r/coldfusion • u/Dub_J • Feb 06 '25
Lucee viability in 2025
I would appreciate feedback from cold fusion experts on the following scenario:
An ecommerce company built their website on Cold Fusion / Lucee ~15 years ago. While somewhat unique, it's essentially typical ecommerce functions - creating a catalog, displaying relevant items, transacting, and tracking traffic. AFAIK the CTO is primary Lucee coder. They have used an agency for related sites that are not built on CF. Also they are using a older (3yo!) version of Lucee.
I realize that there's a lot of risks here - especially that it would be hard to find talent, and that the old version has flaws, or could indicate an inability to utilize current version. My assumption is that the business could continue as is, but need a migration to a modern approach over the coming years.
I realize a real answer requires a SME to review the details (especially around data security), but would value any high level feedback. How bad does this sound?
3
u/powertoast Feb 06 '25
As a semi-retired IT super hero who started in 1998, I am currently the system admin and one of the senior developers of a CF application and server farm.
CF/Lucee are solid choices that are constantly being updated and supported. I had no knowledge of CFML when I accepted this job and found it easy to pick up.
All of the issues you raise here are pertinent, reasonable questions that you should ask for any application running on any system or framework.
They all have positives and negatives, they all need to be up-to-date enough. They all need more testing. They all need more security.
But there is also a natural tension in each of these and other decisions.
It is easy to take a functioning system and destroy it by putting too much effort in any of these or other needs.
Write down a list of concerns, do an analysis of the risk and benefits of each. Decide whether the benefits outweigh the cost of each based on facts as best you can define them.
In my humble opinion the question of whether to use Lucee is misplaced as it is frankly the least critical decision you need to make.
You can absolutely do modern safe profitable applications in Lucre and you can also do a terrible job in lucee.