more zealotry needed in coldfusion
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I hear the word zealotry used and for me it has a negative connotation. It has been brought up lately usually around something perceived as new but that doesn't mean something old could have zealotry.
I would like to see more zealotry in ColdFusion.
I thought it would be nice to break-down the definition of "zealotry" using dictionary.reference.com.
- zeal·ot·ry – undue or excessive zeal; fanaticism.
- un·due
- unwarranted; excessive: undue haste.
- inappropriate; unjustifiable; improper: undue influence.
- ex·ces·sive – going beyond the usual, necessary, or proper limit or degree; characterized by excess.
- zeal – fervor for a person, cause, or object; eager desire or endeavor; enthusiastic diligence; ardor.
With this break-down, my preceived negatives are "excessive" and "undo". Undue could be negative for me since it is "unjustifiable" but I wonder how many of the "zealotry" claims lately are truly on an unjustifiable statement.
Excessive may not be negative depending on what a person considers "going beyond the usual".
- Is reading a programming book "excessive"?
- Is blogging "excessive"?
- Is presenting on a subject "excessive"?
- Is working on an open source project "excessive"?
Sadly, i would say "Yes" these are excessive. These are "going beyond the usual".
Are these negative? No. Next time, when I hear zealotry used, I'll try to keep this in mind. Was the zealotry claim on some "unjustifiable" statement? In most cases, I doubt the actual instance called zealtory was "unjustifiable" so it isn't negative but a positive case of zealotry.
In this post's context, I think ColdFusion needs more zealots which means "going beyond the usual" with "enthusiastic diligence" using CFML.
Zealotry is also defined as: excessive intolerance of opposing views - http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=zealotry
I don't know about anyone else, but I'd rather not have any more people who are intolerant of opposing views.
"Intolerance" is definitely negative. I did find an intolerance connection in the Thesaurus section of http://www.thefreedictionary.com/zealotry after your comment.
From my view, the perceived zealots of late are actually tolerant since they are "going beyond the usual" with new/old stuff and not intolerant. I'll try to think of "good" zealotry when mentioned in general unless a specific "intolerance" statement is noted.
"Bad" zealotry (intolerance) is definitely not needed in CFML. I think more "good" zealotry is definitely needed in ColdFusion.
Reminds me of my high school and college debate days, when we'd spend 10 minutes in a debate over a definition of a word :-)
What Scott refers to is the modern day "fanboy": Not only are they opposed to opposite views, often times they're totally ignorant, having never used the opposing platform or product, and often times, they're just repeating the same tired arguments their fellow fanboys are using. (Great example: the Apple fanboys who repeat whatever Gruber says, no matter how much or little truth it contains)
What Mike is referring to is advocacy: engaged people, those who do more than sit on the sidelines.
You know what Billy? You are pretty smart..I don't care what Mike says about you, :D
You nailed it. I guess what I loathe is the blind devotion, as well as being opposed to opposite views.
For example, I have plenty of friends who own and use Apple products - people who really enjoy the products and truly feel they are better than the alternative - that I would not consider 'zealots'.
I will agree, we need more advocates.
The word zealot is not new, it comes from the first century AD - the Zealots were a militant Jewish sect who violently opposed to Roman rule in Palestine - so not surprising the word has "negative connotations".
As Scott says, we've already got too much of that in the CFML community.
"Good zealotry" can be described more simply as "passion", and again, we've got plenty of passionate developers.
Advocacy is a much better word, particularly since the focus is on *active* involvement, and that's the thing the CFML community needs more of - instead of a bunch of [overly] passionate devs who simply sit on the sideline (until CF is bashed and then they pile in) - we need more people to get involved with advocating CFML at all times, in a level headed way, and simply being a constructive part of the community, in one way or another.
And I don't even see that as going beyond the usual - rather, I see anyone who is not actively involved in the community is below the usual / lacking / missing out.
Thanks for the comment. Active and constructive are good descriptions. I am trying in my approach, when I hear zealotry tossed around to think of it as a positive since someone is actively doing some, blogging, tweeting, not sitting on the side line. I haven't witness the "intolerance" some see behind people being excited about products.
I would go further as to say, "advocate with a passion". That replaces "zealot" and casts this in a better light.
Mike this is really a great post - really gets at maybe THE issue in our community: how to focus our efforts just on promoting the language we all love and avoid engaging in bickering between ourselves over frameworks or CFML engines.
Your kind of zealotry, or advocacy with passion, as Peter, Billy and Lola suggest, is exactly what we need, particularly as we break into the Gov 2.0 space, where I think we can really make our mark: CFML is now free and open source, still unrivaled for rapid application development, accessible for having both a tag and ECMA script syntax, already pretty ubiquitous in government at all levels, and really well-suited to all the (often free) cloud hosting options we enjoy now...
We need more of a "Big Tent" approach towards everyone who loves CFML, whether they like to pay for it or not, because, to outsiders, we're all perceived as the same community. For me, this is the core philosophy behind http://OpenCFSummit.org.
The best way to promote any technology is not to promote the technology.
Instead, build cool, usable things that people love, and want to use, and start using. Over time when it becomes a core part of their stack, the language is sitting there for them to learn and extend with.
This is exactly how other open source languages like PHP have taken a foothold with Wordpress, and the wonderful Cucumber made it into places to get Ruby in the house.
Luckily, Java is already in many houses, we just need continued and greater innovation and best-of-breed tools.
Jas
Absolutely Jas - spot on.