Making the move to CFEclipse from HomeSite+/Drewamweaver. Care to join me?

Note: This blog post is from 2007. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.

Some of you know me as one of the old-line "dinosaurs" who have been long-time fans of CF Studio and its "son" HomeSite+. I've been using them for 10 years, and have in fact continued to be an ardent supporter of helping folks move from CF Studio to HomeSite+ the past few years.

I've also used Dreamweaver on occasion, because it offers some useful features that HS+ does not have (especially for web service and CFC exploring, to name just a couple).

Welcome to the revolution

But there's so much goodness in CFE and Eclipse in general (including most of the things in the other common CFML editors) that I think it's time we old-line folks faced the music and "got with the program".

Of course, no one will force you, and I do understand the challenges you may face (or the concerns you may have). I just want to do what I can to help, including sharing here over time various discoveries and tips (and traps) as I make the transition. But we're not alone--and I'm clearly not being any sort of a pioneer. Plenty have already made the journey.

Indeed, that's one of the main reasons I created the recent list of bloggers who have already written (and most who continue to write) about CFEclipse. I want to help folks learn from those who've travelled the road before us, as well as to hear both the arguments for and against it.

But I don't like CFEclipse because of "x"

There are certainly many who are still holding out, arguing for why they don't care for it. In fact, to address that, Brian Kotek just last week did an entry on "CFEclipse: Pros, Cons, and Misconceptions".

Join me on the journey

I've had to use Eclipse and CFEclipse for the past few months as I have been working with FusionDebug and the new CF8 debugger, both interactive step debuggers for CFML, and both based on Eclipse.

I've only learned the bare minimum I needed about Eclipse (and those I didn't *need* CFEclipse to work with the debuggers, I did install it). I still edited my code in HS+ and just used Eclipse/CFeclipse to do debugging, and I have reminded people of that whenever I showed off or wrote about the debuggers. There are plenty of people still preferring either HS+ or DW (or some other editor).

But Adobe is clearly behind Eclipse as a platform for code editing (witness FlexBuilder, and the new Eclipse-based debugger in CF8). They're not turning their back on DW, but clearly CF developers are getting more and more built-into Eclipse, both from them and from others.

And many in the CFML community are clearly behind CFE. I think we'll only see things get better and better, and I plan to do my part to help folks like us make the transition. So while I won't claim to be a pioneer, I do offer my services as a guide. Care to join me?

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