Things aren’t looking too hot for ColdFusion on the TIOBE index lately. Have a look:
TIOBE Programming Community Index
It’s hard to spot, but you’ll find “CFML” waaaay at the bottom in the 50 – 100 list. It’s listed in alphabetical order rather than ranked by popularity because, according to Tiobe, the differences in popularity among the bottom 50 were so marginal that it made little sense to order them. Yikes. As someone who’s been programming in ColdFusion for so many years, that’s a hard pill to swallow.
Interestingly, it seems to go along with what I’m seeing in the community for ColdFusion developers seeking work. Programmers that have a pretty advanced toolset are jumping to other platforms where the jobs are more plentiful and they’re doing well. Candidates who respond to my openings for ColdFusion developers don’t always have the chops, and it takes a very long time to locate and hire qualified candidates for ColdFusion jobs. That does make sense if the language is truly as unpopular as the TIOBE index suggests.
I began looking at this a few days ago when I found a two+ year old article regarding the release of the iOS SDK by Apple. I can’t find the article now or I would link to it, but the author was opining about the bad decision by Apple to release an SDK for a popular platform like iOS that requires programmers to use Objective-C, an unpopular choice from the author’s perspective. Clicking the same link above, a flash forward of more than two years from that article, and you’ll see Objective-C jumped from being very low on the index to being the #8 most popular language today!
It’s surprising how quickly things can change. As developers, we should be prepared for sudden shifts and keep our toolsets up to date and ready for what may come.
#1 by Raymond Camden on April 28, 2011 - 11:46 am
Dude – No one respects the TIOBE list. No one. Ignore it and don’t bother sending him the traffic. Also – google for how he removed ColdFusion because it was only a framework.
#2 by andy matthews on April 28, 2011 - 12:01 pm
I would have a SERIOUSLY hard time believing that Erland was more popular than ColdFusion. I guess CF developers don’t have time to tell other people how awesome CF is because they’re busy getting work done.
#3 by Steve 'Cutter' Blades on April 28, 2011 - 12:06 pm
This doesn’t account for the 3 – 4 direct contacts I’m getting per week from recruiters about CF positions across the country. The TIOBE index has always been a seriously flawed system, with little to no basis in the true state of affairs.
#4 by Peter Boughton on April 28, 2011 - 2:31 pm
TIOBE isn’t flawed – because being flawed implies there is something useful to hold that flaw. There isn’t. The whole premise of TIOBE is meaningless nonsense. Even *if* it was possible to get accurate numbers, they serve no purpose (well, other than driving traffic to the site).
If anyone is depressed about CF’s ranking, well there’s another site which does various rankings which lists it as high as 14th, and no lower than 29th.
I’m not linking to it because it’s just as useless as TIOBE, (even if better executed).
The whole idea of ranking languages is stupid. Ranking languages which have entirely different purposes is even more so.
Stop worrying. Go do something useful.
#5 by Gary F on April 28, 2011 - 6:44 pm
Two more “statistics” to check out.
http://www.google.com/search?q=filetype:cfm
317m pages coded in cfml. Pretty darn good for something that’s supposed to be less popular than lisp, pascal and ada!
But web searches for “coldfusion” is a better indicator of popularity, take a look at this. It’s achieving less than a quarter of the searches now compared to what it got in 2004. http://www.google.com/trends?q=coldfusion
#6 by Mike Chandler on April 28, 2011 - 7:00 pm
Interesting remarks, I had actually heard that there was some outcry against the validity of the TIOBE index. The search engine technique they use, while the actual technology isn’t fully disclosed, isn’t necessarily a scientific or slam-dunk method of determining popularity of a language — maybe popularity of the language as a topic of discussion. Nevertheless, I can somewhat see why they might connect those dots.
@Steve: I get a solid flow of recruiters contacting me about ColdFusion jobs as well. But have you ever tried recruiting for a ColdFusion position? It’s tough work. You’ll get applicant flow, but you’ll have a really hard time finding candidates that are fully qualified to work on software systems. For CF powered websites, you’re in good shape, but CFers with experience with continuous integration and unit testing are extremely hard to find.
#7 by Barba Williamson on June 6, 2011 - 10:32 am
Mike,
Call me. It’s important
#8 by John smith on October 27, 2011 - 7:14 pm
Mike,
Don’t call me, it’s not importnat.
#9 by Jean Ducrot on April 29, 2011 - 6:27 am
Dude,
Ada really? I learned to program on that back when I was in the military 10 years ago. Who do you know who still does that? And that would be more popular than CF? I still think Cf is great but the community is just too small and I hear the same complain from many companies, there just isn’t enough qualified developers.
#10 by Steve 'Cutter' Blades on May 2, 2011 - 7:08 am
@Mike
Please, call me Cutter.
Last year I was recruiting for an entire team of CF developers. Yes, it was very difficult. You get a ton of applicants, many without the chops you’re really looking for. Really good (or great) CF developers are rarely looking for full time work, as they have it already, or have a thriving consultancy going.
We took to finding talented developers in other disciplines (PHP, Ruby, etc) and retraining them in CF. Elitists would walk into the interview and never return. The more experienced, and more open, discovered the true power of the modern ColdFusion platform and became better programmers.
If companies will invest in finding good developers, and turning them in to good ColdFusion developers, they will find the benefit. The ROI in CF isn’t just in the ease and speed of development with the platform, but also in the low learning curve to get to that point. A good developer, with a solid understanding of OO principles, can quickly grok the class nature of CFC’s, understand the value of building view layers with custom tags and CFM pages, and utilize the power that Application.cfc and the CF application framework provide for them.