ColdFusion Alive

About ColdFusion Alive

The ColdFusion Experts: Develop | Secure | Optimize

Publisher

Michaela Light

Category

business · news · technology

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

29 Mar 2017

Latest episode

13 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

144 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   13 Oct 2026

   144 Anxious about AI writing CF code (and how to overcome your fears) with Ray Camden

   Ray Camden talks about “Anxious about AI writing CF code (and how to overcome your fears)” in this episode of ColdFusion Alive Podcast with host Michaela Light. “...that is the big shift I’ve seen over the last year, is that with all of the guardrails around things, it is so much more efficient and easier to trust AI to build what I want…” https://youtu.be/cObnRO_4lKQ Show notes Anxious about AI writing code? Vibe-coded horror stories Skills Your coding style, steps and guardrails Alternative AI tasks if you don't want to let AI code Plan Test Review writing and code Ideation to overcome writers block Use your own judgment and sense Confidence in AI-generated code Hallucinations Unit tests Human read (some) of the AI-gen code, eye Critique this code prompt - ideally with a different AI Blog as a static site Hugo, to Jerkel, to Eleventy Astro Learning new languages Learning Typescript Does this code make sense Coming from other languages to CF Webawesome web library - similar idea to Bootstrap CSS AI sanity checking of my code Better syntax checking Break down my line(s) of code Stackoverflow developer vs AI assisted developer Entry-level jobs Software development new career paths AI IDEs and vibe coding VS Code Agentic agent dev tools Less typing of code Autocomplete on steroids SDLC and PRs Create or update skill from what it learned Ask AI agent - how can I utilize you better? Can you improve AI coding as a super compiler Higher level view Beyond frameworks Does the target language matter any more? Adobe CF MCP docs server What have you been doing lately? Customer education AI for marketing his blog ideas Mentioned in this episode Eleventy Astro Webawesome Adobe CF MCP docs Blog The MCP Listen to the Audio Bio Raymond Camden Raymond Camden is a developer advocate, focused on Generative AI, the web platform, development and cats. He has 8 kids, 5 dogs and 2 cats. Links raymondcamden.com His Amazon wishlist Threads LinkedIn Interview transcript Michaela Light Welcome back to the show I'm here with Ray Camden famous cold fusion uh developer ai expert and general all-around great guy along with being a star wars fan and cat afectionado uh ray lives in louisiana one of the only state of the union that has a different law system I think and it does have great food and a bit of French influence. And he's a developer advocate, has been for many years. I think many, many years ago, a developer advocate or had some other title for Adobe, but you've now moved forward. And he has eight kids as well. Raymond Camden So eight kids, five cats, one dog. Raymond Camden No fish. Michaela Light Well, the cats might eat the fish. So welcome, Ray. Raymond Camden Hey, thank you for having me. Michaela Light And we're going to be talking about using AI with ColdFusion and development in general. Some of we're going to talk about are how some developers are kind of terrified about letting AI write code, having confidence in the code that's generated. How it can help if you have to move between languages. And we'll slip in some rag and AI sanity checking. And we'll ask Ray what he's been doing lately because that's always of interest. So tell us about how developers you talk to are frightened about using AI to write code. What do you think is going on? Raymond Camden I wouldn't say they're frightened. I think there's hesitation, maybe, because at least year or so ago, we saw so many vibe-coded things and heard vibe-coded horror stories. And I think, and from my personal experience, it wasn't necessarily fear, but I can remember about two years ago at a Microsoft conference. Using, I believe, Copilot. And my test was, hey, you know what? Create me a web component, but don't use a build step. Read more Michaela Light is the host of the CF Alive Podcast and has interviewed more than 100 ColdFusion experts. In each interview, she asks "What Would It Take to make CF more alive this year?" The answers still inspire her to continue to write and interview new speakers. Michaela has been programming in ColdFusion for more than 20 years. She founded TeraTech in 1989. The company specializes in ColdFusion application development, security and optimization. She has also founded the CFUnited Conference and runs the annual State of the CF Union Survey. Join the CF Alive revolution Discover how we can all make CF more alive, modern and secure this year. Join other ColdFusion developers and managers in the CF Alive Inner Circle today. Get early access to the CF Alive book and videos Be part of a new movement for improving CF's perception in the world. Contribute to the CF Alive revolution Connect with other CF developers and managers There is no cost to membership.

2. 

   30 Sept 2026

   143 Semantic CF code search with JARVIS (No Arc Reactor Budget required) with Monte Chan

   Monte Chan talks about “Semantic CF code search with JARVIS (No Arc Reactor Budget required)” in this episode of ColdFusion Alive Podcast with host Michaela Light. “...With this tool, kind of like an AI bot, if you will, that will give a jump start on the onboarding process… the new employees can just use this bot to get a familiarity with the code base…” https://youtu.be/w2LeYZB8LA8 Show notes What if you could ask questions about your codebase and get answers instantly? Motivated by CodeQL by GitHub (Paid tool) “What if a new developer (or a CTO) could just ask the codebase ‘where is the session timeout set?’ and get a real answer instead of grepping for three hours?” “You called this a poor man’s J.A.R.V.I.S. Ben Nadel said ‘with great power comes… great self-indulgence.’ Are we about to be very self-indulgent today? What is J.A.R.V.I.S.? J.A.R.V.I.S. is the fictional artificial intelligence assistant created by Tony Stark in Marvel's Iron Man and Avengers comics and films. J.A.R.V.I.S stands for "Just A Rather Very Intelligent System". Codebase ingestion using vector databases Walk the repo, split files into chunks (functions, classes, docs), turn each chunk into an embedding (a numeric vector that captures meaning), and store those vectors with metadata (path, line range, language). That index is what makes “where is session timeout set?” searchable by meaning, not just IDE search. A vector database is a store optimized for “find the N most similar vectors.” Examples: Pinecone, Qdrant, Milvus, Chroma, LanceDB, plus CF’s built-in / in-memory store for demos. Code search is usually hybrid: vectors for meaning + keyword/BM25 for exact symbols. How you chunk CFM/CFC/JS/SQL differently Why you store a summary + metadata and embed that The current gap: CF’s built-in document ingestion doesn’t yet understand CFC/CFML structure, so custom scripts are required PDFs can be ingessed directly Updating the vector store when your codebase changes Prompt-driven code exploration Prompt-driven code exploration: You ask in English. The system retrieves the relevant chunks, stuffs them into the prompt, and the model answers from that context. That pattern is RAG (retrieval-augmented generation): retrieve first, then generate, so the model is grounded in your code instead of guessing What you need” slide with practical commentary: Piece Why it matters CIO translation CF 2025 Update 8 Native AI, vector stores, agents, MCP No new language or Python sidecar tax Vector store (Qdrant / Milvus / Pinecone / Chroma) In-memory is too small for real apps Persistent, scalable “memory” for the AI LLM (Anthropic, OpenAI, or Ollama local) The brain Cloud vs on-prem / air-gapped choice Ingestion script CF can ingest docs today; CFC/CFML still need custom work One-time + ongoing cost of keeping the index fresh MCP (optional but powerful) File-system or other tools the agent can call Controlled agency—AI can look without unrestricted access Key terms Vector store / embeddings -  numbers that capture the meaning of code so similarity search works Chunking by logical entity (whole function, not random 500-token slices) -  this is the quality differentiator Summary-first embeddings -  embed a rich description (purpose, path, callers, callees) rather than raw code only MCP (Model Context Protocol) -  open standard so the agent can safely call tools (filesystem, DB, etc.) Ongoing ingestion -  full re-index vs git-diff / pipeline-after-merge Adobe folded LLM, embedding, vector-store, RAG, agent, and MCP APIs into the CF engine (commonly described as CF 2025 Update 8 / the “CF 2026” AI wave). You call models from CFML (ChatModel(), agent(), simpleRAG(), VectorStore(), etc.) instead of wiring every provider by hand. MCP (Model Context Protocol) An open standard so tools/resources are exposed the same way to Claude, Cursor, VS Code, ChatGPT, etc. CF can host MCP servers or call MCP tools. Community projects like MCPCFC wrap existing CF functions as MCP tools. Similar commercial tools Sourcegraph Cody, Continue.dev, custom LanceDB/Qdrant indexers A fascinating look at how AI can help developers understand and navigate complex applications. CIO / risk / value questions Time-to-answer for audits, compliance questions, or new-hire onboarding Reducing “bus factor” / key-person risk Security posture: Local Ollama option (data never leaves the building) Guardrails and “excessive agency” concerns (echo Pete Freitag’s CF Summit security talk) Prompt injection surface when the AI can call tools Cost model: vector DB + LLM tokens + ongoing ingestion vs. developer hours spent hunting code Build vs buy: this is a capability you can own inside the CF platform rather than another SaaS Practical next steps & gotchas (5- 6 min) Minimum viable version a team could stand up in a sprint Biggest surprise or pain point he hit while building it What CF 2026 still needs (better CFC/CFML-aware ingestion is the obvious one) Where the slides and sample code live: github.com/knittingguy (JARVIS repo + the earlier mongoDB-langchain / aiagent_cf work) Close & resources One sentence each for the CF developer and the CIO listening Ben Nadel quote callback Point people to the GitHub, MCP servers list (mcpservers.org), and Monte’s Facebook/Geek Talk channel Invite questions from the live or later audience Why are you proud to use CF? WWIT to make CF more alive this year? What are you looking forward to at the Adobe CF Summit East? Mentioned in this episode 133 GitHub Copilot & AI-Assisted Coding (Unlocking ColdFusion’s AI Potential) with Monte Chan Qdrant vector database CF 2026 features (TT blog) MCP servers CF Summit East Monte's GitHub Listen to the Audio Bio Monte Chan Monte Chan is currently a Senior Web Programmer at Shoes For Crews. He has been programming in ColdFusion since version 4.5 back in 1999. He was a co-manager of the Alamo Area ColdFusion User Group from 2008 to 2010. In his free time, he enjoys learning any web development related technologies or just programming languages he can put his hands on. He also enjoys running marathons; he does not run fast; he just runs🙂. He currently resides in San Antonio, TX with his beautiful wife and three rescue dogs (two chiweenies and one pure-bred chihuahua). Links Facebook You can email me at monte (at) monteandjanicechan.com but you may get a quicker response if you send me a message in Facebook Messenger. LinkedIn YouTube channel, Geek Talk. GitHub Interview transcript Michaela Light So welcome back to the show. I'm here with Monte Chan and we're going to be talking about semantic ColdFusion code search with Jarvis. And you don't need an Arc Reactor budget to do this because it's all written in ColdFusion. So welcome, Monte. Monte Chan Oh, thank you. Michaela Light And it's been a few years since you've been on the show when you were talking about your AI coding experience. And I'll put that episode in the show notes at TeraTech.com. But let me introduce you to folks who haven't met you before. You're currently a senior web programmer at Shoes for Crews, and you've been programming ColdFusion since version 4.5 back in the late '90s. You used to be the co-manager of the Alamo Area ColdFusion User Group. And in your free time, I don't know how you have free time because I've seen you presenting at CF Summit and I know you work hard. You enjoy learning any web development-related technologies or just programming languages that you can get your hands on. And also, you enjoy running marathons, though you don't have any world-record times there. You just enjoy it, do it for fun. Currently, you're in San Antonio, Texas, and you have a beautiful wife and three rescue dogs. Two chiweenies and one purebred Chihuahua. What is a chiweenie? I've never heard of that. Chihuahua is the little dog, right? Read more Michaela Light is the host of the CF Alive Podcast and has interviewed more than 100 ColdFusion experts. In each interview, she asks "What Would It Take to make CF more alive this year?" The answers still inspire her to continue to write and interview new speakers. Michaela has been programming in ColdFusion for more than 20 years. She founded TeraTech in 1989. The company specializes in ColdFusion application development, security and optimization. She has also founded the CFUnited Conference and runs the annual State of the CF Union Survey. Join the CF Alive revolution Discover how we can all make CF more alive, modern and secure this year. Join other ColdFusion developers and managers in the CF Alive Inner Circle today. Get early access to the CF Alive book and videos Be part of a new movement for improving CF's perception in the world. Contribute to the CF Alive revolution Connect with other CF developers and managers There is no cost to membership.

3. 

   14 Sept 2026

   142 Moving to ColdFusion 2025 Cheers and Challenges with Charlie Arehart

   Charlie Arehart talks about “Moving to ColdFusion 2025 Cheers and Challenges” in this episode of ColdFusion Alive Podcast with host Michaela Light. "…There was so much in that Update 8. It is like a new release, and the AI stuff is by far the biggest. And there’s so much more than the AI stuff… if you think Update 8 was all about AI, it’s not.." https://youtu.be/FX4FHKCxCK8 Show notes Charlie, you always open Hidden Gems by saying there's more new stuff in a release than people ever realize. Looking back at CF2025, what's the one gem that surprised even you? Does this include hidden gems in CF 2026 (aka CF 2025 update 8)? ACF 2026 introduces native artificial intelligence (AI) and large language model (LLM) integration, Model Context Protocol (MCP) support, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), vector databases, new ColdFusion Markup Language (CFML) features, security enhancements, developer tooling, monitoring capabilities, and performance improvements. The installer now lets you set an allowed IP for the admin on any profile, and it reminds people about wsconfig. You pushed for both of these. Thanks! For shops that only touch a CF installer once every few years, how much does a small usability win like this actually move the needle? Enabling HTTPS for the built-in CF Admin is basically trivial now, and you can force HTTPS only. On port 8500. Here's the thing that should scare people. In your consulting work, how many admins were you finding like that before CF2025? What's the worst thing you've seen happen because of it? Since ACF 2016 admin not visible publicly by default Containers got a real upgrade. 60 to 70 percent faster startup, secrets support, CCS inside containers, better docs. CF has had container support since ACF 2018! For teams already on Docker or moving toward Kubernetes, what's the day one win they should expect? Subscription licensing With pure subscription licensing now the only path, how are procurement and finance teams reacting compared to the old perpetual model? What should a mid-sized shop be building into their multi-year budget forecast, and where's the true up risk hiding? Subscription budget is same as upgrading every 2 years Dev license 2 concurrent requests limit CF2025 is subscription only now. You've got the public pricing numbers and you point out a lot of people were already on subscription through cloud AMIs or ETLAs. This is the number every budget owner actually wants before they'll sign off on anything. Purely on total cost of ownership, how does this compare to the old perpetual plus upgrade discount model for a mid-sized shop, over say a five year run? API Manager doesn't need a CF license key anymore. That feels like a quiet one but it's huge. Who should be looking at this now that it's free, and what are people actually using it for? Came out with ACF 2016 Useful for API monitoring, throttling, versioning and security The new null coalescing operator, multi-exception catch, trailing commas, createObject loadPaths, these all feel overdue. Which of these do you think will actually change how people write CFML day to day, versus just being nice to have? CSP and nonce support are built in now. For teams that have been fighting with Content-Security-Policy headers, how much of that pain does CF2025 actually solve, and what still has to be handled outside CF? For better app security Beware CFDump needs fixing if you use CSP - alt CSP header for this Click Dump to expand or contract sections The removals list is longer than any release I can remember! Prior depreciented functions were now removed. YUI based UI tags, cfencode, Axis1, COM, parameterExists, tags as CFCs, ThreadTerminate. HTMLEditFormat() → EncodeforHTML() This is the part where every CIO I talk to gets nervous, because somewhere in their app is one ancient tag holding the whole thing together, and nobody left on staff remembers why, kind of like nobody remembers who actually planted the tree that's now blocking the road. Of everything you've helped migrate so far, which removal is causing the most real pain? Key terms defined Deprecated = still works, but developers are warned not to use it. Replacement is normally available. Removed/obsolete = no longer supported; code using it may fail to compile, load, or execute. Unsupported but present = an intermediate state used by some vendors: it may still work, but bugs may not be fixed. Behavioral breaking change = feature remains, but its semantics change enough that old code may behave differently. Adobe explicitly distinguishes deprecated, deprecated and unsupported, and removed. Deprecated ColdFusion functionality remains eligible for bug/security fixes; deprecated-and-unsupported functionality generally receives only security fixes; removed functionality is unavailable. Adobe updated the Compatibility Code Analyzer and Pete Freitag built a dedicated compatibility scanner into Fixinator. How good are these tools actually at catching the gotchas before they hit production, so people aren't finding out the hard way in front of customers? You spend time on the breaking changes carried over from the March and June 2024 updates, searchimplicitscopes and the encryption algorithm change, plus the old dateformat capital D change from CF2021. This is exactly the kind of thing that makes a CTO put off an upgrade for three more years, one small silent change breaking something nobody tested. For someone jumping straight from CF2018 or CF2021 to CF2025, what's the realistic order of operations, because nobody wants to be Frodo walking into Mordor without Sam and a map? Java 21 and Tomcat 10.1 landed together. Beyond just being current, what real benefits, or new gotchas, are you seeing CF developers run into? Quarterly Java updates Future Java 25 support? Deploy CF as a WAR requires CF Ent Looking at the full support matrix, Windows 2025 server is added. Sybase is gone, Solaris is gone, WebLogic and WebSphere are gone. Few orgs use these so it was an ROI decision to remove. For organizations still stuck on those platforms, it's a bit of a fellowship breaking up, everyone has to pick a path forward. What migration paths are you actually recommending? ZIP install alternative Past this one release, what should a CIO actually watch for as a signal that Adobe is staying committed to the platform, versus the risk of another long quiet stretch? Nobody wants to migrate now and then find themselves waiting at the gates of Moria for the next real update. What are you excited about for CF Summit East? Reston VA near IAD airport Mentioned in this episode Hidden Gems in CF 2025 CFmeetup youtube ACF 2026 features ACF 2026 features (cf2025 update 8) https://guides.adobe.com/coldfusion/en/docs/introduction-to-coldfusion/whats-new.html ACF 2025 features Adobe ACF 2025 features https://guides.adobe.com/coldfusion/en/docs/introduction-to-coldfusion/whats-new-cf-2025.html Adobe CF issue tracker CFMeetup talk on CF 2025 migration Adobe CF Summit East (TT blog) https://teratech.com/adobe-coldfusion-2024-new-features/ Adobe CF Summit East Listen to the Audio Bio Charlie Arehart A veteran server troubleshooter who’s worked in enterprise IT for more than three decades, Charlie Arehart (@carehart) is a longtime community contributor who as an independent consultant provides remote, short-term, and even on-demand troubleshooting/tuning assistance for organizations of all sizes and experience levels (carehart.org/consulting). Links X Facebook LinkedIn Web Interview transcript Michaela Light Welcome back to the show. I'm here with famous Charlie Earhart. Saw him recently in Las Vegas at CF Summit, invited him back on the podcast. And we're going to be talking about moving to Cold Fusion 2025. Cheers and challenges. So, if you are one of the very few people on the planet who does Cold Fusion, has not heard of Charlie, he is a veteran. Server troubleshooter. He's worked with enterprise IT for more than three decades, probably four decades at this point, to be honest. And he's also been contributing to the community. He's a great helper in the different ColdFusion communities. He's contributed to multiple ColdFusion books. And he provides remote, short-term, and on-demand troubleshooting, tuning assistance for organizations of all sizes. And experience level. And you can find him at cairheart.org/slash consulting. I'll put that in the show notes at terror tech.com for those of you who want to find it. Welcome, Charlie. Charlie Arehart Hey, well, glad to be back. It's been a little while. Charlie Arehart Yes. Well, I took a little break, but I'm back from the break now. Charlie Arehart Well deserved, I'm sure. Michaela Light Yes. So we're going to be talking about. Both ColdFusion 2025 and what I call ColdFusion 2026. Other people call it ColdFusion 2025 update eight. So, and we'll look at the cool things that Adobe released in there. But in particular, we're going to look at some of the hidden things that people may not have noticed. And so what are you excited about in the latest release that came out over the summer? Read more Michaela Light is the host of the CF Alive Podcast and has interviewed more than 100 ColdFusion experts. In each interview, she asks "What Would It Take to make CF more alive this year?" The answers still inspire her to continue to write and interview new speakers. Michaela has been programming in ColdFusion for more than 20 years. She founded TeraTech in 1989. The company specializes in ColdFusion application development, security and optimization. She has also founded the CFUnited Conference and runs the annual State of the CF Union

Who has been a guest on ColdFusion Alive

Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.

• Daniel Garcia
• Luis Majano
• Brad Wood
• Mark Takata
• Scott Stroz

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Apple Podcasts (US)

4.8 / 5

5 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 51 / 100

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Quality

90

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0

YouTube

0

Engagement

32

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