Yes, CF was hardly the first to provide a templating framework for output generation. But ColdFusion's competitive advantage was how it seamlessly integrated database access, in particular SQL SELECTs and INSERTs, into HTML-based template looping and HTML forms. For a ridiculous number of applications, especially business applications, that's all anybody really needs. It was abstract enough to support many kinds of data sources (e.g. CSV files), which IIRC was one of the most common ways to extend the engine. And it was simple enough that even people who struggled jumping from HTML to a proper programming language could crank out useful applications, especially if someone provided them a SQL query to copy+paste.
Years later C# would be lauded for LINQ, which provided for C# what ColdFusion provided to markup transformations.
These sorts of language integrations weren't new, either. Years later I would discover and dabble with Perl's format framework: https://perldoc.perl.org/perlform. I had actually learned Perl a few years before I was introduced to ColdFusion, though I don't think many Perl programmers were ever familiar with formats. (It is rather frustrating for modern uses.) And while I didn't make the connection at the time, I believe some older languages (Fortran? SPSS?) which I was briefly introduced to in college supported similar language-integrated data source and record processing capabilities, though like Perl formats they were designed for tabular text output.
But this history only emphasizes how important of a competitive advantage this was for ColdFusion, which was completely squandered.
Regarding the discussion of PHP elsethread, about a year after taking over maintenance of a ColdFusion website (where I was first introduced to ColdFusion), I advocated for and was allowed to migrate the site to PHP. That was about the time PHP made the switch from Perl (PHP 2) to C (PHP 3). Before then I actually didn't even know PHP existed, despite being an avid Linux and Perl user. At the time I was convinced ColdFusion sucked. It was only later in my career that I slowly began to appreciate what ColdFusion brought to the table technologically.
Years later C# would be lauded for LINQ, which provided for C# what ColdFusion provided to markup transformations.
These sorts of language integrations weren't new, either. Years later I would discover and dabble with Perl's format framework: https://perldoc.perl.org/perlform. I had actually learned Perl a few years before I was introduced to ColdFusion, though I don't think many Perl programmers were ever familiar with formats. (It is rather frustrating for modern uses.) And while I didn't make the connection at the time, I believe some older languages (Fortran? SPSS?) which I was briefly introduced to in college supported similar language-integrated data source and record processing capabilities, though like Perl formats they were designed for tabular text output.
But this history only emphasizes how important of a competitive advantage this was for ColdFusion, which was completely squandered.
Regarding the discussion of PHP elsethread, about a year after taking over maintenance of a ColdFusion website (where I was first introduced to ColdFusion), I advocated for and was allowed to migrate the site to PHP. That was about the time PHP made the switch from Perl (PHP 2) to C (PHP 3). Before then I actually didn't even know PHP existed, despite being an avid Linux and Perl user. At the time I was convinced ColdFusion sucked. It was only later in my career that I slowly began to appreciate what ColdFusion brought to the table technologically.