# Adobe ColdFusion

11 Hacker News commenters recommended Adobe ColdFusion and 15 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 7 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 26 years (3 owners).

**Verdict:** Recommended for fast, template-friendly web development and a stable, well-documented platform that some have used for decades. Common caveat: many find its tag-based language and legacy codebases painful.

## Why people recommend it

- Templating and good vendor support (2 comments): "Using HTML templating and good support from a small and agile company had a lot to recommend it" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50253943)) "They're well-documented, well-supported products." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50253784))
- Lively community and solid documentation (2 comments): "They're well-documented, well-supported products." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50253784)) "ColdFusion has a very lively community" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50254493))
- Preferred over PHP and Ruby (2 comments): "I will go to my grave insisting that Coldfusion was a better platform than PHP" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49243161)) "I still think its a better alternative to PHP or Ruby(rails)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50254684))
- Steady living for many years (2 comments): "I've made a very good living with ColdFusion consistently since I picked it up in 1997." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50253534)) "It put a lot of food on my table in the early 2000's." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50252618))

## What people warn about

- Dated reputation and bad memories (5 comments): "Hackers have historically derided any website generators or tools like ColdFusion[tm]" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46058138)) "Don't recall having a great time using it, though I was very young at the time" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46621798)) "I remember Cold Fusion quite well. You might have PTSD." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46633547))
- Tag-based language and paradigm (3 comments): "I have very mixed feeling on the language as a whole, both the tag and script language" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47147739)) "I've lived through some horrific 10M line coldfusion codebases that embraced this paradigm to death" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46799783)) "one of the primary criticisms of ColdFusion was programming logic in the form of tags" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46621184))
- Legacy codebases seen as nightmares (3 comments): "That I dislike especially given the code base was written by amateur developers" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47147702)) "I've lived through some horrific 10M line coldfusion codebases that embraced this paradigm to death" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46799783)) "The entire stack described in the post is the stuff of nightmares." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50253181))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Apache Tomcat](https://hackerapproved.com/p/apache-tomcat.md): 6 recommend
- [GlassFish](https://hackerapproved.com/p/eclipse-glassfish.md): 5 recommend

## Where to get it

- [Visit the official site](https://www.adobe.com/products/coldfusion-family.html)

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Adobe ColdFusion", https://hackerapproved.com/p/coldfusion/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).