion is that it does not scale, that is absolute and arrant nonsense and I speak from authority, having spent the past 11 years of my working life designing, engineering and deploying large ColdFusion applications around the world. On the weekend of the Indy500, 4 ColdFusion servers handled a peak traffic load of 48,500 concurrent users and did not "bat an eyelid" and I am not exaggerating, that is 48,500 concurrent users, I just want to repeat that. ColdFusion will survive and prosper because in a free market economy it is eminently marketable and exceptionally good."
Jason Dean wrote on 06/18/10 9:45 AM
Mike,I agree that in large organizations, like the one I work in, the developers don't really care about the TCO of the technology they use. In those cases what you say is absolutely true. But I, for one, want developers to get out of the mindset that ColdFusion(CFML) is only for big, enterprise businesses that care about things like TCO.
Many other the internet's most exciting websites are started in the garages and basements of very bright, young developers who do choose their technology based on their budget and do not consider TCO.
I think it is important to spread the message to those would be developers that even though ColdFusion costs money upfront, that for them it may be worth it in the long run.
Or even for the one-man shop who thinks that every penny needs to be pinched, they are the manager AND the developer. They certainly care about TCO, even if they don't really know that they care about it. We need to get the message to them as well.
A lot of the criticism CF gets is from lone-developers who think that the only good software is Free/Open Source software and that just isn't true. And while I believe they are entitled to chose whichever tools they like, I certainly think it is worthwhile to show them that ColdFusion is a good choice for many organizations, even if not for them, and that there is no good reason for them to dismiss it as a viable technology.