Do you need OO programming for CF?

I think programmers outside ColdFusion community will be amused by the question as most (I didn’t say all, mainly I refer to Java and Microsoft-Camp developers) learned from day one that they have to architech their solution in OO way They must be laughing at us on this discussion.

Here’s the original URL where I get the discussions and blogs:

http://tinyurl.com/prwqty

To me, I came from system analyst background and not computer science, then I grow as database programmer and then move to web developer with ColdFusion. Then I moved camp to pre-dominantly .NETdevelopers company and year later moved out from developers role and back to business analyst and project manager. I don’t have strong OO background and I am rarely code with OO in mind. But I know enough to understand all the benefits and know how big applications can benefit from good OO architecture.

However, this is what my observation. We (I refer to developers and engineers) have the tendency to only use one tool to accomplish all things. We believe in one thing and we love to make stuff more complicated that it should be. I guess that is in the blood of humanity. We excel in knowledge, creative brain, and create these all wonderful stuffs that supposed to make our life easier but they end up make our life more miserable (that is another subject that I won’t be sharing in this blog, but may be my other blog ).

When ColdFusion is out, I believe, it was designed to give us an alternative way to create dynamic web in the shortest amount possible. You need email functionality, done, it is there. You need to query a database, done it is there. Even on the newer version, the same trends are true. You need a web service, 3 lines of code, done. ColdFusion allows us to consume .NET code, Java code and that what makes ColdFusion unique. I think there will always be two type of application developers. One that loves creating all the complex mechanism at the background, and the other one just simply to get the business done quick and accurate. My personal thought, ColdFusion will always be for the second person. If you need strong OO support, I think you should just write Java code and compile and let us INVOKE it within ColdFusion.

In this hetero languages technology world, I believe on hetero architecture too. Open API, write small functionality codes and easy inter-changeable code. Are you going to write OO oriented FBML? (facebook markup language) There is no such thing But you create sophisticated Java module that will interact with FBML. The one thing that I learned from day one that I think is very important is this 4 acronyms: -KISS – keep it simple stupid

That’s my 2 cents.