In my previous post on porting one of my Fusebox applications over to ColdBox, one of my readers asked the question in the comments:

"Hey Russ,

Curious as to why you are porting from Fusebox to Coldbox? What about Coldbox do you like more than Fusebox if anything?"

I actually started replying to his question in the comments and then I realized I had about 3 paragraphs in my reply already and this might get buried in the comments. So I decided to make it a post to explain my reasons for choosing to use ColdBox over Fusebox for this application and most all of my new applications.

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I've been using Fusebox for well over 6 years now. Its the only framework I have have ever used when developing applications for clients or myself. Its served its purpose well and has always seemed to fit my needs. However, lately I have been running into some things that are frustrating me about it. Mostly when it comes to working with other frameworks for CFC's and throwing in an ORM here and there.

I have been working on an application over the last month or two that I wrote in FB5 and ColdSpring. At first it was fine. Mostly due to the custom lexicons written by Nathan Strutz to instantiate ColdSpring and get beans from the factory right in the XML control file. Then after seeing Mark Mandels Breezo on the Transfer ORM, I decided I wanted to give it a whirl and throw it into the mix. Now this is where things started to get interesting (read aggravating).

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I've been coding ColdFusion applications for about 8 years now and I consider myself to be a pretty good developer. I have used Fusebox for every app I have built going all the way back to 1999. I follow pretty sound coding practices and read all the blogs and try to keep up with whats going on in the CF Community. But for some reason, I am just not getting a handle on this Model-Glue thing!

I have spent almost all day today setting up Model-Glue:Unity and trying to get a simple app up and running using a few CFC's and some views. I read the Model-Glue Quickstart in the documentation and managed to get the basic application template up and running but thats about the extent of it. I feel like someone has Model-Glued my head to the table and then flipped it upside down on me.

I know there is something that I am just missing or not grasping that is preventing me from moving forward with it but I cannot put my finger on it. No matter how many times I go through the code, or read a tutorial or refer to the documentation.

Maybe I have just been doing Fusebox for too long and have no experience with any other frameworks. Maybe my brain just thinks in fuses and circuits and then short-circuits when I try to alter the way that I think about an application.

Im not going to give up but, WOW, I certainly need a break so Im going back to doing some Fusebox development for the evening. Ahhh, the comforting feeling of something familiar!