Thursday, June 18, 2009

ColdFusion Inconsistencies

One of my biggest pet peeves in programming is inconsistency. I absolutely hate it when things aren't consistent, especially when it's something really, really simple.

ColdFusion 9 is going to include some new functionality for dealing with spreadsheets. While this should be a huge win for ColdFusion, I'm a little disappointed in the implementation. Why? Let's take a look at the tags:


<cfspreadsheet action="read" src="c:\Sales.xls" query="sales" />


Hmmm... that looks pretty similar to...


<cffile action="read" file="c:\Sales.xls" variable="sales" />


But they changed "file" to "src" and "variable" to "query". Odd. That also looks pretty similar to...


<cffile action="write" file="c:\Sales.xls" output="#sales#" />


Well at least that's a little consistent. And the spreadsheet equivalent...


<cfspreadsheet action="write" filename="c:\Sales.xls" name="sales" />


What? Now it's "filename"? And now they're using a "name" attribute instead of the "variable" attribute? Huh? Why?

Just for fun, let's check out one last cffile action...


<cffile action="copy" source="Sales.xls" destination="Sales2.xls" />


Now they're using "source" again, but this time spelled out.

Honestly, am I the only person that's bothered by this?

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