People writing CFML today use MVC frameworks, use ORM and the cloud. Yes it is still easy for beginners to write bad code, I think that may be more true in ColdFusion than in other languages. But getting started easily can also be a virtue.

You might be surprised but a lot of the ColdFusion community don't have tunnel vision and are familiar with a lot of other languages.

http://www.bennadel.com/blog/2061-Seven-Languages-In-Seven-W...

http://corfield.org/blog/post.cfm/learning-clojure

Sometimes another language is a better choice for a given task. We write CFML because we like it and are more productive in it, even if it isn't cool.

But why? If they had to energy to create those frameworks, why didn't they invest it into moving on to a better technology?

> Some people write crappy code in CFML.

Yes. But people write crappy code in [your preferred language] too. There's nothing inherent in CFML that forces people to write bad or hard-to-understand code.

> OMG can you believe some people still use TABLES???

view source

  > Some people write crappy code in CFML.
  Yes. But people write crappy code in [your preferred language] too.

  > OMG can you believe some people still use TABLES???
  view source.

Edit:

To InnocentB's point about HN's HTML. Does anyone here think HN's markup is meant at all to be inspirational? My take has always been that pg has priorities, and a layout for HN firmly based on cleaner HTML & CSS isn't high on that list.

If you don't like tag based language, you can use pure scripting in CFML pages. Also, nothing in CFML requires or even leads ANYONE to use table based layout. I don't know where you got that idea from.

When i first looked at CFML I had distaste for what i saw. The problem is, what i saw was other peoples bad code. Once i really dove in and started writing CFML myself, i found it is like any other language in that, you can write beautiful, clean, easy to understand and modify code.

CFML has a LOT of things built into it that make db backed web development VERY nice, including:

Db queries and transactions as a first class language member. Pdf generation, ftp access, email sending, graphing, ALL are first class language features, not to mention native use of java libraries.

Don't get me wrong, i see the value in frameworks like ROR. I just think CFML gets a bad rep when it does not deserve it.

And for a second I was excited by first class transactions.

Thanks for the correction!

I like modern markup and layout better than the way things used to be just like almost everyone else, but It's hard to come up with an argument for switching HN to more modern markup. It wouldn't make the site easier for PG to maintain, and it probably wouldn't result in a change to the visual design unless a designer was brought in.

However. A lot of the leeway in technology choice you might have as a lone-wolf entrepreneur fly out the window once you grow beyond that. If you have no intention of growing beyond, go nuts. Use whatever makes you happy. If you do want to grow more, then be prepared for a rewrite.

Yes, it's one of the most usable and beautiful sites on Internet.

<cfscript> if(noob) { greetings = "Hello Coldfusion N00b"; } </cfscript>

<cfoutput>#greetings#</cfoutput>

Are you trying to tell me that PG is not a web designer?!

Perhaps, but I kinda liked the contrast to the constant stream of proud, wilful "Clojure/CoffeeScript/CaramelMacciatoScript is the new black" hipster-sounding posts on HN.

While I agree that it's a good general rule to use CSS/divs, if something is taking too long, my philosophy is that you should just make it easy on yourself and break out a table, especially if the layout is something obviously tabular visually.

How many blog posts couldn't be boiled down into a twitter post? The fact that something can be transformed into a 140-character blurb for teenagers with short attention spans does not mean that it should be.

> The whole post boils down to what appears to be proud, willful ignorance.

You whole comment really comes off as a bit short-sighted at best. The whole point was to share the way he gets stuff done. The fact that you do things a different way does not make his way wrong. Automatically assuming that your way is best is a sign of professional immaturity.

C is a lot more archaic than CF, but sometimes it's the right tool for the job. Archaic doesn't mean wrong. I certainly don't want to program in CF, but if someone else does and it works for them, then more power to them. As others mentioned, this is at least a nice counterpoint to the Latest-AwesomeYetUnproven-NoSQL-SemiFunctional-Framework/Language stuff that flies about so much.

Oh, and they still do leech therapy. The humor theory was bunk, but leech therapy can indeed have benefits.

Is there are good replacement for HTML tables yet that works well in all browsers?

I'm talking about for things that actually need to be laid out in a grid, which, in my experience, is many things. Grids are fairly fundamental to layout and design.

CSS support is a lot better and more consistent across browsers now than it was even just a year ago, and there are CSS 'frameworks' that make grid based design a trivial task without cluttering your page with table markup where it's not required.

There are even plenty HTML5 'frameworks' (or templates if you prefer) that take backwards compatibility and such like into account so you don't have to faff about with all that yourself.

http://www.blueprintcss.org/ http://960.gs/ http://html5boilerplate.com/ http://www.initializr.com/ http://codekickoff.com/

I'm going to rant now.

It think it is ridiculous that people get away with stating that one shouldn't use tables for layout because "Tables are for tabular data".

What is a table? It's a grid! And grid-based CSS layout frameworks are the new hotness; eg:

http://960.gs/

http://www.blueprintcss.org/

http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/grids/

http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-grid-layout/

(And look! Many of these are exactly what you listed!)

CSS has many wonderful features. However, I think the "tables are for tabular data" is an intellectually lazy argument that needs to die.

CSS should be used because of what it can do for you - not because of some theoretical argument about the purity of tags.

Besides, these companies have absolutely zero valid reasons to keep using this crutch - it's severely outdated, a giant gaping security hole and a hindrance to the entire world wide web.

And no, legacy applications built upon IE6 on which some corporations have based their entire internal communication (or other things) are not an argument for supporting IE6, but instead gives us all the more reason to force them to get rid of it.

I got out of ColdFusion 8 months ago into PHP, which isn't exactly known as being a hotbed of good code. I feel like just a mediocre programmer at the currently company I'm at would be a way-beyond-stellar ColdFusion developer. Of course this is all anecdotal and hearsay, but my experience is in line with yours.

[1] http://www.advantexllc.com/blog/post.cfm/how-oo-almost-destr...

[2] http://www.remotesynthesis.com/post.cfm/Objects-and-Framewor...

That's basically the majority of developers, in any language.

I'm not going to bother defending the mindset of the author, though I suggest that if you examine concepts like toolset familiarity, code craftsmanship, and zen, you may see that his way is a path to happiness. (and honestly, from what I recall of CF in my college days, I liked it no less than PHP)

You have a point there, but I'd argue that on a platform like the web the impact of skill stagnation is much bigger.