There is one thing that continues to rear its misinformed head at me no matter where I seem to work, and that is fear of technology for fear’s sake. its Intriguing to me because a lot of the times, Companies are aware of technologies that could potentially make them more money, but also, I’ve run across others who don’t understand or properly comprehend the technologies enough around them to realize the benefits, but they turn a deaf ear to it.

Its understandable that some of the fear is driven by cost. The cost to learn, the cost to maintain, and the cost of dignity to admit you don’t know everything, and that there might just be something out there for a senior engineer to learn. Companies are more willing to “just do what works” because it makes them the fastest money. They are more inclined to stick with the quickest moneymaker, their “foundation of code” that may be outdated and brittle, but the client won’t know that till its too late, and their checks clear, right?

Unfortunately, thats a very scary reality. It makes me cringe to think how many shops out there (especially older CF shops) work with this mentality. Something that I’d like to bring extra attention to is the fact that I stated older. I think its safe to say that a lot of people who got into ColdFusion 6+ years ago have a much different mindset than ColdFusion developers who’ve gotten into it say, 3+ years ago, maybe. I think that that 3 year shift in mindset has a lot to do with the types of solutions we were writing for the web then, to the types of advanced applications we do today with ColdFusion.

The inherent issue is the fact that our solutions have evolved to this meet more advanced needs, but as developers, our methodologies may have not. we may be building larger-scale, more advanced applications that rely on “action files” for our forms, or our code may be sprinkled with queries throughout. Of course, there is nothing wrong with this approach, but as applications grow and become exponentially more and more complex, that code may show just how brittle it truly is in the face of enterprise needs and growth.

But it makes money, the processes may have not stood the test of time, but the money it produces is just as green. I have heard that argument thousands of times, and I’ve never myself thought it really stood any ground because the fact is, eventually, bad code will come back to haunt you. You’ll get an e-mail from a project you cringe when you think about having to fix, or you sit back and realize what you’ve written is poor and not really you’re best, but you move on because time is money.

The other strange approach that older shops take is to rely on “how much experience” they have with CF and how they have never needed these new practices and methodologies in the past. Again, I find this to be an argument that doesn’t hold any ground because as I previously stated, we have found ourselves building applications today that have become much more complex than before, but since that “cf guru” we all know “has been doing this for years”, they don’t think things have become more complex, they fit the same shoe on everyones foot.

I see this as yet another more dangerous approach to development, people who “been doing things this way for 10 years” have a much lower chance of being around for another 10. I think its safe to say that virtually nothing has stayed the same on the web for the last 10 years (hell, even the last 5 years). New approaches, new technologies, new this and that are coming out all the time, and to pretend it doesn’t exist is just foolish and inevitably an extremely dangerous mindset for a company to maintain. Not that I am saying its our responsibility to adopt any and all technologies that came out, but at least to be aware of them, do some research on them.

I feel that at the end of the day, it comes down to this, contracting tends to work this way, Developers figure they “don’t have time” to crack open a book, they need to get work done and satisfy a client expectation, and we can bet that no client is paying anyone to crack open a book (unfortunately). And that same developer doesn’t attend conferences or training because “it takes away from money I could be making”, when the real truth is, its investing in you’re knowledgebase and increasing the amount of money you’re worth. But for that developer, its hard to make that sale because they’ve done things the they’re way for so long, that thats just the way it is.

Being a nerd, I really wanted to embrace this technology, Vonage seemed like a really cool alternative to phone service, it was relatively inexpensive (because at the time I needed long distance, cheap) and they offered some really cool features…and it was only a month to month low cost fee of $29.99! Seems too good to be true, I thought…I was right.

Slowly, service began to degrade. I would get a phone call (that often times would ring only once for some bizarre reason) and I would say “Hello”, hear nothing for a good 5 seconds and then suddenly hear the pissed of “EXCUSE ME HELLO?!” of the person on the other line. This happened on a regular basis and really pissed me off to no end.

As I began to say, my phone would often ring only once, and then forward off to my cell phone..which was a nice feature when I wasn’t home, but was terrible when I was. I would run to grab the phone, only to have to run back to my cell phone in the other room, what a pain!

Also, I had friends complain about voice quality and general audio lag in long conversations, even when I wasn’t doing anything on the web!

So I decided (nearly 10 months later) that I should cancel my account. Of course, the only way you can do this is by calling them during their 8AM-5PM EST Monday - Friday window, and you have to be put on hold for a majority of your day. The first time I called them I was on hold for nearly 2 HOURS, and I NEVER spoke with anyone (after basically repeatedly hitting 0, so I could have been anyone requesting service or support!). The next day I called and got through to a human in about 10 minutes (good for them), and then “had to be transfered to account management”. That took another good 10 minutes, and then the fun started.

The service rep started to go on about how she was so sorry that I was leaving but that I should reconsider the service, in the event of an emergency the vonage service might be more reliable than my cell phone. I responded, “My cell phone has actually been consistently more reliable than your service, no thanks”. She then retorted, “Is the monthly price an issue? we could lower it to a $12 a month fee..etc.”. I responded, “No, I’d pay $100 bucks a month if your service worked half as good as you advertise it does”. More begging and negotiating ensued and finally she says to me “Okay sir, I am sorry you feel this way I will cancel the account, please hold”.

Finally! its about damn time! She returns about 4 minutes later and says, okay sir “is there anyone you’d like to transfer this account to in your family or a friend perhaps?” I said, “No, I don’t wish this on anyone”. She responded saying “well, reason I ask is because since you are terminating your service within your 12 month agreement, there will be a termination fee”. TERMINATION FEE?! (It was a whopping 30 bucks, whatever..) I actually had the rep cite me the clause in their Terms Of Service that states this is the case, and it was true:

3.6 Disconnection Fee (Does Not Apply to Business Plus Customers). You will be charged a disconnection fee of $39.99 per voice line if your Service is disconnected, subject to applicable state and local laws. However, if your Service was activated on or after February 1, 2007 and is disconnected after two (2) years following your activation date, the disconnection fee is waived. If your Service was activated on or before January 31, 2007, the disconnection fee is waived if your Service is disconnected one (1) year following your activation date.

Amazing, so, this service actually lived up to nothing they advertised…

In conclusion, I would not recommend this service to my enemies. It seems from what I’ve read, the service is “regionally acceptable”, so depending on where it is your using this service, it could be better. I didn’t figure I’d have an issue in San Jose, CA..but I sure as hell did.  I am most likely going to try my hand at Skype next. It has always been far more reliable.