I wrote CFML for the better part of two decades, only getting away from it in the past couple years. I started back with 4.5 when I found it on a shelf at the

I wrote CFML for the better part of two decades, only getting away from it in the past couple years. I started back with 4.5 when I found it on a shelf at the publishing company I worked for in high school - a former employee had won it in a contest at a conference and had no idea what it was. I ended up building an entire ecommerce system on it, building many backoffice apps, connected to the mainframe and building far faster than the green screen programmers ever could. (this is not a critique of mainframes or green screens, there was much value there thats been lost, but I digress) I am very happy to be away from CF today. it was one thing with macromedia, a different thing when adobe bought it and IMO mismanaged it over the years (I cant believe they still have it tbh, the money they make from legacy apps using it in the enterprise must be enormous), and while lucee started off great, it lost its way and never had enough resources to do things well. But the biggest thing was that like many niche languages, you end up with a cult of zealots - either true believers, those whose livelihoods are tied to it, or those who are so pot committed to it they have to convince everyone around them that they’re continuing to make the right choice sticking with it. Ive seen it with many niche or dying languages, the ones that have been around as long as this one, really had time to metastasize, theyre the worst though. You cant criticize or critique without causing drama. “evangelists” jumping into every thread, yelling how CF isnt dead, how their latest framework is the one true way, arguing over things that dont matter. I know because I was one of those people for a decent stretch. Not wanting to believe that the language I had chosen and spent so much time with wasnt the the best. But I also look back fondly on CF, and others like it. PHP, rails, these are looked down on today but there are so many places where they are an excellent choice for the job at hand. Types are fantastic once you reach a level of complexity and size, theyre a hindrance till then. The compiler is great when you reach that size, it slows you down till then. In my “modern” stack at work, there are lots of nice features, but the iteration speed is a tenth of what I had with my server-rendered, JIT, html sprinkled with programming language. We delivered more value, far faster. So I guess ill just say, thank you CF for what you were, still are for many. If youre on the outside or inside nowadays, dont look down on it, but also dont think about it like religion.