I am a developer and a big part of my programming is done with ColdFusion. Making me partially dependent on it for a living. Due to this I often evaluate its future. I also do this for plenty of other technology out there (jQuery, jQuery UI, Node.js, backbone.js, Sencha, Terracotta/ehcache are some I've looked at in the past six months). I do this for personal reasons, so I can make enough money to put food on the table, and professional reasons as it is currently part of my job.

In the past week Adobe has announced a change in strategy and pretty massive layoffs. As my buddy Dan Wilson put it on Twitter:

Funny, I wondered where the netflix PR team went after their disaster earlier this year. Obviously, they went to Adobe.

Due to nature of the news and the angst it has caused there have also been questions asked within the ColdFusion community about its future.

My short response is: The future of ColdFusion is positive and in a good, strong position.

My longer response and why is below.

First ColdFusion makes money for Adobe. Rob Brooks-Bilson wrote on Twitter over the weekend:

The thing to remember with CF is that CF is profitable for Adobe.

Second, at MAX, the ColdFusion team was quite bullish about showing features in the next version of ColdFusion. More.

Now, also over the past few years Adobe have invited me (and many others) to see their plans for ColdFusion. All of this information is confidential so I can't share it but, and I'll be careful here, part of that means knowing what future plans are and therefore knowing if they got changed. So, today came confirmation by ColdFusion Sales Engineer Josh Adams that nothing has changed for ColdFusion:

Following on the heels of the slew of Adobe announcements of last week, Adobe evangelist Terry Ryan released a blog post stating that ColdFusion Zeus is still under development and on schedule. We're still here--same leadership, engineers, and sales team as before last week--and we're still selling ColdFusion 9 and working hard on the next version of ColdFusion, codenamed ColdFusion Zeus.

(There is more in his blog entry as well, including information about Zeus release dates, so do read it).

Third, ColdFusion moved from the Flash Platform earlier this year and, thus, was not around for the changes to the Flash Platform that happened last week. Its worth reading a quote from Adam Lehman's blog entry announcing the change:

The fact of the matter is Adobe just upped their commitment to ColdFusion in a HUGE way.

Forth, ColdFusion is part of a big ecosystem in Java (and due to its .NET integration possibly also within an enterprises ecosystem). While the Flash Platform had to invent just about everything themselves, ColdFusion does not. ColdFusion can use Java open source libraries (and often contribute to) and also improve the core language. Take two parts of ColdFusion 9 as an example, it can take Hibernate and make ORM ridiculously easy and improve the language itself via script based components.

So, thats my long answer as to why I believe the future of ColdFusion is positive and in a good, strong position.

You may have noticed that in the opening paragraph I mentioned that I was "partially dependent" on ColdFusion. That is because as awesome as I think ColdFusion is (and others like jQuery, ORM) knowing what a programming language can do is only part of being a great developer. Its knowing how to use languages that truly makes great developers. And, in my opinion, that is a process that involves constant learning, reading, practicing, trying new things, failing, succeeding and having fun. Most of that is up to you not a language. So, don't worry about ColdFusion -- it will be fine -- and spend time making yourself a better developer. Write more unit tests. Do the ColdFusion Koans. Learn more about ORM. Find out what on is in jQuery 1.7. Investigate NoSQL. Read The Passionate Programmer. Find out what AOP is. And whatever you do don't engage in FUD.