ColdFusion Markup Language
By Mark Cyzyk
The Yale computer scientist David Gelernter, in his book Machine Beauty: Elegance and the Heart of Technology, persuasively argues that much of the development of superior technology relies not so much on what the technology does, but how it does what it does. Specifically, Gelernter asks, does the technology work in an elegant manner and is it simple, yet powerful?
Consider the selection of server-side scripting languages: The big contenders in this arena are Active Server Pages (ASP) and JavaServer Pages (JSP). Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP) is also starting to edge in on the market. While each is powerful in its own way, neither of the environments is particularly aesthetic by Gelernter's definition. Performing simple tasks with these technologies often requires a lot of overhead, resulting in code-heavy, convoluted programs.
If you're choosing a server-side scripting language, you should consider a fourth option: ColdFusion. Because it acts more like a markup language than a programming language, ColdFusion is an elegant solution for embedding code in HTML files. Allaire, the company that also makes the popular HomeSite HTML editor, has a whole suite of ColdFusion technologies consisting of an application server, an integrated development environment, and of course, the markup language. It is this ColdFusion Markup Language (CFML) that competes directly with ASP and JSP.
Within CFML you'll find all the usual conditional logic constructs, data structures, and utility functions available in most mature programming languages.
