The Lighter Side of Code

I was working out this morning and I had an idea that would be interesting to watch.  What if there was an Ultimate Programming Showdown?  They have a hacking contest at security conferences, we developers should have a programming contest.  I would go to see that, especially if you add in beer and cheerleaders.

Let’s think about what would happen at this event.  We could take all of the best developers in a given language and put them down in front of neutral machines, much like a gaming contest.  Then each person would be given a small app to build within a given time frame.  Of course there will have to be some ground rules to keep the .NET and PHP folks from being cute and here are some I have been mulling over.

First, there can’t be any pre-built modules or classes, everything needs to be built from scratch.  That means database connections, DAO objects, etc.  The idea is to see which language would be the best and fastest to develop a project.  Now we all know how this will end up, but I think it would definitely help the lemmings of the world see the power in each language.

I was also thinking that there would be a bracket system and rounds.  I imagine the under the table betting on that would be spectacular.  But besides that, it would be fun to watch and trash talk!

I am guessing that ColdFusion is going to smoke the competition in this type of competition, but I think it would be fun to watch.  Here are the people I think would be top seeded:

1. Ben Forta: Because he British and well…he’s Ben Forta.
2. Ray Camden: I mean the guy is a Jedi.
3. Luis Majano: Simply because ColdBox is wicked complicated!
4. Hal Helms: Because I have nicknamed him ‘The Duke’ and I want to chat that someday.
5. Sean Corfield: Because I want to see Ray Camden and him battle it out.
6. Joe Rinehart: ModelGlue is pretty nutso as well.
7. Ben Nadel: Because he will probably show up with something kinky.
8. Adam Haskell: Fusebox…the first framework I learned.
9. Matt Woodward: Mach-II people.
10. Mark Mandel: Transfer.

I know I am missing some folks but those are the people at the top of my mind.  Who else thinks this would be cool to see?

Lu Sancea Coldfusion, PHP .NET, Coldfusion, PHP

A few days ago Ben Forta posted, on his blog, an article about the costs of ColdFusion. Well, I read it and I commented on it based on a lack of research on the pricing of other technologies specifically .NET and I apologize. A guy named David posted after I did and was talking about the pricing for .NET. After looking around at all the prerequisites needed to run a Windows .NET environment I realized that running a .NET environment is pretty expensive as well.

Also, now that I think about it, people say that ColdFusion is not learned by new programmers and I think that Adobe should do something about that with the Universities. It’s completely free to learn CF with CFEclipse and the developers version of CF server. The problem is that most students are learning C# and VB in school and when they come out they further saturate the .NET job market. That’s why it’s so hard to find CF developers, because the new brood aren’t picking it up until later in life.

I love ColdFusion, and I have been successful in converting other developers away from .NET in the past. The biggest reason they move to CF is the learning curve and the ease of development. I have met some developers who don’t know some of the tricks in HTML, Javascript, and CSS because VS does a lot of it for them. Anyway, I retract my comment in Ben’s blog…ColdFusion is better priced than .NET, at least according to the pricing above.

Lu Sancea Coldfusion, PHP .NET, Coldfusion, PHP, pricing