I think everyone must know by now but after reading the news and blogs over the weekend and today I'm in two minds on how to take the news from sys-con.com that CFDJ is dead. Actually it's worse than dead, its going to be re-born into Microsoft's Silverlight journal! To quote Sean Corfield the magazine was a "piece of ****" the adverts bombarded you and made reading nearly impossible. Couple that with the Windows Server ad that fires up with sound EVERY time you hit a page and my only assumption is that Microsoft was paying big bucks to annoy the world. But in my head I keep coming back to Michael Dinowitz post and the fact it looks bad for CF. The press release does state that its "Adobe's fault" for discontinuing support, but between the line is how this story will be read.
"We have seen a rapid trend and move from ColdFusion to other emerging rich web technologies such as AJAX, Flex, and Silverlight"
Being an Adobe/ColdFusion hater/sceptic I could see read into the press release in several different ways:
Adobe not committed to CF
CF not a strong enough language to be represented by the Sys-con range which include Java, Ajax, Silverlight, .net, XML, AND Flex
If Sys-con are blaming Adobe then why are they still running flex.sys-con.com/
The "trend" that people are moving from ColdFusion to other rich web technologies means CF is on its way out?
The last one is what gets me for now. I know that there "is" money going into ColdFusion marketing but public stunts like this doesn't help the language in anyway and I can only hope that there is some form of rebuttal to the press release. But don't forget though there is still one printed technical journal out there dedicated to CF, The Fusion Authority Quarterly Updaten.b. If you are looking for CFDJ's check out http://pdf.sys-con.com/