The entire stack described in the post is the stuff of nightmares. ColdFusion, IIS on Windows Server, PHP. Things that make you wake up in a cold sweat.
"Yo dawg, I hear you like security vulnerabilities..."
CF was an interesting path. I used the Python equivalent, Zope, extensively back in the day. Both could glue together some really powerful components and allow you to write whole web apps more or less declaratively.
That said, we collectively tried that experiment ("we" includes you, my JBoss compatriots) and realized this is not The Way Forward. That doesn't mean they're valueless, not at all! And it's the sort of experiment you have to try or else it's always going to be nagging at the back of your mind: "what if we tried this... and it was amazing?" But we did try it, and it was not amazing.
If you have to maintain CF or Zope or JBoss today, godspeed. Just know that life is easier elsewhere. It doesn't have to be this way. It's not this way for everyone.
ColdFusion did a lot of things right for its time, but it can only be appreciated if one understands the engineering challenges of the time period (e.g. perl cgi-bin). Using HTML templating and good support from a small and agile company had a lot to recommend it, and many people built a living out of it, both inside and outside Allaire.
I've made a very good living with ColdFusion consistently since I picked it up in 1997. There are now several really nice MVC frameworks for ColdFusion out there. If you've not used it in decades, it has a fully script-based syntax now, and there is a strong free CF engine (Lucee).
The newest integrations with AI are definitely interesting.
I've been pleasantly surprised to see some inklings of growth in CF adoption, though I'm comfortable saying that most new code in ANY language is going to be written with AI going forward.
With the latest PHP vulnerabilities - ColdFusion is actually a selling point: "Gee, it doesn't run 60+ percent of the internet, but it's actively maintained and can be configured to be secure."
What does this mean? This being a revelation for a web tech solution strikes me as strange. I saw a tiny bit of CF like 25 years ago and perhaps mistakenly thought it did this back then.
Edit: No we don't oh please god no.
What gives me cold sweats are custom application servers that no one knows how they work.
CF was an interesting path. I used the Python equivalent, Zope, extensively back in the day. Both could glue together some really powerful components and allow you to write whole web apps more or less declaratively.
That said, we collectively tried that experiment ("we" includes you, my JBoss compatriots) and realized this is not The Way Forward. That doesn't mean they're valueless, not at all! And it's the sort of experiment you have to try or else it's always going to be nagging at the back of your mind: "what if we tried this... and it was amazing?" But we did try it, and it was not amazing.
If you have to maintain CF or Zope or JBoss today, godspeed. Just know that life is easier elsewhere. It doesn't have to be this way. It's not this way for everyone.
The newest integrations with AI are definitely interesting.
I've been pleasantly surprised to see some inklings of growth in CF adoption, though I'm comfortable saying that most new code in ANY language is going to be written with AI going forward.
With the latest PHP vulnerabilities - ColdFusion is actually a selling point: "Gee, it doesn't run 60+ percent of the internet, but it's actively maintained and can be configured to be secure."
What does this mean? This being a revelation for a web tech solution strikes me as strange. I saw a tiny bit of CF like 25 years ago and perhaps mistakenly thought it did this back then.