CFBuilder gets no love in CS5
Posted on April 12, 2010
Filed Under Adobe, ColdFusion | 11 Comments
Right. Can somebody please explain to me why ColdFusion Builder isn’t included in CS5 Web Production Premium, whereas Flash Builder 4 is????
C’mon Adobe that makes no sense.
There’s no way I’m spending that much money on CS5 *and* not get my primary development tool (CF Builder) included in the bundle.
Very, very disappointed.
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About Craig McDonald
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I hear ya, man oh man am I feeling unloved by Adobe as a ColdFusion developer today. You buy the very expensive and under baked CFBuilder on its own and they ‘give you’ Flash Builder for the cost of.. well.. Flash Builder!! (if CFBuilder was the $50 it should have been!) LAME. Then they don’t even include it as a ‘web tool’. Freaking stupid move. Instead of advancing CF they have set it back further. Then again Flash Builder wasn’t in the first Creative Suite after it came out, maybe they are just slow at getting things done..
If CFBuilder was the $50 it should have been?
Seriously? You think CFBuilder SHOULD have only been $50?
How do you justify that? Do you think it is just another text editor? Or do you think that IDEs are easy to make and not really that worthwhile?
$50? Clearly you are better off sticking with CFEclipse if that is how you feel. But I think that CFBuilder is well worth $300 and is justifiably priced there.
Just because CFBuilder is priced at $300 and includes Flash Builder 4 for free does not mean that you are really being forced to buy Flash Builder at $250 just to get the $50 CFBuilder. It means you are paying for the $300 CFBuilder and getting Flash Builder for $0. That is an awesome deal. And if Adobe took FB4 out of the bundle tomorrow CFB would still be $299.
And Craig, If you are not willing to pay $1800 for all of the awesome tools that are in CS5 Web just because it doesn’t include a CFB, then you probably were never planning to buy it anyway.
Flash Builder didn’t make it into CS until version 4. CFB is only in version 1. Give it time and it may end up in there. But I suspect that there is a lot more going on behind the scenes that will keep a new product out of CS until it has proven itself.
Some people were debating if Adobe would make a Developer’s Suite or a Developer Edition of CS5, bundling together Dreamweaver, Flash Professional, Flash Catalyst, Flash Builder and ColdFusion. Or have a package where users can mix and match a certain number of applications for a fix price. Unfortunately, it seems like Adobe’s current pricing plan isn’t that flexiable.
@Jason: I agree with you on the pricing of CFB, completely. Honestly, I did not blink twice at $299 and think it’s quite a fair price, especially when you start looking at the cost of other commercial IDEs: IntelliJ IDEA, for example, is $249 … hell, the glorified (and incredibly awesome) text editor, TextMate, is about $50 but I never hear anyone complain about paying for that!
I will admit that I am lucky regarding CFB. I was upgrading to Flash Builder 4 Premium anyway, which of course comes with a free copy of CFB. And, I might feel differently about the cost of CFB if CFEclipse were not out there. But it is and, as such, we CF’ers have an open-source, free alternative.
However, I disagree with Adobe’s decision not to bundle CFB with CS5 and, in my opinion, the argument that it has not yet proven itself doesn’t hold. Adobe has been shipping unproven products in CS for years (e.g., Bridge, Media Encoder, Device Central).
I think you’re right that something else is going on (there always is) but, in my opinion, Adobe has generally treated ColdFusion poorly relative to their other, flagship, products such as Flash, Photoshop and the like. They could have bundled it with a CS5 edition and really helped push CF awareness to their massive user-base, but they didn’t and, for me, that is what is most disappointing.
@Jason I was and still am giving serious consideration to buyign CS5. I own CS3 and was close to buying CS4 a few months ago until I found out CS5 was around the corner so I waited.
I am primarily a ColdFusion Developer, but lately due to my current work I have been required to diversify my skillset and now use Fireworks daily, with occasional use of Dreamweaver/Photoshop/Illustrator. I love Creative Suite – it’s a fantastic toolset.
However, it’s not cheap. I don’t know about you, but that’s a lot of bickies for me. I don’t have a big corporate buying the software for me, it’s coming directly out of my own pocket.
I directly take issue with forking out over $1000 for CS5, tagged “Web Premium” – “the comprehensive solution for producing standards-based websites and immersive digital experiences”. If Flash Builder fits into that category, why doesn’t CF Builder?
I have never taken issue with CFBuilder’s price – but Adobe’s argument that including Flash Builder increases the value proposition in the $299 price tag is now null and void because I would buy CS5 anyway and effectively end up with two copies of Flash Builder.
The idea of CS is to bundle together like tools into a suite that saves professionals money. Keeping CF Builder separate from the rest of CS seems self defeating to me.
Or do Adobe think that ColdFusion developers don’t do anything else “creative” other than write CFML all day? Believe it or not Adobe, I’m a designer as well.
So are you going to get it or not?
First you said “There’s no way I’m spending that much money on CS5 *and* not get my primary development tool (CF Builder) included in the bundle.”
Then you said “I was and still am giving serious consideration to buyign CS5.”
Like I said, if you would let CFB not being in CS5 stop you from buying CS5 then you really never would have bought it in the first place. However, if your first statement was just hyperbole then that is a different story. I made my statement based on your statement that you would absolutely not buy CS5 if it did not include CFB.
As for whether or not CFB should be in CS5, sure it would be nice. But I am sure there are reasons it is not. Like I said in another comment, Flash Builder finally made it into CS just now, and it is in version 4. So give it time and support the products. If CFB is successful then maybe someday it will be part of CS.
The way you are complaining about it you make it seem like you think that Adobe probably put no thought into the decision at all. I’m sure they did.
Let me ask you this, where do you draw the line? When do you stop demanding that they include products in CS? For example, captivate is used to create web content, should we demand it be in there? What about Presenter? Why do we only get Acrobat Pro and not Acrobat Pro Extended? Adobe needs to draw the line somewhere, right? Or should they just give away the farm because some cannot afford everything that they want?
Also, how many owners of CS Web are ColdFusion developers do you think? As much as I hate to say it, I would guess a very small percentage. And what good is CFBuilder without ColdFusion? All of the other products in CS are useful without the purchase of other software. CFB would not be.
It’s easy to say that it should be in there because it is for web development and it’s a web bundle, right? But the decision making that goes into things like that are probably a lot more complicated then some exec saying “You know what we should do?”
I said I’m not going to spend my money on both. It is one, or the other. I can’t afford both. If CFBuilder was included in CS5 I probably would have stretched my budget and upgraded since I’m one release behind anyway. Bundled, I could see the value proposition *in my specific circumstances* to spend the extra money on the suite. Isn’t that the idea of a bundle? To provide a value proposition for the buyer to save money instead of buying individually?
My primary beef is if it’s good enough for Flash Builder to be bundled, why not CF Builder?
Your comment “if you would let CFB not being in CS5 stop you from buying CS5 then you really never would have bought it in the first place.” is a pretty sweeping assumption and frankly a little arrogant. Are you really so sure of yourself that you know exactly what I think and will do?
Just on the reach of CF developers – perhaps if Adobe provided the toolset for CF to a larger community (via CS5), it would grow the number of CF Developers.
Finally, the “age” of Flash Builder is not a valid argument IMHO – many v1 products have been included in CS5, so why not CF Builder?
Actually that is not what you said, though It may be what you meant.
Otherwise, I guess we’ll disagree. I hope someday they include it. But the fact that they did not include it yet does not surprise me. That is a big decision and one that would be difficult to reverse if they decide it was a bad one.
My issue with your statement is that you act like it should be a no-brainer, and it is not.
Maybe they should offer CF Builder at an upgrade price if you own CS5 Web Premium? – after all, it is a web tool.
Jason, you’re an aggressive little bugger. Are you a salesman for Adobe? or just plain ignorant and disrespectful of peoples opinion.
Perhaps next time you could write in uppercase just to prove your point a little more.