I’m taking the topic up again because the last time I did it raised all sorts of questions from ColdFusion developers. The most common theme from ColdFusion developers was that I was comparing apples and oranges, or rather, apples and blueberry muffins. ColdFusion is a platform, Rails is a framework on a platform. I understand this and agree and sympathize with the arguments, but in the end, I think the arguments are fruitless.

Ultimately in life I want to create things, usually web applications, and to me, ColdFusion and Rails are the same thing – both are tools I can use to get me there. With ColdFusion I can use frameworks like Fusebox or Mach II or my own custom frameworks but in the end there are things that Rails can do that no ColdFusion framework can do easily or at all, and that’s what I’d like to talk about: