Thank GOD for ColdFusion. After doing a bunch of JSP stuff, I can't imagine trying to be productive without the tools that CF provides. The less that elegant syntax of the JSTL is annoying, but it's the tight integration that I really miss. You don't really appreciate the CFMAIL tag (for example) until you have to spend a few hours getting JavaMail, the Java Activation Framework, the Jakarta mailer taglib, configure it all, and then figure out how to integrating it with the JNDI setup on Tomcat (I gave up and just use parameters in web.xml). Granted, it's a one time deal, but boy is it a pain in the ass.
And then when you want to do a grouped loop on a recordset (didn't find a simple solution)….
Or pull all characters up to the first space in a string (nothing like digging out a java.util.StringTokenizer)….
Yeah, CF is way nice, and those who knock it are either gluttons for pain, or have rich clients paying them by the hour. Especially since you barely sacrifice any of J2EE's power when using CF. The VERY simple app that prompted all this can be found here: Lindsay's Alphabet Book. One template, 168 lines (layouts not included), containing a handful of conditionals, a single email sender, and 3 queries.
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