The Future of ColdFusion Part 1

The CFUnited Keynote usually gives a good insight into the future of ColdFusion and this year was no different. What a great way to kick off the event so lets get right into what was talked about. Ben started off at 9:00 AM talking about the state of ColdFusion today. With no actual numbers to report he did say that sales are superb and that the numbers are the best they have ever been for Adobe. That right there should just let any doubters know that CF is not going anywhere.

The next item on the agenda was the announcement of CF Open Process. This to me is great move on Adobe's part. This will consist of a public bug database and a way to request enhancements. Right now there is no real easy way to find out if your code is breaking or if there is a bug you are not aware of. As far as enhancement requests I think the only way to do that now is to email Ben or Jason and that is not a real good way to go about it. There are also plans to add Custom advisory boards with focused committees on CFML, RIA & frameworks. The development of the next version of ColdFusion is well underway at this point. The next version of ColdFusion breaks down into 3 specific areas.

• Advancing CFML
• Improved Integration (Flex/AIR)
• Improving the developer Experience (I won't say it but you can guess what that may or may not be!)

Next was to me one of the biggest announcements of the Conference. One of the biggest problems with ColdFusion is the lack of developers. So how do you get more people into CF? This problem really starts and ends with Education. Adobe clearly understands that they need to reach the educational market with ColdFusion. With that they announced that ColdFusion will be available for free to Students and faculty for academic use. This is a similar model to Flex and there will be no restrictions on the software. Ben also made it a strong point to note that this is enterprise edition which is a big plus. On top of providing the software they really want to help on the education side as well. There are plans to provide training materials which should help push the adoption rate. This great news and I could not agree more with Ben that this really should of been done a long time ago.

The next problem is one that I am glad to be seeing addressed. CFML as we all know is the language we write in, not ColdFusion. With other available products today there needs to be some consistency in the CFML language. With that the announcement of the CFML Language Advisory board. The board will be made up of some really great people

• Sean Corfield
• Ben Forta
• Gurt Frantz (Ralio)
• Ray Camden
• Rob Brooks-Bilson
• Sanjeev Kumar

That was part 1 and in part 2 I want to dive into the sneak peak of Centar (CF9). There is some really great features coming and I can't wait to talk about them. Any thoughts on the stuff I talked about here though are welcomed.