According to the May 2008 TIOBE Software Index (that which measures the popularity of different languages being used in the Software Development profession) CF is no longer ranked. It isn’t anywhere within the top 100 items listed, it isn’t in any of the past archives has having been popular, and it won’t be included again.
Why? Because it is a framework (akin to asp or jsp) and is not a programming language.
The definition TIOBE uses is that a language is only a programming language if it is Turing Complete. A simple definition of Turing Completeness is if it is able to compute any function computable. It is still counted even if it takes the language a huge amount of time and memory to complete this function.
So is ColdFusion not turing complete? I don’t know if I buy that or not and nor do I like the negative light this shines on ColdFusion. The Tiobe index is regularly referred to as a good metric for platform viability and not having CF on there could be a serious blow.
Can anyone confirm that CF is not Turing Complete (or can anyone prove it is?) I’m very interested in seeing what others think about this turn of events and the current classification of CF.
UPDATE:
I’ve taken the two links from Jeff’s comment and hyperlinked them here:
http://www.forta.com/blog/index.cfm/2008/5/5/TIOBE-From-Hype-To-Fiction
http://www.forta.com/blog/index.cfm/2008/5/6/TIOBE-Responds
The net result seems to be that Coldfusion isn’t a programming language but CFML is. Of course, almost everyone who talks about CFML uses the term ColdFusion to refer to it so it naturally skews CFML down in the list at Tiobe (to presently #135) since Tiobe uses search engine queries to rank the various languages. It seems like a bit of a cop out on Tiobe’s part to not include “ColdFusion” as a substitute for CFML.
Sorry I missed the hubbub at the beginning of the month. I clearly don’t read enough blogs :O)
Comments
Bill
thanks Jeff - I totally missed it!
jeff
There wasa huge buzz at the begining of the month about this.
http://www.forta.com/blog/index.cfm/2008/5/5/TIOBE-From-Hype-To-Fiction
http://www.forta.com/blog/index.cfm/2008/5/6/TIOBE-Responds