Why must you laugh at my back end?
Cold Fusion? No, no... <i>no</i>.<p>> CFML.  I really like programming in CFML (a programming language, “ColdFusion Markup Language,” as opposed to ColdFusion, a commercial CFML interpreter made by Adobe).  I know it’s not "cool" like Node.js or Clojure or even RoR.<p>Doctors used to bleed people with leeches to get out the "bad humors". They stopped using that "tool" for a reason. It was a <i>bad tool</i>, and better "tools" came along.<p>Not only is CFML not <i>cool</i>, it is hard for most people not familiar with CFML to understand [1]. The syntax mixes in with HTML markup in such a way as to make it very difficult to distinguish the two apart. <i>With</i> a syntax highlighter your mind still has a hard time as there isn't enough of a difference to make a subconscious context switch easy. Also, the need to cram logic constructs into HTML/XML-like syntax makes for some screwed up code. My understanding is that you can put the attributes for the tags in any order, and that means that things you'd always expect (in other languages) to appear in a certain order, like conditions for statements, are instead a matter of style [2].<p>> It’s got an old vibe. Not just because it was the first made-for-web programming language (tho it’s modern & updated frequently), but because whenever I meet other CFML coders, they’re always old dudes.<p>My experience with CF developers is similar. This is not a good thing. This is <i>nothing</i> like the C and C++ graybeards you occasionally meet and develop immense respect for. These old CF developers are, in my anecdotal experience, the kind people that learned one type of development and stuck with it for a long, <i>long</i> time. They've not really improved their skill sets beyond what was popular practice when they first learned Cold Fusion. These are the kind of people (I kid you not) that think HTML tables are a <i>great</i> way to get your page layout <i>just right</i>.<p>Why did the OP take an entire blog post to say what could have been posted to Twitter ("you darn kids and your twittin'!")? The whole post boils down to what appears to be proud, willful ignorance.<p>A lot of "you're a developer, but you really should learn about business" stuff gets posted to HN. This case looks to be turned around and we have a business person doing double-duty as a developer. My advice is to learn something more current, and not because it's cool. More current technology has business value in that it's easier to find people who can work with/on it, and you will be able to find more of those kind of people for longer. The underlying tech will also (usually) be supported for longer, and by a wider range of companies. The reasons are too many to comprehensively list here.<p>I wasn't laughing at your back-end, by the way. It made me a little sad.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.quackit.com/coldfusion/coldfusion_tutorial.cfm" rel="nofollow">http://www.quackit.com/coldfusion/coldfusion_tutorial.cfm</a><p>[2] <a href="http://www.quackit.com/coldfusion/tutorial/coldfusion_loops.cfm" rel="nofollow">http://www.quackit.com/coldfusion/tutorial/coldfusion_loops....</a>