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ColdFusion MX on Mac OS X
kylner writes "This seemed to be one of the lesser-covered news items at Macworld, but it seems that Macromedia has decided to release its JRun 4 J2EE Server for Mac OSX. What's siginificant about this release? Well, they simultaneously released Macromedia ColdFusion MX for J2EE Application Servers to go with it! It may not be a stand-alone edition of ColdFusion MX, but this is still a dream item for any ColdFusion developer with a Mac at home. It took me about 30 minutes to install on my iBook 600 (I messed up a few times since it requires a little terminal work) but once I got it up and running it just worked. All I've had time to do so far is create a variable and output 'Hello World', but so far so good."
> but once I got it up and running it just worked.
Good thing! I hate to see you get it up and running and then it still not work.
Here before all but 8486 of you.
The developer wanted to use ColdFusion, and not PHP. Don't get me wrong, I know and love PHP (not as much as I love Perl, mind you, but still.), but there are times when... a little diversity is a good thing. Say for instance, you're developing something with a team of people, none of which know PHP, but do know ColdFusion as a common language among them. Are you either going to try and teach them PHP (something they may not want to learn, if they haven't ventured off to do it on their own, yet) or just get the project done with ColdFusion. If it works, it works, and it's good. The first priority is getting the job done, then going over semantics. If the customer or supervisor wants the task re-done in PHP, over ColdFusion, then so be it. Different tools for different jobs, but keep in mind, There's More Than One Way To Do It . :-)
Informatus Technologicus
Ah. It seems you are learning a valuable lesson: what you consider to be "proprietary" is not inherently bad. What you consider to be "Free" is not inherently good. The world is not a battle of "us versus them" (or in this case, "you versus us") but rather a bunch of people all struggling to make their way together.
One should use the best tool for the job, based on one's own judgment. If one uses a second-best tool simply because it is "Free," then one is still using a second-best tool.
I write in my journal
I AM running Apache with PHP installed, and I am working on learning how to develop with PHP. However, my first foray into web app development was with ColdFusion. Additonally, the site I work for hosts under ColdFusion. I'll be the first to say that PHP isn't that difficult to learn, but if I hadn't been introduced to ColdFusion (arguably easier to learn than PHP from a noob's standpoint) and gotten some background in development I'd probably still be smashing my skull against a wall. At the end of the day it's about using the right instrument for the job- and now that I have two web scripting environments running on my dev box I can actually make the attempt to write an app/site using both as an exercise to keep my skills cross-platform.