I presented an introduction to Flex Builder 2 this evening to my local CFUG, the Detroit Area ColdFusion User Group. Some of the attendees had seen Flex previously, but none had actually used it themselves. This made showing it off both fun and easy.

And to make things more interesting, I used a very recent build of Flex Builder 2 (so recent that I had to rework some of my demos minutes before we started). No, it did not crash, but I did have to close and reopen my project a few times. But hey, the new features make it so worthwhile! ;-)

All in all, a very good meeting. And a 5 minute commute home from a CFUG is a pleasant rarity!

The TIOBE Programming Community Index for January 2006 has been released. Java and C have treaded places for the #1 and #2 spots (Java is now in the lead), Python and Delphi are slipping, C# is on the rise, Ruby misses the top 20 by one spot ... and ColdFusion climbed from 25th to 16th (the biggest mover on the board).

There are some real oddballs here, too. ActionScript below Prolog and Ada? PL/SQL as a programming language (but no other SQL implementations)? And it gets worse, too.

Now, just to be brutally honest, I have no faith in these numbers and in what they are supposed to mean. And so I don't read much (if at all) into rankings and comparative movements. But, one point may be worthy of consideration. Assuming that the data compilation and analysis used the same techniques and patterns this year as they did last, TIOBE has discovered massive growth in ColdFusion use this past year.