5 ms·

Who else came here thinking this was about Cold Fusion, the Markup Language from the 90s? I once met an 'Old Timer' at a Startup Interview here who had it in hi

Who else came here thinking this was about Cold Fusion, the Markup Language from the 90s? I once met an 'Old Timer' at a Startup Interview here who had it in his resume. He felt threatened by my mere presence and kept referring to me as 'You Millenials' lol. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ColdFusion_Markup_Language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ColdFusion_Markup_Language

harshaw 10y ago
erm, no, not when the source was scientificamerican.com
- PeCaN 10y ago
  The title would work just as well on TheDailyWTF.
frogfuzion 10y ago
You should seek to understand the importance of older technology and the problems it solved rather than judging the individual for feeling pride in knowing it. If more people did this we wouldn't be solving the same problems over and over again.
lostapathy 10y ago
Sadly there's more ColdFusion running around to this day than you'd like to think, managing more important data than it should be. It's frightening.
- frogfuzion 10y ago
  Why is that frightening as opposed to any other older web server code/api that is out there? Or even newer code for that matter?
  - lostapathy 10y ago
    All the ColdFusion code I've ran into still exists because it's too rotten of a mess to be replaced. It tends to be very procedural code with lots of "libraries" that rely on side-effects rather than abstraction. The kind of thing where nobody understands how core concerns (like security) work, they just "know" it seems to work. Except those in the know, know that it doesn't always work, but it's all too fragile to fix it, either. I know I've been extremely unlucky with the CF code I've had to deal with, but I've also never heard of anybody with a healthy CF codebase they aren't eager to replace.
    - bluetwo 10y ago
      I maintain a large codebase for an application that has been around for longer than a decade in CF. I love it. I have also, over the years, been brought in to rescue applications that have grown into giant messes. So I'm not saying what you are saying is incorrect, but it has less to do with the language, in my opinion, and more to do with what happens to large applications that get written by multiple teams of people over the years, as they adapt to changing customer demands. And, sometimes, by managers who don't understand code, the importance of documentation, or how to communicate and plan for business issues. Build an app in any web application today and try to maintain it for a decade.
      - lostapathy 10y ago
        I agree, it's not really the language's fault. I'm involved with more than one application that's over a decade old, so I understand what happens. My point is that a lot of the things still running around in ColdFusion aren't there because they're healthy, they're around because they are too sick to do anything else with. I've got too much personal experience with applications used by the government that I sure would not trust with my personal data! You know, things written before password hashing was standard practice ... and that still don't hash passwords.
    - ambicapter 10y ago
      Why would you want to replace a "healthy" codebase?
  - PeCaN 10y ago
    So there's run-of-the-mill old code that's accumulated a lot of cruft, is hard to get acquainted with, and can be tedious to work with. But it works, and doesn't get replaced. Then there's old code that barely worked when it was new and is held together by duct tape. Often it's written in something antiquated like VB6 or COBOL and is very troublesome to replace. (Not that all VB6 or COBOL code is bad, mind you, but as soon as you get out of their problem domain things go downhill fast.) Then there's ColdFusion. -- (In all seriousness, I'm sure there's good ColdFusion code out there, but the stuff I've seen is like a weird mish-mash of all the bad parts of PHP with all the bad parts of ORMs and all the bad parts of XSLT.)
    - lostapathy 10y ago
      This, exactly. It's like a case study in all the bad things that can go wrong when you mix government projects run by people who didn't know what they were doing with 10-15 years of neglect, but need to keep the software alive because it supports a critical government function but there's nowhere near the budget to rebuild it properly.
steverb 10y ago
I had CF on my resume for quite a while as well, although I took it off to reduce the number of recruiters calling me. Back in the age of classic ASP, Perl scripts and CGI scripts, Cold Fusion was a very decent technology choice. It was my introduction to a controller/view styled programming pattern (called Fusebox) back in 2000. Then they (Macromedia) got bought out by Adobe and the whole thing descended into weirdness and MS came out with .Net. Now get off my lawn you millenial! :-)
- sean_patel 10y ago
  > although I took it off to reduce the number of recruiters calling me. Why? If it was in demand due to scarcity, couldn't you have done freelance work at a ridiculously high hourly rate? I've come across another ol Indian dude (my Pop's age, we called him 'uncle') who was making a killing programming in some mainframe language called COBOL. Answer this and I'll get off your lawn LOL. ( He also made fun of my node.js and react.js and said "You young kids are always moving on to the next shiny thing")
  - flukus 10y ago
    That limits your career long term. You might make good money for a while, but the well will dry up and not many would hire someone that's been doing nothing but cold fusion for 20 years.
    - sean_patel 10y ago
      Didn't think of that. Thank you for the career advise. I'm glad you highlighted the risks (it'll help me when I become old and think I am being clever working on then-outdated tech :)
      - matt_kantor 10y ago
        > (it'll help me when I become old and think I am being clever working on then-outdated tech :) It depends how old you mean, but if you're a few years away from retirement it could still be a good plan.
douche 10y ago
My employer's website still runs on a ColdFusion CMS system. It's atrocious.
- sean_patel 10y ago
  Any reason why they haven't replaced it / migrated it off to something else, like say, Contentful CMS API?
  - douche 10y ago
    It's not worth anyone's time to mess with it. I never thought it would take all that long to just redo it, especially considering all the time wasted trying to tweak it and get Salesforce forms embedded, for instance, but I don't make those kind of marketing decisions... We have in large part just superseded it with some small static html+js sites dedicated to each of our products that we stuck on Azure webapps. So much easier, so much better, and, so much cheaper. But the main site limps along.
snowwrestler 10y ago
Linode runs on Cold Fusion to this day AFAIK. This is one reason I won't host on Linode.

harshaw 10y ago

erm, no, not when the source was scientificamerican.com

PeCaN 10y ago
The title would work just as well on TheDailyWTF.

frogfuzion 10y ago

You should seek to understand the importance of older technology and the problems it solved rather than judging the individual for feeling pride in knowing it. If more people did this we wouldn't be solving the same problems over and over again.

lostapathy 10y ago

Sadly there's more ColdFusion running around to this day than you'd like to think, managing more important data than it should be. It's frightening.

frogfuzion 10y ago
Why is that frightening as opposed to any other older web server code/api that is out there? Or even newer code for that matter?
- lostapathy 10y ago
  All the ColdFusion code I've ran into still exists because it's too rotten of a mess to be replaced. It tends to be very procedural code with lots of "libraries" that rely on side-effects rather than abstraction. The kind of thing where nobody understands how core concerns (like security) work, they just "know" it seems to work. Except those in the know, know that it doesn't always work, but it's all too fragile to fix it, either. I know I've been extremely unlucky with the CF code I've had to deal with, but I've also never heard of anybody with a healthy CF codebase they aren't eager to replace.
  - bluetwo 10y ago
    I maintain a large codebase for an application that has been around for longer than a decade in CF. I love it. I have also, over the years, been brought in to rescue applications that have grown into giant messes. So I'm not saying what you are saying is incorrect, but it has less to do with the language, in my opinion, and more to do with what happens to large applications that get written by multiple teams of people over the years, as they adapt to changing customer demands. And, sometimes, by managers who don't understand code, the importance of documentation, or how to communicate and plan for business issues. Build an app in any web application today and try to maintain it for a decade.
    - lostapathy 10y ago
      I agree, it's not really the language's fault. I'm involved with more than one application that's over a decade old, so I understand what happens. My point is that a lot of the things still running around in ColdFusion aren't there because they're healthy, they're around because they are too sick to do anything else with. I've got too much personal experience with applications used by the government that I sure would not trust with my personal data! You know, things written before password hashing was standard practice ... and that still don't hash passwords.
  - ambicapter 10y ago
    Why would you want to replace a "healthy" codebase?
- PeCaN 10y ago
  So there's run-of-the-mill old code that's accumulated a lot of cruft, is hard to get acquainted with, and can be tedious to work with. But it works, and doesn't get replaced. Then there's old code that barely worked when it was new and is held together by duct tape. Often it's written in something antiquated like VB6 or COBOL and is very troublesome to replace. (Not that all VB6 or COBOL code is bad, mind you, but as soon as you get out of their problem domain things go downhill fast.) Then there's ColdFusion. -- (In all seriousness, I'm sure there's good ColdFusion code out there, but the stuff I've seen is like a weird mish-mash of all the bad parts of PHP with all the bad parts of ORMs and all the bad parts of XSLT.)
  - lostapathy 10y ago
    This, exactly. It's like a case study in all the bad things that can go wrong when you mix government projects run by people who didn't know what they were doing with 10-15 years of neglect, but need to keep the software alive because it supports a critical government function but there's nowhere near the budget to rebuild it properly.

steverb 10y ago

I had CF on my resume for quite a while as well, although I took it off to reduce the number of recruiters calling me. Back in the age of classic ASP, Perl scripts and CGI scripts, Cold Fusion was a very decent technology choice. It was my introduction to a controller/view styled programming pattern (called Fusebox) back in 2000. Then they (Macromedia) got bought out by Adobe and the whole thing descended into weirdness and MS came out with .Net. Now get off my lawn you millenial! :-)

sean_patel 10y ago
> although I took it off to reduce the number of recruiters calling me. Why? If it was in demand due to scarcity, couldn't you have done freelance work at a ridiculously high hourly rate? I've come across another ol Indian dude (my Pop's age, we called him 'uncle') who was making a killing programming in some mainframe language called COBOL. Answer this and I'll get off your lawn LOL. ( He also made fun of my node.js and react.js and said "You young kids are always moving on to the next shiny thing")
- flukus 10y ago
  That limits your career long term. You might make good money for a while, but the well will dry up and not many would hire someone that's been doing nothing but cold fusion for 20 years.
  - sean_patel 10y ago
    Didn't think of that. Thank you for the career advise. I'm glad you highlighted the risks (it'll help me when I become old and think I am being clever working on then-outdated tech :)
    - matt_kantor 10y ago
      > (it'll help me when I become old and think I am being clever working on then-outdated tech :) It depends how old you mean, but if you're a few years away from retirement it could still be a good plan.

douche 10y ago

My employer's website still runs on a ColdFusion CMS system. It's atrocious.

sean_patel 10y ago
Any reason why they haven't replaced it / migrated it off to something else, like say, Contentful CMS API?
- douche 10y ago
  It's not worth anyone's time to mess with it. I never thought it would take all that long to just redo it, especially considering all the time wasted trying to tweak it and get Salesforce forms embedded, for instance, but I don't make those kind of marketing decisions... We have in large part just superseded it with some small static html+js sites dedicated to each of our products that we stuck on Azure webapps. So much easier, so much better, and, so much cheaper. But the main site limps along.

snowwrestler 10y ago

Linode runs on Cold Fusion to this day AFAIK. This is one reason I won't host on Linode.