They should use ColdFusion. I hear it's pretty cool.

FWIW the API portion of the bug tracker appears to be a Java Spring app

Yeah, don't even get me started on that whole thing lol.

Something about "dogfooding..." (it's a verb now)?

I've had that talk with Adobe peeps many times over the years and it's become clear noone outside of the CF team itself cares about that.

If I recall correctly (it was a long time ago), I believe when macromedia bought Allaire, it was a very short time after that I saw .cfm extensions on the macromedia website... just sayin

Yes, Sean Corfield was part of Macromedia at the time and used to talk about how they were really big on using CF for everything.

I guess they don't want to pay the license fees?

One of the biggest issues from what I heard over the years was Adobe's IT team didn't want to support hosting ColdFusion servers.

psh, just put them on AWS

Sounds about right.

Actually, they've actively rewritten all of their CF sites to other languages. Adobe TV used to be a ColdBox app. The CF blog used to be MangoBlog. And I'm fairly sure an early version of the bug tracker may have even been in CF.

are any of those apps that they got from Macromedia, then re-wrote later?

I don't recall when any of those apps were first made. I recall back when Aaron Greenlee's company at the time (wrecking ball media) was writing Adobe TV but I don't recall what year it was. I want to say after the Adobe acquisition

I think if they used Cf for everything, it would go a long way in assuring the world of their long term commitment to the product

I don't disagree with any of your points, lol. I've made all those same points over the years and their take on it has been that they don't agree. Adobe brass has historically not seen any compelling benefit to using CF.

Better language, better marketing, more sales, more money

Many of these decisions come from very high up. When the CF blog moved from CF to wordpress, that was a company-wide decision to consolidate all blogging precense. And to the people up top making that decision, I think CF is a very small cog in their very big wheel

well if Adobe viewed CF like Google viewed Go, I personally think CF would be in a much better place today

As much as I would love all those things to come true, I wouldn't hold your breath. That said, you bet your behind I'm pushing hard to integrate CF with as many Adobe products in the near future as I possibly can. The more it becomes a part of everything the tougher it becomes for Adobe not to use it.

So sad

Since I was name-checked in this thread... So, when Macromedia bought Allaire, they placed several of the Allaire execs in senior positions and my team of C++ and Java devs were told "you will use CF for all the website stuff" and they put Jer in charge of my team (he was a lot of fun to work for). Jer was also obsessed with Flash, so we created an all-new macromedia.com in CFML with a fancy expanding overlaid Flash-based navigation system. Similarly, we built an all-new online store with Flash and CF and an all-new Extension/Exchange site and we also replaced the download center with a CFML app. We selected Mach II as the framework for a lot of that (which caused some accusations of "favoritism" from the Fusebox crowd and some others). When I oversaw the Oracle ERP integration project a while later, I used Model-Glue. And so, for a while, every single online purchase, every single download, every single license purchase, for all Macromedia products went through CFML (and some Flash). The Flash navigation was a disaster so that was removed in favor of plain HTML/CSS/JS. The project nearly didn't launch at all because the JRun connector was so incredibly buggy... but after a couple of bugfix-focused updaters to CFMX, we got it all launched. Over my time there, the Flash gradually all went away in favor of plain HTML/CSS/JS but it was still all backed by CF. For a while, the CF team used macromedia.com as an acceptance test before releasing new versions -- so we were always running each new CF release prior to the public getting access. One thing about Macromedia: every team could pretty much do whatever it wanted, in terms of technology. That meant multiple bug trackers, multiple version control systems, and all sorts of random programming languages across the entire company, along with a mix of third-party systems, all cobbled together with string and tape. One of my early large projects internally was to get a JMQ message hub in place and at least replace all of the batch jobs and ad hoc file transfers with real-time messaging. That's how the JMS gateway for CF came about that shipped as an example. And then Adobe bought us. Adobe has corporate standards for everything. One of the first battles we waged was JBoss vs WebLogic. Sigh. And they wanted us to standardize on Oracle for the database too. Also sigh. And Perforce was inflicted on everyone for version control. And SAP was the answer to everything, in terms of HR, ERP, CRM, etc. So a huge amount of the integration work my team had done over the previous five or six years was all torn out and thrown away. And then the CFML-powered parts of the website all began to go away in favor of whatever awful corporate content management systems etc Adobe had deemed were the "standard" for the company. And all the teams' bug trackers were "standardized" too. And that's why there's next to no CFML used at Adobe any more.

Wow, its funny how these kind of stories have such a LONG TERM affect on how things end up. Thanks Sean for sharing. I'm happy they at least got rid of JRUN.

Thanks for sharing the full story, Sean.

The Wordpress stuff internally makes me want to drink paint. As someone who did professional WP development for years (hey, gotta pay the mortgage somehow) it pains me to see how they handle it. But, as they say, not my circus, not my wordmonkey. 😛

Gotta love corporate bureaucracy!

Jeez… I didn’t realize what I would be starting with my comment! 😳

Asking why Vendor of X doesn't dogfood their own product is often an "interesting" question 🙂 (and, no, please Shantanu, the phrase is not "drinking our own champagne"!)

Yeah I was wondering about that. I want to find which of his VPs first said that to him and shake them like a squirrel in a dog's mouth lol.

Maybe they thought were joking and thought he'd realize the associations it had? And maybe they're now squirming in their chair every time they hear him say it, and don't have the nerve to explain it to him?

Prrrrobably