ColdFusion Markup Language (CFML) is a dynamic web programming language, which is especially suited for new developers as it was written to make a programmer's job easy and not care if the computer's job is hard. ColdFusion's main goal is to be a rapid application development scripting language and middleware. It integrates with many technologies to provide you with an out-of-the-box language that makes things easy. In this brief introduction we'll look at key language features you need to get started.

Going Deep

ColdFusion (CFML) is an interpreted and dynamic ECMA Script like language that compiles to Java Bytecode directly, thus running in the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and in almost every operating system. Implementations of the language are mostly done by two parties: Adobe ColdFusion (Commercial) and Lucee Server (Free & Open Source) and saw its beginnings in 1995. It is a mature and modern language and development platform. You can discover all the versions here: https://cfdocs.org/coldfusion-versions​

Developing with ColdFusion

All examples shown in this book will be done leveraging CommandBox as the de-facto standard for ColdFusion (CFML) development.

​CommandBox is a standalone, native tool for Windows, Mac, and Linux that will provide you with a Command Line Interface (CLI) for developer productivity, tool interaction, package management, REPL, embedded ColdFusion/Java server, application scaffolding, and some sweet ASCII art.

ColdFusion Docs Reference

The best way for discovering the methods, tags and functionality of the ColdFusion language is to leverage cfdocs.org. Make sure you open it and bookmark it.

IDE - Editors

There are many flavors of IDE's but here are our recommendations.

• ​Sublime 3 - Our recommended option due to extensions and plugins.

• ​Adobe ColdFusion Builder​

• ​Atom Editor​

• ​Vistual Studio Code​

• ​IntelliJ​

Tip: Install the CFML, ColdBox and CommandBox plugins for Sublime 3