Open Bluedragon perhaps the better way to develop for me.

Coming out of “retirement” has been interesting, perhap sabattical is a better word. A lot has changed including my outlook on developing software, startups and the rest of it.

For me personally JSP/J2EE was never a rapid application development platform. PHP is common, in fact I’m just sorting a project out now for a client, but it’s still a mess. CFML, I’ve liked for a while but it’s always been the case of the cost of entry, you needed a licence for the server and when the $$$ are coming directly from my pocket I slam the breaks on until I know the business is going to absorb the start up costs.

So, my return to the arena and I find out that Bluedragon became open. Now CFML now looks like a viable solution. I downloaded the version with Jetty as the server, worked first time, no complaints, well documented to get started. A quick peek under the cover and I could work out how to sort out data sources. The OpenBG team have done a brilliant job.

In terms of rapid application development, I’m getting on quicker than I would with Ruby On Rails. With RoR I always had to go back and change the forms to how I wanted them. RoR was great for real quick scaffolds but you can spend as much time replumbing things to how you want them.

I know everyone has their own style and preferences, but the CFML/Java combo looks good for the things I want to do. It’s nice to be back.